Populärmusik från Vittula

Year: 2004

Director: Reza Bagher

Writers: Erik Norberg, Reza Bagher, Mikael Niemi (novel)

A story of two boys, united by rock'n'roll, growing up together in Pajala in the 60's. 

This is one of those movies that my parents have tried to make me watch, and had seen several clips before, in music class almost six years ago, and in Swedish class few weeks ago. I wasn't too interested, until we had to decide what movie we'd watch on Swedish class, which is about culture. We had a lot of different choices and my teacher didn't even mention this first, because our school didn't have this as a DVD only on VHS. So I saved the situation and said I could bring the DVD. And we voted from all the possible choices and this one won - not that everyone was happy with it, at least I heard some quiet complaints today.

Actually we watched the whole thing with Swedish subtitles. That's why I don't really have anything to say about the dialogue, because 1) I don't really know what kind of dialogue in Swedish is natural and what's not, and 2) I don't even know if I understood everything said in this movie. (Usually the dialogue in Finnish movies is very... clumsy though, depending on the movie.)

First thing I noticed was the cinematography. It had some really nice effects like really quick zooming for instance. Even though that was used a lot, it didn't feel like an overused technique 

The story isn't too spectacular. It's almost boringly ordinary, but that might be the beauty of it. Also the story  was spiced up with some scenes that were metaphorical and therefore very nice and gave a nice artistic touch to the movie, or otherwise just "not literally happening" scenes, dream sequences. Even if the story was almost humdrum, those scenes added something more to the story, something more... unreal. 

This movie was actually partially very... disgusting. There were very graphic scenes that make the viewer feel either disgusted or uncomfortable and both. There were several scenes during which I had to actually look away because it was so gross. So if I learnt one really important thing, it's this: never bring this movie to school and watch it with class. Really. You will be so embarrassed and so will your teacher. 

The music was fun in this movie, especially rock'n'roll, but I was actually expecting more of it. Also the score was nice. We watched this movie in two parts, and today when that one melody started playing, I felt like I had heard it ages ago. It was very beautiful.

This movie was decent, but didn't quite meet my expectations. This movie has been praised more than it deserves. But still, this was an interesting movie, and very nice, apart from all the... disgusting parts.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

7 / 10