lilja 4-ever
Directed by Lukas Moodysson
Sweden 2002 18 R
Review by Eadon
I won't give away the plot outline, you need to see this and savour it, if that is the word. Just
know that this is a subtitled, Swedish film that contains disturbing,
adult themes, and that this is most definitively worth your time. If you are serious about cinema,
then read no further, and watch!
Lilja 4-ever is about
the attempts of an adolescent girl to thrive,
then survive, in Russia. She finds herself in
conditions of poverty in the midst of highly
(perhaps implausibly) unsavoury company - I
know this sounds dull, but be not deceived.
Lilja 4-ever is easily
the most involving movie I have seen this year,
or this millennium come to that. There are moments
of touching joy, but mostly
Lilja
4-ever is enchanting, tragic,
haunting, painful. It is a movie I'll not forget
in a hurry. In fact, the longer it is since
I saw it, the more moved I am. When watching
this, I was almost in denial, and only now is
the full impact of the movie hitting me. This
is personal, of course, some people might be
indifferent, cold devils, shrug, and say, I'm
bored! Bring on the guns!
Lilja
4-ever is apparently based on
the life of Dangoele Rasalaite, a Latvian girl.
I didn't know that before watching this, but
my immediate impression after watching
Lilja
4-ever was that the really upsetting
thing is the feeling that the movie is based
more on reality than fiction.
Lilja 4-ever is shot
without gimmicks, yet there is something moving
about the direction. The acting is so superb
you don't notice it, including the portrayal
of a boy who becomes wholly dependant upon Lilja
as a guardian. Foreign movies can deal with
subjects beyond the scope of most modern Hollywood
movies, and often they are more mature. Nothing
made by Hollywood I know of can match the power
of a movie like this. I'm not saying all movies
should be like Lilja 4-ever, of course. But,
as often happens, a low-budget movie will move
me a million times more than the mega-budget
Hollywood stuff that floods the worlds cinemas
through American distribution cartels.
This movie contains a plethora of powerful "adult"
scenes & themes, but if you are old enough,
please find a way to see
Lilja 4-ever,
it is a life-perspective altering exposition,
the likes which, shallow nonsense like Forest
Gump could only dream of.
The only thing is, it took me a week to shake
off a sadness that settled behind my eyes, and
even now there are melancholic echoes.
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spoilers corner
Spoilers!!!!
Warning: this box contains a movie post-mortem analysis that freely gives away important plot twists and details. If you have not yet seen this movie and intend seeing it, avoid this spoilers box until afterwards. Bookmark the page, see the movie, see if you agree with my review then write an arsy comment saying I am talking total b*ll*cks :-)
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I missed the first part of this movie,
having just caught the close up of Lilja's
injured face before the titles and the
"3 months earlier" caption. I think
I am glad I missed the flash forward,
because I didn't have any preconceived
ideas. I just saw the events start to
finish.
I was convinced Lilja would not go to
the airport, in favour of being with
the lad. In the end she sold out as
readily as her mother, despite knowing
the pain that would affect the left-behind
loved one. This was a masterpiece of
story telling. Everything that happened
after that moment was despair. A movie
as sincere as Lilja 4-Ever
can portray dreamscape people with low-quality
wings on their backs and still work.
Ultimately, it is perverse that, in
an America-dominated world, we are obsessed
with stopping kids downloading movies
and music from the Internet, when it
is infinitely more urgent to set our
legal resources against organised crime
and its trade in child slavery/prostitution
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There are no more spoilers below this
point, except maybe in any user talkback
comments.
End of spoilers corner
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None. Lilja's ending is perfect for a
movie, and, well...
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| From: |
Natasa | Subject: | 2004-08-25 08:07:38 |
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