all about lily chou-chou
At the San Francisco Film Festival, I watched a mysterious but wonderful movie gAll About Lily Chou-Chouh directed by Shunji Iwai. Shunji Iwai is describing the situation of Japanese teens, such as, a threat, a rape, shoplifting, or prostitution in the movie, which are vivid description. It is much to be regretted that we watch the movie as long as director gathered information of Japanese teens on Internet. For me, the film seems like a message to all of us. In this essay, I would like to describe a real message from Shunji Iwai.
Apparently, the movie includes too many wretched scenes. And that let the audiences remember unhappy memories, and that makes the audiences heartrending. Although the theme of the film is bullying, a purpose of the film is not preaching. The film just depicts the darkness of younger days realistically. So I can say that Shunji Iwai succeeded to express a subtle atmosphere of bullying. In fact, I remembered my unpleasant memories as a junior high school student and lost myself in a dark mood. Our children must follow the same direction like us, and that makes us sick. In short, the main theme of the film is a warning about a crisis of hurt teens to adults.
On the other hands, the movie has another meaning as an underlying theme. At the beginning, the movie seems to describe just the whole of teens; however, the things are totally different. In fact, after two main characters went to Okinawa, which is a Japanese resort spot, one of them, Hosino, was totally changed. He had begun to treat the other main character, Hasumi, harshly. Why was Hosino changed suddenly? To begin with, they became friends by the fact that both Hasumi and Hosino liked Lily Chou-Chou, who is a singer. Indeed, they are believers of her. This indicates that they are too pure like the other teens and too weak to live in the society. I suppose Hosino was too sensitive, and his ether was opened by his contact with Mother Nature. All believers of Lily...
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