MAJOR SPOILERS
To those who say the English don't make good films have obviously been watching the wrong films!
So this tale of two teenage boys who make a suicide pact after their classmates are killed on a skiing trip and they are the only two survivors is not original. It's been done before and many a time.
Yet the way Suri Krishnamma has done it is subtle and original. It's a nice take that the suicide pact involves "A Book of Life"- An affirming set of tasks to carry out before they can commit suicide. It's the dreams and desires of their dead friends that they must carry out ranging from punching a policeman to burning down the school.
To say this is an epic tale of courage, friendship, yada, yada would be more fitting on a drizzling Hollywood Blockbuster. This far surpasses mere words - unlike Hollywood it doesn't make everything explicit, it doesn't treat the audience as if they had an IQ of under 80 and it's not in your face.
For instance the last task "to understand, to mean what I say, to cherish my friends" before the two main characters jump over the cliff, can be taken in so many ways... they survive, it's true, and the film becomes not so much a story about death but a story about life.
The relationship is unusual... Jake is the one who outwardly seems to be getting along well and tries to stop Steven from continuing the suicide pact but it is he who wants death more than anything. Steven is in many respects the opposite.
And it is Jake who manages to fulfill his own suggested task of crashing a car. Steven's wish was to "kill somebody or something" - this may be something he said just to personify himself/ to mask himself in his own representation. But it's not really who Steven is; at the best of times he is an enigmatic and puzzling character and yet when it comes to killing an animal, he can't even fulfill his own dream. Make of it what you will for it can be taken in many ways, BUT it is never thrown in your face.
For those who haven't seen the film, my ineloquence may just confuse you (even though I could keep going another couple of thousand words). This is an engaging story, realistic, and full of emotion.
And it affects people in different ways and will affect you in a different way every time you see it because it does not steer you down a narrow path of "this is how the movie goes; this is the emotions I want you to feel" as directors often have that manipulative power over their audience. It lets you take it the way you want.
To those who say the English don't make good films have obviously been watching the wrong films!
So this tale of two teenage boys who make a suicide pact after their classmates are killed on a skiing trip and they are the only two survivors is not original. It's been done before and many a time.
Yet the way Suri Krishnamma has done it is subtle and original. It's a nice take that the suicide pact involves "A Book of Life"- An affirming set of tasks to carry out before they can commit suicide. It's the dreams and desires of their dead friends that they must carry out ranging from punching a policeman to burning down the school.
To say this is an epic tale of courage, friendship, yada, yada would be more fitting on a drizzling Hollywood Blockbuster. This far surpasses mere words - unlike Hollywood it doesn't make everything explicit, it doesn't treat the audience as if they had an IQ of under 80 and it's not in your face.
For instance the last task "to understand, to mean what I say, to cherish my friends" before the two main characters jump over the cliff, can be taken in so many ways... they survive, it's true, and the film becomes not so much a story about death but a story about life.
The relationship is unusual... Jake is the one who outwardly seems to be getting along well and tries to stop Steven from continuing the suicide pact but it is he who wants death more than anything. Steven is in many respects the opposite.
And it is Jake who manages to fulfill his own suggested task of crashing a car. Steven's wish was to "kill somebody or something" - this may be something he said just to personify himself/ to mask himself in his own representation. But it's not really who Steven is; at the best of times he is an enigmatic and puzzling character and yet when it comes to killing an animal, he can't even fulfill his own dream. Make of it what you will for it can be taken in many ways, BUT it is never thrown in your face.
For those who haven't seen the film, my ineloquence may just confuse you (even though I could keep going another couple of thousand words). This is an engaging story, realistic, and full of emotion.
And it affects people in different ways and will affect you in a different way every time you see it because it does not steer you down a narrow path of "this is how the movie goes; this is the emotions I want you to feel" as directors often have that manipulative power over their audience. It lets you take it the way you want.