Why Art Matters: The Virgin Suicides

Portraits of Boyhood Obsession

I've been obsessed with The Virgin Suicides, the book and the movie, since it was added to Netflix. Bothered by the mystery of "why," I was compelled to buy the book, consuming it in a matter of days.

The movie made Lux the primary focus of the story, the youngest sister as the catalyst for the story beginning, and Lux's behavior the vehicle to push it along. The book, however, gives you a lot more back story on members of the whole family, making all the sisters protagonists in their destiny.

Having lived in Michigan in the 70s, albeit in single digits, I distinctly remember the desperation of the times. I remember diseased trees as well as beef and milk poisoned with DDT. Polluted rivers and lakes. The author captured all of that, and make it part of the story more so than the film.

For the movie, director Sophia Coppola, like Quentin Tarantino, has a distinct ear for enhancing her projects using soundtrack selections. Her music put me firmly in my cousin's bedroom reading her back issues of Hit Parader and Creem. While the book provided a playlist during a critical moment in the book, it was only one passage. Sophia layered her movie with musical moments. "Strange Magic" by ELO not only captures the magic of the story, but Michigan in the 70s as well.

Coppola always played with mystery. The fact you only get a taste as to what the girls were like lent them a mystery that only can be achieved by being an unattainable teenaged girl.

Kirsten Dunst was perfectly cast as Lux.

But what is the overall appeal of The Virgin Suicides?

The youthful mystique of the Lisbon girls. If I may borrow from The Who, "I hope I die before I get old." The girls, by existing in the past, have become beautifully tragic, almost mythical creatures, worshiped memories. By staying in the past, their myth stays intact; had they lived and grown up, the myth would cease to be. In scenes with the boys on their dates to homecoming, there was every indication sisters Bonnie and Mary would have grown to be as dull as their parents.

By having to story told by the unnamed teenaged neighbors, you become one of them, calling them to play music, taking them to the dance, slipping through the sliding glass doors.

The story refuses to answer the question why the girls killed themselves or explain the complexities of mental illness. That the whole family is mentally ill is obvious; the best possible answer is you cannot explain the unexplainable, only speculate.

It is a tight, wonderfully crafted story. Not a single word is wasted.