Thanks to matt's hot tip I was able to finally see Lilja 4-ever, which I would like to announce as my favorite of his films. Also I would like to announce that Moodysson has become a director whose favorite film of mine seems to be whichever I watched last. It's fair to say that the narrative structure of Together has effected everything I've written since the experience of first seeing the movie. Blah blah backstory about Moodysson being an early impression on me and causing me to delve into the lesser known filmmakers out there.
Spoilers galore.
Anyway, Lilja 4-ever hasn't left my head since I watched it Friday night. It was a story about one girl's lost childhood, but I also connected to it as a story of my lost childhood, my lost innocence, and a statement on the purity of happiness. The tiny moments again and again of Lilja and Volodya finding bliss in simple things like each other's company, eating bread, a basketball, talking, sniffing glue, etc. Lilja and Andrei before you knew what was coming. . .or, more exactly, back when you were comfortable blocking out what you knew was coming. I really connected to the film in these ways, and in that sense it wasn't an entirely depressing movie for me, because it has affected my perception of my daily activities since then. Does that sound stupid? I don't feel that it should. I watched it with my roommate and a friend, and afterwards we drove down to Laguna Beach and climbed up on a rock structure to had a nice long conversation, even though before the movie we had all talked about how the next day we were to wake up early. That is clearly a positive reaction to the film.
The room was silent as the credits rolled as well, which is unusual. It took me back. It felt honest and poetic at the same time. Although I knew it wouldn't end well, I kept hoping it would, I became very emotionally involved, and by the time she killed herself I was relieved, I was happy for her release. For a movie to take me to the point in which I feel that the main character's suicide was justified is tremendous. I felt her hopelessness. I felt the pain of her mistakes, the agony of not being able to go backwards. Under different circumstances, traveling down different paths, things might have ended up much better for Lilja. That constant fear of making the wrong decision, coupled with the grueling reality of fate, was very real in the film. When she was playing basketball with Volodya I felt she had won. Which is provocative, which is daring, to say that indeed some people are perhaps better off dead. That the quality of human life can be so terrible as to negate the sanctification of being alive. It is very much what the American dream would try and tell you is impossible. And, yet, there it was. Playing out right in front of me. Does this paragraph contradict the previous paragraph? It seems to thematically, but it somehow co-existed inside of me during and after the film.
A+.
