Landscape Suicide

‘A chilling, unsettling film about two murderers and a dozen landscapes (…). How do ‹Pain› and ‘Place’ fit together – the seemingly unprovoked stabbing of a popular schoolgirl by her classmate Bernadette Protti in a Californian suburb in 1984, and Ed Gein’s mass murders in rural Wisconsin in the 1950s? Do the interrogation transcripts, re-enacted with remarkable actors, fill the void of the landscapes? Or do the landscapes offer clues to the bloody crimes, to the emptiness of the characters and their relationships? As a viewer, one inevitably tries to fill in the gaps: this, too, is an act of (interpretative) violence.’ (Christoph Huber, Austrian Film Museum)

‘At its core, James Benning—the visual poet that he is—is concerned with interrogating the landscapes of these two places: Ed Gein’s wintry Wisconsin and rainy California. He demands that viewers look at these places, listen to them, and engage with these real crime scenes (…). Formally brilliant and deeply moving.” (Richard Linklater in an interview with Peter Becker)