Written By: Keaton Marcus

Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides kickstarted the director's career in 1999, fueled by a singular vision and talented performers. A coming of age story written from a female perspective about the dynamics of the male gaze and the struggles of being a teenage girl--its cinematography only matches the attitudes towards the film's titular characters on a purely aesthetic level--mystical and fantastical without ever truly getting to know their humanity. These girls are objects and toys without agency and it's Coppola's searing cautionary tale full of emotional repression and angst that brings their story to life. The film is impenetrable and cold at once, warm and inviting at another, but never entirely giving away its intentions. Coppola asks viewers to look beneath the surface beneath the shallow perspectives of the main male characters, and hopefully gain empathy for the female ones in this odyssey into their psyches.

The Virgin Suicides is a beautiful story about five sisters, and their mysterious existence told in the words of the neighborhood boys who worshiped them and who come together 20 years later to try and solve the mystery of the Lisbon sisters.

It's impossible to analyze The Virgin Suicides without addressing its narrators--and how the male gaze as an entirety alters our perspectives on the girls. Defining the term--it refers to the largely heteronormative male perspective of women in particular, and their general tendency to objectify and sexualize them. It's already impressive that Coppola made such an insightful take on the theme in 1999 considering the term was only popularized recently. The girls' entire lives and struggles are ripped from themselves. Instead of giving them the chance to narrate and convey their tribulations, audiences only see one side of the story--the male side. The boys living in the neighborhood are who we see most of; whether it's expressing their fantasies about the girls or watching them from a distance. Even in the "present day" scenes, it's the men attempting to solve the mystery of their suicides. They were so beautiful and perfect, after all. But what they don't comprehend is that their "love" for these girls wasn't love--but mere obsession and infatuation. They fell in love with the idea of them--their entrancing eyes and gorgeous hair and not who they were as people, and that's a tragedy that's still so unfortunately prevalent in society's views of women and girls.

The movie's cinematography is undeniably beautiful, but it's also Sofia Coppola's subtle and purposeful test for viewers. Will they drool over the film simply due to its stunningly sunny aesthetic and alluring montage or try and understand its deeper and more relevant ideas underneath. Its painterly stylistic tendencies are only mere mimicry of the male perspectives of these girls. Its beauty and prettiness are so easily commendable that we forget that this is a very, very important piece of cinema. On the first watch, I found myself getting ever so slightly distracted by the style--and that isn't an issue in it, but I looked past what lay so obvious below. It's a testament to Coppola's brilliance. She challenges herself to walk on the tricky tightrope between style and substance not only in her film's cinematography but its characters. The several montages of the girls just lying around and dreamily taking in their equally gorgeous surroundings are the boys' fantasies of them. Because they're so beautiful on the outside, they must live perfect lives, devoid of any struggle or effort--simple and tantalizing without any conflict. That's where their logic truly falters. The girls are locked in their house by increasingly strict and controlling parents, forced to deal with their severe cases of depression alone--and eventually, they kill themselves in response. But, again, if they had such fantastic lives, why would they do such a thing? The premise explains that 20 years later, the men are still trying to solve the "mystery" of the suicides. There was no mystery. The men created the mystery to entertain themselves as teenagers--they liked the body without the soul--the aesthetic without the feeling. The girls were so clearly suffering but the people around them were so focused on either possessing or objectifying them that they forgot they were human beings as well. This story is an epic coming-of-age tragedy most of all--intimate in its scope but apocalyptic in its ambitions stylistically and thematically. A masterpiece if I've ever seen one.

I think the main message that this analysis and the movie itself are trying to send is the fact that we are so quick to prioritize what's pleasing to the eye over what's pleasing to the mind. The example Coppola uses, of course, is a double-edged sword--a representation of the male gaze of teenage girls and our collective gaze of cinema. It's only ironic that this movie has become a cult classic on Pinterest boards for its aesthetics that so many fail to see its importance. When I think of great art--I think of shows and movies that have the special capability to change our society for the better, carrying this interminable power of relevance and strength that both those living today and posterity will remember.