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Jisatsu sâkuru (2001) More at IMDbPro »

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141 out of 169 people found the following comment useful :-
Suicide Club: one please!, 22 February 2005

Author: gto0227 from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I thought this was a great film. So great in fact, that I wrote to the director and he replied.

The movie is clearly a reflection of one particular social problem in Japan. NO! it isn't suicide! Suicide is one solution to the problem but it isn't the problem itself. If you need help understanding the film, I have three suggestions. 1) forgot focusing on the cute girls jumping in front of the train. Instead notice who exactly is dying 2) pay attention to the relationships between individuals, particularly related individuals 3) pay attention to the lyrics of the songs. Two songs very clearly tell you what the social problem is. Two songs also very clearly offer solutions to the problem. The movie ended correctly. Listen to the last song carefully.

The plot is basically this. Define "the problem" and show how deep it permeates the society. Show one solution again and again. Finally, propose a different solution.

Character development was clearly there too but it is Japanese character development so what is not said is just as important as what is said. Note the actions, listen to the soundtrack. Don't depend only on the dialogue. And DO LISTEN TO THE LYRICS OF THE SONGS!

The most touching scene was the girlfriend in shock trying to deal with the loss of her boyfriend and finally walking past the chalk outline of her dead boyfriend still sketched out on the sidewalk. She missed him so much that she lay down on the outline. Hollywood would never do a scene like that because the soundtrack that supported her mood, thoughts and actions clearly did not require any dialogue. I don't think Hollywood actors are capable of performing without the crutch of snappy dialogue anymore.

The scariest scene for me was the group of students that suddenly decided to outdo the deaths at the train station by jumping off the school. Three students backed down and refused to jump. But after they realized what had just happened, (there was a lingering pause to let it sink in in real time) one felt guilty and dragged another down with her. The last felt so guilty that she went anyway even after being begged not to by friends and teachers. Talk about peer pressure! If you understand Japanese schools, you can understand how real that scene was. In fact, when the movie was first shown in Japan, students were prevented from seeing it because adults were concerned about them getting the wrong idea.

If you were confused by the police officer's suicide, review his earlier behavior. Particularly, what time does he come home, how knowledgeable is he about his family, and how concerned is he about his family? And who exactly died just before he commits suicide?

If you are confused about the cryptic phrase "Are you connected to yourself?", try replacing it with "Do you still believe in yourself?"

As for the ending, well, if you don't have a family that you can trust and you put all your hopes for the future in your boyfriend and he died without explaining why, what would you do?

Lastly, I read all 7 pages of reviews previously submitted. Quite a few people just didn't get it. OK, what is the big failing? Well, I'd say that American films typically choose well-known songs as supporting material to set a mood. You know the words to the song so you know what idea they are supporting, might even hum along while watching the film. But what if the director chooses unknown songs? Will you pay attention? What if song lyrics replace dialogue? Will you even notice?

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108 out of 130 people found the following comment useful :-
One of the best films of the 2000s, 18 March 2005

Author: Brandt Sponseller from New York City

A suicide epidemic is sweeping Japan, even among hordes of teenaged girls who are making pacts with each other and offing themselves together. As Detective Kuroda (Ryo Ishibashi) and crew investigate, they begin to suspect that maybe there's more to it than simple suicide.

In terms of sheer spectacle, surrealism and the impact of its scenes, Suicide Club is simply an amazing, groundbreaking film. As for "what it really means" (assuming we could even agree on how that could be determined), it is wide open for interpretation. Everyone is likely to have their own, and not a few will probably insist that their interpretation is the "right" one. I don't think mine is the "right" one--I don't even agree that there would be a "right" interpretation. But at any rate, my current take on the film is that it is an extremely twisted, broad-ranging exegesis on many facets of Japanese culture (and to an extent, it can be applied to other cultures, as well) that is issuing sharp criticism at the same time that it is showing reason for hope.

Suicide Club is a very dense film. By that I mean that it is packed full of meaning, symbolism, references and such. An analysis of each scene would be interesting and informative, but it would take far more than 1000 words (the space IMDb allows). At the same time that much of it may be intentionally cryptic, designed to open up the interpretational field, I think that much of the film is more transparent than its often David Lynch-like surrealism would suggest.

For example, in the late 20th/Early 21st Century, and especially in 2001, the year before Suicide Club was released, a big news story in Japan (and elsewhere, including BBC and CNN reports) was their relatively high suicide rate. 33,000 Japanese had killed themselves in 2000. The Japanese government's Ministry of Health developed a special program to combat the phenomenon. At the same time, there is a cultural history of suicide being "honorable" in Japan, at least in some contexts, yet contradictorily, suicide has also been looked at as strongly taboo by the Japanese, as something not even to be talked about. Japan is also a culture where a more cyclical view of time and nature is common. The major Japanese religions are Buddhism and Shinto. Many species of Buddhism accept reincarnation, and Shinto has a potential "life after death" as kami. In the midst of all of this, The Perfect Suicide Manual by Wataru Tsurumi was on Japanese bestseller lists for years in the late 1990s. So suicide is certainly a complex, pressing issue in Japan.

Writer/director Shion Sono offers his own thesis for the root of the problem, on the way providing a strong cultural critique of Japan (and by conceptual association, similar cultures in other industrialized nations). The criticism is perhaps surprisingly conservative in light of the graphic bloodiness of the film's images, but we could see Suicide Club's brutality as partially an embrace of reality versus sweeping the truth under the rug, and partially a Natural Born Killers (1994)-styled self-indictment of the media age's contributions to the problem.

A major theme is "disconnect". Many are wrapped up in their work, in gadgetry and other pursuits so that they lose their connections to their families and even themselves as authentic human beings. It is significant that Sono shows many suicide victims with interlocked hands, achieving a kind of emotional/spiritual/"kamic" unity before taking the plunge. Another corrupt attempt at achieving the missing connection is realized in long strands of human skin that are bound together and found near some suicide victims. Kuroda, who is investigating the epidemic, is relatively disconnected from his immediate family. They need help, but he only notices when it's too late.

Pop culture is initially portrayed as shallow or decadent. Near the beginning of the film, the young girl pop group has a big hit with a vacuous song about e-mailing or calling them. (Did I hear someone mention "Kim Possible" (2002)?) The name of the group is alternatively written in English (via posters, video and the subtitles) as "Dessert" (sweet and appealing, but bad for you if overindulged and consisting of "empty" nutrition), "Desert" (a seemingly barren wasteland, or an abandoning) or "Dessart" ("Dessert" + "Art"). Near the middle of the film, A Ziggy Stardust-styled glam-punk is shown depravedly indulging in sex and violence--an even more extreme version of Malcolm McDowell's Alexander de Large from A Clockwork Orange (1971). Later he becomes a self-styled Charles Mansion-ish celebrity, and he is blamed for having a connection to the suicides, in a typical media/pop culture scapegoating. At one point, the suicides evolve from their initial spirit of a unifying pact to a fad to be indiscriminately mimicked, whether one does it alone or not. It seems that in such an environment, even suicide is not immune from corruption.

The film only begins to reach a resolution once characters are lectured on their unwitting alienation/inauthenticity/dissociation from their core values. Children, either as perceptive innocents or wise reincarnates are the primary instruments of this reeducation. Even "Desert" contributes, as they sing a song about piecing together jigsaw puzzles. Later, when they decide to literally desert their pop stardom, they do so with a farewell song that's no longer shallow, but full of poignancy and hope. (By the way, all of the music in the film is excellent--I would love to see a CD soundtrack released.) This is a rare film that might be difficult to enjoy without a taste for this kind of deeper analysis, but there are plenty of visceral and surreal delights for horror fans. Those with weaker constitutions may have difficulty stomaching this material, but Suicide Club is an absolutely brilliant film--all of the technical and artistic aspects are exemplary. This is one of the best films of the 2000s.

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148 out of 230 people found the following comment useful :-
Not for the Japanese-ignorant, 23 September 2004
Author: rrobins2-1

A user on this board commented that much of this film is lost in translation. This is true. From what I've seen, the overwhelming majority of users on this board are either American or European. Also, the majority of the reviews of this film are negative, and the only explanation from these negative reviews are that the film "doesn't make sense" or lacks a "solid plot."

LOL

Of course it doesn't make sense to you. You're watching it as an American. You cannot watch this film with an American lens. You're right - it doesn't make sense. But if you watch this film with a Japanese lens it makes PERFECT sense.

First, you cannot watch this film within a Christian/existential context. You must watch it from a Buddhist/Shinto perspective. This is the predominant religion in Japan.

Watching this as a Shinto/Buddhist you'll find that a lot of the images take on new meaning. Shinto is an animist religion that WORSHIPS NATURE - pay attention to the animal symbols that repeatedly crop up in the film (did you wonder why there are baby chicks running rampant during that creepy "shaving" scene?). Also, pay attention to the colors. Yellow means something much different to the Japanese than it does to Westerners.

Also, Japan has an incredibly powerful youth culture. Western societies, especially the United States, tend to dismiss youth as a time of decadence, immorality, and lack of direction. The Japanese hold their youth in reverence - they believe it's an incredibly precious time of life. In fact, just as the US has "mother's day" and "father's day," the Japanese have "children's day!" This movie is making a statement about childhood and the value of childhood.

And, last but not least - reincarnation. Reincarnation is accepted as a fact of life in Japan. Keep that in mind when the kids from the Dessart Group are talking all "cryptic" and "nonsensical." ^_^

I won't go into detail on what sort of meaning the film takes within the native Japanese framework. I will tell you this, though: the plot IS coherent from start to finish. There aren't any "plot holes." No more so than you'll find in the greats of American cinema, such as "Citizen Kane" or "Pulp Fiction."

With these things in mind, "Suicide Club" is not as enigmatic as it might seem. Of course, this information doesn't dismiss the other complaints: gratuitous violence and the J-pop performances.... Which, I'd argue, are just more American-biased complaints.

Sayonara! Randy

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41 out of 54 people found the following comment useful :-
A powerful cinematic meditation on suicide., 9 January 2004

Author: Wetbones from Vienna, Austria

When trying to make sense of this film one must consider the circumstances under which it was made and what inspired the director to do it in the first place.

Shion Sono started writing the script after a close friend of his killed himself. Nobody had any idea why he did it. He seemed perfectly OK and then one day he was dead by his own hand. There was no suicide not, no explanation, nothing.

SUICIDE CIRCLE, the film, is a cinematic meditation on the theme of suicide. Several times in the film it is mentioned how you have to be "connected" to yourself and not only to your job, your family and your other duties. There's also a reason that happy, laughing, cheerful, young, beautiful people off themselves apparently for no reason at all. Note the shots when the cop is on the subway and he looks at all those people who look dead tired and depressed. Each one of them could kill himself anytime. The end is also about this, the cop character has to give up trying to figure out who will kill himself because ultimately this is something up to the individual and outsiders can only have so much influence on it. In a way Shion Sono excuses himself from not preventing his friend's death with this ending.

The film is ambiguous in many places and does not provide any easy answers. It only gives ideas, offers perspectives, theories and hints. And that's what I like about it. Actually I watched this film for the first time only a few months after getting pretty close to ending my life myself. I thought it was a very intelligent and respectful film about the subject matter and much better than any heavy-handed, whiny, "politically correct" Hollywood film or those horrid movies of the week on TV.

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36 out of 47 people found the following comment useful :-
"Because the dead shine all night long", 15 April 2004

Author: kiden104 (kiden104@aol.com) from Bowling Green, KY

Shion Sono's "Suicide Club" is not standard fare. In many ways, I agree with the fact that this film is not for everyone. It is in reality a love it or hate it venture. However, I would suggest that anyone who holds love for the medium of film give it a try. Sitting down to watch this film, I had no idea of the journey upon which I was about to embark.

From the opening mass suicide and the subsequent dark hall patrol of a Tokyo night guard, "Suicide Club" starts with the notion that the film is to be a gore-fest and another dimly lit horror movie. But shortly into the film, such is disproved. A rash of mass suicide plagues Tokyo detectives when they are confronted with the reality that these are not your average end-my-suffering suicides. Are the suicides really suicide? Are they in fact murders? And how do a bizarre website and a preteen girl band fit in? These questions all come into the forefront as writer/director Sono explores some nonfiction issues as well.

"Suicide Club" is not only a social commentary, exploring fads and Japan's disaffected youth, but also a prodding statement on existence itself. What if all the ways in which we have been taught to define ourselves has been wrong? How do we connect with others while remaining connected to ourselves? Furthermore, as an American audience, we have much to gain from Sono's work. "Suicide Club" shows us what would happen if the Japanese had helmed "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"; "Suicide Club" brings the sort of respect to Japanese cinema that "Battle Royale" and "Audition" did. But mostly, it exposes us to a harsh reality -- the limitations of American cinema. The fiercely original and highly intense "Suicide Club" could never be made stateside.

In the end, "Suicide Club" does not leave you with a clear answer to any of the questions that it poses. The film does indeed jump to subplots and twists and turns, leaving some chaos and confusion in its wake. But such is the nature of the topics Sono confronts. "Suicide Club" will not give you a 94 minute break from reality; rather, it will use 94 minutes to prompt you to redefine reality. (Four Stars)

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37 out of 55 people found the following comment useful :-
One of the most powerful thought-provoking films out there, 4 February 2005

Author: therRhetor from California

Don't mind the negative comments some reviewers give this film; some people just need the typical linear plot formula to appreciate a movie. But for those who are willing to step outside this structure and open their minds to something more daring and intriguing, Suicide Club is just for you.

By the end you will wonder what the hell just happened, and you will be on the right road to understanding as long as you're willing to throw away the notion of an action-driven movie and allow the thematically constructed characters and powerful scenes to permeate your psyche and lead to reflection on the influences in teen's lives that give meaning to and strip meaning away from life.

As for the overly used blood sprays that give rise to some complaints, they just contribute to the surreality of the film and don't detract from the ultimate message if one is willing to seek it.

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48 out of 78 people found the following comment useful :-
Good, but not entirely coherent, 7 February 2005

Author: nikkuchan from Minnesota

First of all, I looked at another comment by someone named rrobins2-1, who said that this movie is "not for the Japanese ignorant," that it has a lot to do with Buddhism and Shintoism, and that it's perfectly understandable from a Japanese point of view.

Mr. rrobins2-1 obviously doesn't know what he's talking about. I have lived in Japan, I speak the language, and I know that his comments are ignorant, which is ironic because that's what he claims others are. First of all, many Japanese people don't follow any religion, nor do they know a great deal about them. Second, every Japanese person I spoke to said the same thing about the movie: "I didn't understand it." So much for that perfectly understanding Japanese point of view. Anyway, now that that's finished, on to the review:

The beginning parts of the movie show a lot of promise. Teenagers are killing themselves, and being happy about it to boot. The police are looking into it, believing that it's more of a murder, and someone is causing it. Throughout the movie, you see their futility in trying to figure things out, and the scenes that feature mass suicide are very intense and well-done, but there ends up being so many different things in the movie that don't amount to anything, and their is no real conclusion to the film.

First off, there's a girl who informs the police of a website that's connected to the suicide. She attempts to find out the cause of the deaths. It seems that she would be an important character, but she's not in very much, and she doesn't do anything. This goes with all the characters. There are many characters in the movie, but none of them are developed, and many times you're left wondering why they're in the movie to begin with. There's a weird Rocky Horror-esquire musical performance about halfway through the movie, which many people believe is way out of character for the rest of the movie. Anway, I don't want to spoil anything, so I will just say that the story doesn't end, and with the way things stand at the end of the movie, it's impossible to understand how these people were convinced to kill themselves the way they were.

Going through all the stuff in the movie quickly: There's the mass suicides, Cops that are out of touch, a giant roll of stitched together human flesh of the people who have or will commit suicide, a weird j-pop band who's name is misspelled numerous times throughout the movie, the weird, gay cultist who sings wants to be famous, coughing children who know everything about the situation and give cryptic clues about it. All of these, as well as the stuff I neglected to mention, either come out of the blue, or are barely in the picture (or both), with no explanation (and almost no clues), leading you to wonder what they are doing in the first place. I know it's supposed to be a satire, but if half the people who watch it don't understand it, how are you supposed to get your message across?

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25 out of 36 people found the following comment useful :-
Pretty intense, 21 February 2003

Author: Simon Booth from UK

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

SUICIDE CIRCLE is another Japanese movie that's gaining notoriety for pushing the limits of film violence ever further. In recent years we've had AUDITION, BATTLE ROYALE, VERSUS, ICHI THE KILLER and now this.

One day in May, 54 Japanese happy and healthy school girls line up along the platform of a Shinjuku subway station and simultaneously throw themselves under a speeding train, in an opening sequence quite unlike any other. Gruesome hardly begins to describe the scene. Thankfully the low budget doesn't allow them to show the carnage in *too* much detail. A little later in the day, two nurses throw themselves out of a hospital window for no particular reason.

The police are mystified - the body count is rising and no particular connection between the victims is apparent... no motive or pattern. But a phone call tips them off to a strange website that counts the suicides... before they happen. This raises the question - are they really suicides at all.

SUICIDE CIRCLE is part horror movie, part detective mystery, part social criticism, part philosophy and mostly very strange. The director apparently normally directs gay porn for a living, so it's not surprising that he brings a different set of rules to his feature film than the average movie maker. The film is decidedly confrontational, presenting a complicated structure that opens up lots of questions and rarely lets out any answers. Why would these people commit suicide? The film challenges you to look for the answer inside yourself, rather than handing you some neat solution. The movie perhaps suffers from being too obtuse, but not at least from being too conventional.

The movie has been compared with BATTLE ROYALE, which is not entirely unreasonable given the themes and overall shock factor. SUICIDE CIRCLE is definitely not in the same class, but then it didn't have a director with the talent and experience of Kinji Fukasaku. Like BATTLE ROYALE, the violence and gore is likely to be the thing that gets the movie the most infamy. Not quite as much on display here, but some seriously OTT blood and guts in places. Not for the faint of heart or stomach. The acting is probably the place where the quality gap is widest between the two movies - Fukasaku gets fantastic performances from his entire cast, but Sono Sion gets average to downright poor performances from his. He's sometimes directing kids as young as 5 or 6 though, which has got to be harder work.

Various things like the acting keep SUICIDE CIRCLE from being great work, but it is definitely an interesting and unique one. Plenty of blood and guts and a little bit of food for the mind as well. The message and meaning here isn't sufficiently deep (or clear) for me to recommend the movie to anybody that would have a hard time getting past the shock moments to appreciate it. For those who like a little carnage with their breakfast, though, this is the latest one to watch, and is somewhat recommended.

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12 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Not like anything else, 5 September 2007

Author: Anijo from Sweden

I really like 'Suicide Club'. This is a movie that manage to be sometimes scary, and from start to end pretty unpredictable & nerve wrecking. This is not achieved through the basic horror/ thriller formula but rather by using this format in a very personal and original way. Instead of using some crazy person or a monster as a killer with a defined purpose, director Sion Sono puts his characters (and us as viewers) face to face with death more as it actually is: something we all carry with us, but nobody can understand and nobody can escape. So as the story begins, the police that try to investigate the sudden occurrence of mass youth suicide can't rely on previous experiences. How do you stop violent death when the killer actually is inside the mind of the victims? And if you don't know how or why this happens, can you even protect yourself? This is in many ways a much more fascinating & disturbing concept than the extremely over-exploited serial killer running around with a knife/gun/axe or whatever.

In conjunction with the suspense there's some quite poetic parts which touches on the everlasting question: if you can't find a reason behind death, can you really find any reason to live? In this hi-tech, constant mass communication world maybe a lot of us are spending our time trying to escape from such profound questions by engaging in mindless distractions & superficial relations, never contemplating that these actions might be just as empty & worthless as a non-existence. One notion that the movie conveys is that since death is the only inescapable thing inside all of us, we won't find the true core of life anywhere else. We have to search deep within ourselves.

I rate 'Suicide Club' 8/10. For me it was both entertaining & thought provoking.

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13 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
Horrible, Poor taste and without any kind of coherence, 24 October 2007

Author: Jessica Kolk from Brazil

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Japan, Tokyo. Fifty-four high-school students commit a collective suicide, jumping from a platform in a subway, making the police take the case. The problem is that their suicide doesn't have any big reason, making the detectives think that maybe a suicide cult can be involved with the deaths. While the detectives try to find a link between the 54 dead girls,a hacker called ''The Bat''calls the police and reports a strange link between the suicides and a website she found, which has nothing but red and white dots. She agrees to help the police solve the crime. From there on, many cases of high-school students dying will be only increasing and a strange connection with a girl band called "Dessert" will be made.

The reason why I started to watch 'Jisatsu saakuru' was that I was curious about the movie's review, that made it looks very interesting. The beginning of the movie, showing high-school students committing a collective suicide in a subway was also something very unusual, so I was thinking that I was going to watch a great horror/thriller movie. What a HUGE disappointment! This movie is AWFUL! One of the worst things I already watched in my entire life! It is totally pointless, with so many things in the plot that doesn't have any sense in connecting the story with the facts, that even when the movie ended, neither me, my father or my boyfriend got what the story was about or what the director/writer wanted to show. (Not to mention the sick scenes with people and animals being sadistically killed and raped inside a white sack while a band sings! What the hell was that?) I would never recommend this terrible movie to anyone normal and with good movie taste.

Ps: No, this movie is not perfectly understandable from a Japanese point of view. A lot of Japanese didn't get the message as well!

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