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You know what James Benning does with Landscape Suicide? He makes Errol Morris look like Gore fuckin' Verbinski. And I *like* Errol Morris.

James Benning makes good use of a camera, sound equipment, an editing bay and unknown actors. It's unique, intelligent, oddly humane and formally conforms to its subject matter in a signature style he's carved out for himself over an important career in film while opening wide expansions into which other film makers may prosper. I won't talk particulars or details of the piece because it's important for first time viewers to approach Landscape Suicide unbiased and hungry for Benning's offering.

Benning understands that through the manipulation of image, sound and time, cinema can work to uncover truth within the mundane.
What creates violence? Is it born from our environment, or ourselves? If we live in a world in which everything that surrounds us is now man-made, is the violence which results from these surroundings man-made also? In the end, does that really matter?
Disturbing, tragic and illuminating. A revelation.

Also contained a scene which for me, seemed to completely capture the essence of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

James Benning makes good use of a camera, sound equipment, an editing bay and unknown actors. It's unique, intelligent, oddly humane and formally conforms to its subject matter in a signature style he's carved out for himself over an important career in film while opening wide expansions into which other film makers may prosper. I won't talk particulars or details of the piece because it's important for first time viewers to approach Landscape Suicide unbiased and hungry for Benning's offering.

Mostra-se nas sequências de planos alongados, apenas instâncias isoladas, uma série de planos iniciais. E quanto ao contracampo? E quanto à mecânica e às interações de tais instâncias? Conjuga-se uma virtualização do subtexto, um olhar acerca de vivências mundanas moldadas por fatores implícitos, um exercício em sensibilidade.

It took me a while to get it, but once I did, I respected the hell out of the vision.

"Only a few thousand people watched Landscape Suicide, but everyone who saw it went out and made a documentary about the bleak, violent vicissitudes of the American character."

unique dreamlike meditative nostalgic fuckin weird etcetc

something about this just *works* but it's too visceral to really explain

🎶mem'ries🎶

A fantastic experimental documentary from James Benning, incorporating fascinating murder interviews, a clear artistic style, and his classic use of gorgeous landscapes. Melancholic, beautiful, harsh, peaceful, unsettling, innocent, delicate, tough. It is so many contrasting things at once, and it culminates into a profound and wonderful piece. You don't often see documentaries structured or carried out this way. The interviews are lengthy yet interesting, and the 'montages' of nature, wildlife, roads, buildings, and forests simply have to be witnessed.

The only thing of note about this film are the script and the performances. As a re-enactment of court transcripts from two cases of murder, both the director and actors come together to produce what I would unquestionably assume to be real confessions and testimonies if I didn't know otherwise.

However, inserted in between these re-enactments are lengthy looks at landscapes and other mundane details about small towns. As the title suggests, this could have been inserted as to question the kind of environment that produced the murderers we are, in a certain way, presented. However, the length at which we're made to consider this is pretty absurd, and eventually I completely lost interest in the experimental imagery and started to fast-forward. Maybe I should have given this more of a chance, but there really wasn't much substance to be found in this narrative at all.