Director
James Benning
Cast
Rhonda Bell, Elion Sucher
Edition 1987
95'
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1986
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Crime, Drama
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Dialogue:
English
In "Landscape Suicide" Benning continues his examination of Americana through the stories of two murderers. Ed Gein was a Wisconsin farmer and multiple murderer who taxidermied his victims in the 1950s. Bernadette Prott was a California teenager who stabbed a friend to death over an insult in 1984. Benning's distanced approach to such grisly material is as far removed as possible from sensationalism, however. Although the acts of murder are both bizarre and violent, Benning dwells on them only minimally, emphasizing instead the details of psychological motivation, which in both cases seem frighteningly mundane. Benning has created a script which is a masterpiece of understated colloquial writing, and the actors he employs to re-enact confessional testimony and incidents recounted in trial transcripts perform with a flatly convincing lack of affect reminiscent of Gary Gilmore. The two monologues are embedded in Benning's characteristic meditations of landscape: long shots of the Wisconsin farmlands, general stores, dirt roads and pick-up trucks, and the carefully tended lawns, swimming pools, sprawling bungalows and malls of the middle-class California suburb. These images are offered in the classically spare mise-en-scene which Benning has perfected in his work as a cinematic poet of the contemporary American environment. Here, in his most accessible film so far, the beautiful, open vistas are dense with the significance of the catastrophes they engendered.
Image gallery
Credits
Directors
James Benning
Cast
Rhonda Bell, Elion Sucher
Scenario
James Benning
Director of Photography
James Benning
Editors
James Benning
More info
Dialogue
English
Countries of production
United States of America
Year
1986
Filmography
James Benning
Did You Ever Hear That Cricket Sound? (short, 1971), Art Hist. 101 (short, 1972), Ode to Muzak (short, 1972), Time and a Half (short, 1972), 57 (short, 1973), Honeyland Road (short, 1973), Gleem (short, 1974), I-94 (short, 1974), Michigan Avenue (short, 1974), 3 Minutes on the Dangers of Film Recording (short, 1975), 9-1-75 (short, 1975), An Erotic Film (short, 1975), Saturday Night (short, 1975), The United States of America (short, 1975), A to B (short, 1976), 11 x 14 (1977), 8 1/2 X 11 (short, 1977), One Way Boogie Woogie (1977), Four Oil Wells (short, 1978), Grand Opera: An Historical Romance (1978), Oklahoma (1979), Double Yodel (short, 1980), Last Dance (short, 1981), Him and Me (1982), American Dreams: Lost and Found (1984), O Panama (short, 1985), Landscape Suicide (1986), Used Innocence (1989), North on Evers (1992), Four Corners (1998), Utopia (1998), El Valley Centro (1999), Los (2001), Sogobi (2002), 13 Lakes (2004), Ten Skies (2004), One Way Boogie Woogie/27 Years Later (2005), Casting a Glance (2007), RR (2007), Fire & Rain (short, 2009), Ruhr (2009), Faces 1973 (short, 2010), Pig Iron (short, 2010), Twenty Cigarettes (2011), Two Cabins (short, 2011), Small Roads (2011), Faces (TV film, 2011), YouTube Trilogy: 4 Songs, History, Asian Girls (short, 2011), After Warhol (2011), Nightfall (2012), Stemple Pass (2012), Easy Rider (2012), One Way Boogie Woogie 2012 (2012), The War (2012), Postscript (short, 2012), Bnsf (2013), Chicago Loop (short, 2014), Deseret (2014), Natural History (2014), Perimeter (short, 2015), Spring Equinox (2016), Measuring Change (2016), Fall Equinox (2016), Readers (2017), L. Cohen (2018), 61. La verdad interior (2019), Telemundo (2019), Maggie's Farm (2020), Dancing in the street, 11 grados de separación (2020), On Paradise Road (2020), From Bakersfield to Mojave (2021), The United States of America (2022), Two Moons (short, 2022), Allensworth (2022), little boy (2025)