All About Lily Chou {not a review}
another thing that I notice within the film is how pain of these teenager are closely related to money. Adults give money to these teenagers in various scene, while these teenagers also commit crimes to get them(well it's Hoshino who force them). Money bring out the evil of these teenage but even after obtaining it, it wont take away their pain. Money is the last thing they need. I think one factor that made Hoshino turn violent is that, his family goes bankrupt and his father left. these teenagers feel isolated, clueless, misunderstood, helpless, fear, and disappointed by this world.. some of these teenager are brave, but most of them are not.. those weak people lost all they have and fall deeper into the hole of pain and ended up become source of pain for others.
shit.. I don't even know what am I saying. dude.. that film hurts me... especially the scene when Kuno get rape. When that scene was playing, I feel a violent urge within myself to kill the girl who trapped Kuno. I want to rip her mouth so she will never speak or laugh again.. it hurts even more knowing Hoshino assists the incident despite him had have a crush on Kuno...
so near the end when Hoshino is dead.. I feel sort of relieve... I don't care how he become evil... he needs to get punish for causing so much pain for others ... for Tsuda... poor girl, the scene when she flies a kite, I though she has find something good in life and ready to live.. but nope. in the next scene, she dies jump off a tower... life is so cruel and unforgiven...
to me, the ending of the story implies that Yuichi decided to life and move on instead of clinging to his past.. through out the movie we can see from the online conversation that both Yuichi and Hoshino still cling to their past when everything was not terrible yet.. however, time keep moving and they had become bad person themself with Hoshino dragging everyone to be evil too... Lily symbolicly is the only thing they can still hold on as they are slowly changing for the worst... plus, Yuichi knows Lily from Hoshino, so it seems like to some degree, holding to Lily can be viewed as Yuichi hoping Hoshino will be good agian..
I consider Lily as one of the evil force too... her music is innocent.. but different people interpret it differently.. and sadness within her music has attracted violent and mentally ill people who hide behind their suffer instead of working on healing themselves... we can see this on how some people judge Lily's fans as creeps.. and literal mentally ill or violent people go to her concert... in short.. her music is a double blade sword that may be a good source of carthasis or an evil that bring out the worst of these people. I think it is the later one for these characters. when the credit is rolling, one of the comment left in the forum literally said: "Lily's not there to heal you! Don't make her out to be what she isn't."
thus, for Yuichi, killing Hoshino means he kills his hope on Hoshino. at the same time, the inccident has made Lily consider ill-fated by the mass media, thus, Yuichi has also killed the image the Godlike Lily.
Yuichi has gotten out of the mud. he tries to live differently. he dye his hair, learn to play piano, and maybe, talk to his crush, Kuno.
however, there is one symbolism that I dont understand.. what does rice field mean?? we see even untill the end.. the character are portrayed within the rice field listening to Lily.. and we can see the difference of the rice field that is portrayed with each character... what does this mean??
you can watch the movie and it's behind the scene lore on youtube
p.s: I just found out the Shunji Iwai is also the director of Love Letter, April Story, Hana & Alice... cannot belive this guy is the same director for movie I love so muchhh ಥ_ಥ
p.p.s : future reading (they are all scholar paper (suffer with me!!!) )
1. Bullying, death and traumatic identity. The taboo of school violence in new Japanese cinema
2. World of Grey: All About Lily Chou Chou
3.Trauma and sensation: a study of the youth icon in All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001)
this is my additional thought on the film after watching second time:
I read some chinese sources too and they said aragusuku island that is mentioned during the okinawa trip, is a "cursed" island which is not open for tourist till recent year... and hoshino turn evil after that trip to okinawa.. we see the local asked if hoshino bring something evil with him bcs he almost die twice.. and the traveler that failed to give cpr to hoshino die out of nowhere too. Thus, some people think that hoshino is possessed by something evil. I think the movie intentionally put everything in such criptic way to promote the dark,horror and isolation feeling.. it does not aim to resolve anything...
If one familiar with the bully culture in japan or korea.. people will understand how ridiculous and nasty the violence within school in east asia. The bullied kids have no choice and teacher turn blind eye. That's the reality in Japan and korean school. Plus, I think Iwai wanted to capture how adult often absent from these kids life when they needed help.. messed up people are once nice people too.. but their little crime was ignored, till they did something bigger, like bus hijacking for example, then people start to discuss them.. but there will be no attemp to understand why.. they are plain bad guy to this point.. thus Iwai make those character as "flat" as possible.. to mimic that perspective..
I also found some interesting link between Lily chou chou and debussy which i do not find people talk about. Lilly was debussy first wife, but they marriage only last 5 years.. after that debussy remarry and has a daughter he name chou chou, which he loves to death. Lily later commits suicide.. I found it interesting how Iwai put those two names together .. lily was dead bcs of love; chou chou was born bcs of the very same thing, love..
In short the movie tries to portrait people that is misunderstood. In reality, we rarely know what people are thinking, why they made such decision for they life.. why they change from love to unlove someone... from a coward to be a bully.. we will never know the "real answer." Due to several factors as the movie portrait:
1. Lack of information and clarity. We may able to undestand why Tsuda rejects the boy that confess to her and decided to end her own life, because we know more about her situation and what she is thinking ... But it is not the case for others characters.. like, we will never know if hoshino really turn evil bcs things turn worst in his personal life, or he is possessed by evil in okinawa. Does the traveler guy jump to the street as the driver claims or the other wise.. only people on the set can answer those. (tbh I notice that we know more about the female characters than the male characters, like, we know why Kuno is targeted by the girl bully, and why she shave her head.. but we know almost nothing about the male characters... does Iwai wanted to express that boys are more often neglected compare to girls?)
2. Differrent social background, plus people essentially process things differently.. for example, some people in the movie do not understand lily chou chou music and thinks those people are creep, but for the fans and those characters, lily chou chou is their spirit. Some people may heal hearing lily, but some people decided to take their life hearing the same music... people are often understand/interpret things differently.. And some viewers may not understand why yuichi lead kuno to that factory. But for me, I "understand" him bcs I see how he got bullied, almost stone to death by his peer. to me, he is helpless and cannot fight back.. his only choice to survive is to do what he was being told by hoshino.
3. Lastly, sometimes people are just ignorant. They believe and judge people according to their standard.. remember the news about the bus hijacking, yuichi's father comment that those convicts should be sentence to death without knowing who or why they do such things..
To me, the movie tries to capture/present/mimic real world as what it is.. it is cruel, not always black and white, sometimes no straight explanation, and things can be "just like that"... at least these are my take from the film. The film has change something within me and have me in gloomy mood for a week.. I think it's a great and serious movie which is not for everyone...
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