The Tragedy In Our Everyday Lives

All About Lily Chou Chou is a movie that’s very close to my heart. From the first time I watched it, it moved me like not many others have before or after and that is I believe because it aims to achieve one thing above all: beauty.

There’s a lot of things about this film worth talking about, but I always hesitate to tell too much about movies I recommend to people because I don’t want to create specific expectations inside their minds that will then ruin the experience for them once they’re not met. However without getting into specifics, let me then talk to you first of all about the aesthetics. It became clear to me from the first few minutes of the movie that there was a lot of care and thought put into not just the story or the ambiance of the movie but the way that it is all presented. To say that the cinematography is good to me is underselling its visual achievements. It’s not just the way the camera is angled in certain crucial shots, or the color grading that sets the mood in the big scenes. Every single shot in this film is carefully orchestrated, from the movements of the camera and its pacing to the vibrant yet melancholic colors; it’s not an exaggeration on my part to say that every frame of this picture has been very carefully crafted and the end result is breathtaking.

To add to this, it’s not merely the visuals that have been treated with such care, the music that goes along with each scene was too. An original soundtrack was made not simply to go along with the movie but to serve also as a storytelling device, as it is comprised of songs that were composed and performed by a fictional “Rockstar” within the movie named Lily Chou Chou who’s presented to us in a sort of shroud of mystery and that has an almost cult-like following. The ethereal quality of the music and their presence serves to add a dreamlike quality to the movie.

Over the years I have come to realize that all art’s appreciation is a matter of perception. This is something we acknowledge pretty quickly as we interact with other people and realize that our favorite band isn’t actually everybody’s favorite band, or that the one joke that had us cackling doesn’t actually make everyone laugh the same (or sometimes at all). But it’s not until we give it a moment of thought that we can truly understand what this means and the extent of it. The truth is, everybody’s experience of any given thing is different without exceptions, whether it be something tangible or something abstract, the way our brain processes the information will vary from just a little bit to a lot.

To better illustrate the point I’m trying to get at here, and trust me I have one just stay with me here, let me tell you about back in the day when I first watched The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Fantastic movie, great performances, an incredible epic story-wise, visually and sonically. I was fascinated with it and became a bit obsessed with the whole cowboy genre so I started watching westerns and while I enjoyed them for what they were, I can’t say any of them had nearly the same impact that TGTBTU had on me, they were all just OK. It’s not that they were bad movies, but there was something lacking in all of them for me. In contrast my dad happens to be a fan of the genre, they’re his favorites to watch and he’ll find enjoyment even in the more “directorially-challenged” ones. The man was born and raised in a ranch, far away from any big city, a very different upbringing to what I lived and that’s just the thing; the things that he experienced in life are somehow being portrayed in all these movies to an extent by other people who also shared those experiences or perhaps stole them from someone who did (as is many times the case with genre-film).

Having said all of this, I’m here trying to think up ways to pitch this movie to you. A movie which has had a big impact on me. A movie that has become one of my all time favorites and that I personally think deserves a spot as one of the great accomplishment in cinema. But how can I sell it to you as such knowing our experience of life itself and therefore this movie might differ wildly? I think the answer is “relatability”. If you have ever heard or read anyone else before talking about movies you’ll be familiar with that word, often times it feels to me like a cop-out word for hack critics to look down on a certain film, as if you were supposed to always have some sort of self-insert avatar inside a movie to appreciate it properly. I don’t personally feel like that’s true, but at the same time I have also come to realize that the power this approach has as a storytelling tool can be understated. Many will scoff at the setting being middle/highschooler’s life but that is in fact a big strength that it has, as its easy to assume most of the people who will watch it have gone through that and will more easily connect with it.

All About Lily Chou Chou is not just a story about a bunch of strangers, it’s a story that feels as human as the audience watching it. The characters are real, their personal traits and lives feel so tangible you can almost picture them in your own life; perhaps they remind you of your friends, perhaps they remind you of your family or perhaps they remind you of yourself. As soon as the story gets moving you are immersed in it, because the film has the most beautiful way of painting scenes that are deceivingly mundane, even when the content of these is heartbreaking and tragic it still feels like an extension of life somehow.

To close, I’d like to add first of all that if you watch this movie and happen to really enjoy the music then not only can you find the soundtrack easily online (the album and also the specific performances of Debussy’s pieces performed by Yui Makino) but I also wanted to bring attention to an artist that I found out about only recently. Her name is Ichiko Aoba, and if you enjoyed Salyu’s vocal performance as Lily Chou Chou I highly suggest that you look her up and check out her music. The timbre of her voice is almost a perfect match, and her songs are just as beautiful. Finally, I’ll say that what I really appreciate about this movie is how perfectly it portrays the beauty in the tragedy of our day-to-day, “uneventful” lives.

Thank you, as always, for hearing me out!

See you next time!