What It´s All About - A Tribute to Fucking Åmål

[darkleon]

found an fantastic essay about our most loved movie

its about WHY FA is SO great

its long, but its worth reading it
i enjoy FA even more after reading it :-)


http://people.freenet.de/what-its-all-about/

[arkz1531]

This is a great essay! I read about six months ago though. I think someone in this forum wrote it and told us about it. I can't remember who it was though.

[kant1781]

I think it was me... because I happen to be the one who wrote it . And I remember that you, Kyle, were actually the first one to read it, and I was very thankful for that!

Darkleon, thank you for your kind words! Very happy you liked it. I'm working on improvements, so if you have any ideas...?! There's an old thread about it here in the forum (called "What It's All About") which you'll find by scrolling down the page of the FA forum... there has already been some discussion, so you could continue it there.

[sydney]

It seems that Kant's site is not working at this moment. Therefore I have put the pdf file of his essay in the Fan Stuff and Downloads section. It is a great analysis and therefore too bad if it got lost.

[kant1781]

Tack så mycket, Syd! Jättesnällt!
(In general, my site is online. It's just that the server on which it is hosted is down every now and then... if you experience any difficulty, try again the next day).

[sydney]

No problem...

It seems that your site is up again. When I checked the last time, I got a notice from the provider, that the site has moved or something. Well thanks for clearing that up, Kant1781.

[Anny]

you've done very well kant! *respect*

[Ian]

I found this essay yesterday. It's absolutely beautiful, and sums it up with tremendous eloquence and passion.

Stunning work - don't ever take it down.

[kant1781]

Stunning work - don't ever take it down.

thanks cody No, it won't be taken down. If the Gods will, it will be improved, but not taken down.

[Ian]

Glad to hear it. I guess I'm just worried that one day the interest in SML will dwindle altogether and I'll be the only weirdo left.




I'm glad I discovered this place, mind. Just a shame there isn't more activity, though, granted, I can understand why.

[hcd]

If the Gods will, it will be improved, but not taken down.

They must be sick of it. The site is down again. Seems that you don't have an excellent direct line to the upper floor...

[kant1781]

They must be sick of it. The site is down again. Seems that you don't have an excellent direct line to the upper floor...

My connection with the upper floor is high-speed broadbend, don't worry. What's shitty is my (free) homepage provider. Every now and then, the site is down for something like 24 hours, but it always comes back. Just now, it's been fixed.
http://freenet-homepage.de/what-its-all-about/

[eric]

After watching the film 6-7 times the last week, I read your essay again. And there is one question that pops up in my mind. How does the title of the film affect our interpretation of it? I ask, because you seem to emphasize the "getting out of amal" (from the german title "Out of Amal") which I definitely agree with, as with anything else you've written. But don't you think people from other countries, where the film is titled Fucking Amal / Show Me Love / Love is Love could easily miss that aspect and focus more on the things their title gives them? The swedes on how fucking stupid small town Amal is, the english speaking countries on the aspect of finding the right one and the slovaks on how love is universal. Would your essay be different if you hadn't known about the german title of the film? I'm not sure if you can even give an answer to that, because it's one of those: "Did a tree really fell, if noone saw, heard or witnessed it" questions.

And in conection with that, did you think about your title for the essay "What it's all about"? How it affects peoples interpretation / perception of your essay? I know it's just a line from the song Show me love, but taken out of context, it's quite a bold statement., right up there with the answer to life, the universe and everything. I vaguely remember that when I read it the first time, I was kind of disappointed that you stressed so much, that it was _your_ interpretation, not the universal one that the title kind of promised. Of course I couldn't have seriously expected to find out "what it's _all_ about", but the title lead me to that. Oh, but don't change it, because it really holds what it promises (you can't anyway, it's too popular anyway by now . So here's my suggestion: If you ever redo it, think about putting the disclaimer at the end of the text.

[kant1781]

God, you're too kind! The title is wildly ironic, as hopefully you've reckoned. It was meant to signal (by the use of hyperbole) from the very first line that I wasn't completely out of my mind when I wrote this (the stress is on "completely"), and that I tried to maintain some kind of critical and humourous distance to what I was doing. (The 42 stuff at the end serves the same purpose.) I think that's why I put the disclaimer at the beginning: I was afraid that nobody would read all this to the end if people got the impression that here's some Mr. Wise Guy, trying to pass his personal opinions and feelings for universal truths.

I know I can't change the title anymore... which is a pity because I think I do have a better one (which is part of the unpublished masterplan for rewriting the stuff... ) . I'll consider your suggestion though...

The question concerning the title is a good one. You're probably right. What is interesting is that the titles that German film distributors come up with for foreign films are mostly ridiculous, but this time they hit something on the head. On the other hand, it is not a very strong difference to the original title - Elin talks about flytta from Åmål all the time, as often as she calls it fucking Åmål. So the motive is clearly there, and I'm not sure whether I would have paid less attention to it without the German title. The change gets deeper when it comes to "Show Me Love" or the Slowakian title (which means "Love is Love", I think?). This seems to imply a clear change of perspective to me. (On the other hand, again, I don't mind, because as I've stated so often, it is not the "When you're growing up in a small town" perspective that matters to me.)

[fraks]

http://www.nordnati.com/2008/02/blog-post_15.html (in russian language)

Here is that writes nordnati (russian, which lives in Swedens more than 10 years):

Although nowhere and was not mentionned, why Lukas Modisson
has chose exactly this populated point Åmål, rather then what there Kalix or Rödeby- I expect that else and since name causes some assotiations itself.

This is because Å - a last letter in swedish alphabet.
Mål possible to interpret on different - a purpose,point,finish,the end,limit..
That is to say for me Åmål sounds nearly as "edge of the light / edge of the land".