Bad Ally ([info]zenith) wrote,
@ 2007-12-13 00:26:00
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If you want to see the most damning inditement possible of my generation's self-important solipsism and self-deluding credulity, please watch the First Cut documentary 'Happy Birthday You're Dead'.

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[info]pot80
2007-12-13 12:58 pm UTC (link)
Is that effect intentional?

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[info]zenith
2007-12-13 01:13 pm UTC (link)
No - although my flatmate kept muttering "this must be satire" all the way through it.

I should say a little more about it:

"What would you do if you believed you were going to die in a road accident within the next four weeks? Probably not take a road trip to find the Romanian fortune teller who foretold your death. But this is exactly what film-maker Maja Borg ends up doing, during the "last four weeks of her life." Told she would die before her 25th birthday, Maja has lived with this prophecy hanging over her head for the past six years."

By "lived with it hanging over her head", they mean: used it as both a schtick to seduce cute but excessively morbid boys and girls (although in the case of the guy whose mother died of cancer, understandably morbid - nevertheless Maja uses this subject as a way to talk about her, and her fascinating doomed-ness), and an excuse to treat them with utter selfishness.

Other hilarious features:

- The film begins by telling us that it's the prophecy that has led Maja to spend the past few years partying hard and exploring her sexuality - because no other twentysomethings, especially Swedish hipsters, have ever done that.

- It also reveals that when she was given this prophecy, she had previously interviewed and been 'read' by many different fortune tellers for one of her films - obviously not a single one of their many fortunes in which she lived a long and healthy life were taken seriously.

- Once she meets again the woman who gave the prophecy (now old and sick and actually having to face up to death), said fortune teller apologies and says "No no, you're going to be fine! Sorry about all that!" - this doesn't stop Maja continuing to obsess about it over the few days left until her birthday.

- At points the film starts to resemble Final Destination, and the decisions Maja makes as a result of her obsession seem to be leading her towards a grisly end: she leaves the city and goes to the country summerhouse where she spent time as a child (a child always obsessed with death, she tells us unconvincingly), driving along icy roads, walking out onto a frozen lake, chopping wood with an axe, lighting candles, etc etc.

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[info]slightlyfoxed
2007-12-13 01:58 pm UTC (link)
partying hard and exploring her sexuality

It was my mysterious conviction that I would die somewhere between the ages of 60 and 90 that did the same to me in my twenties.

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[info]zenith
2007-12-14 09:53 am UTC (link)
Conversely, it was the conviction that I would get to party hard and explore my sexuality in my twenties that kept me alive between the ages of 16 and 19.

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[info]danalcapone
2007-12-14 08:51 am UTC (link)
Dude, where's the moneyshot? DOES SHE DIE OR NOT!!!?

You can't leave me hanging like that....

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[info]zenith
2007-12-14 09:53 am UTC (link)
Not only did she not die, but there wasn't even much of a "do you see, that phase of my life is over so in a way I DID die, AHA!" moment. Q was very disappointed by the anticlimactic ending, which I argued he should have seen coming.

I mean, I do see what he meant - I did quite want her to die by the end of it.

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[info]danalcapone
2007-12-14 10:36 am UTC (link)
It's not too late.

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[info]koganbot
2007-12-13 05:03 pm UTC (link)
my generation's self-important solipsism and self-deluding credulity

I insist that my generation can match yours in solipsism and self-deluding credulity.

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[info]zenith
2007-12-14 09:51 am UTC (link)
This is true. And normally I resist the urge to imply that Things Are Worse Nowadays - it was just a moment, like when one remembers the existence of Vice magazine.

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