Wow, this movie is just..it's..having a bit of a hard time figuring out what to say here..it's just a really great, astoundingly wonderful movie! It's was so amazingly different from anything I'd ever seen before or since. It felt powerfully unique and special to me, and what it was about was very quaint, no fantastical elements whatsoever, only the endlessly fascinating eccentricities of people. Well a little more so, in this case. It struck a real deep chord with me and felt very much like a type of story that had never been told the same way in anything else. There's a melancholy windblown kind of feeling to it that would probably come off as dull and dreary if the film didn't happen to be so utterly charming and brilliantly captivating in its own understated simplicity. I found the situations, story, and really the overall world of the movie to be very enchanting in-and-of itself, it felt very authentic and starkly real. And although a lot of the tone is strange, contemplative and even surreal at moments, I still found all the characters to be always believable and I had a lot of sympathy for all sides involved in what was going on. I really followed those characters closely and wished them all well. I thought it was simple yet ingenious how the story was set up and played out, with the two sisters being so close at first and then gradually growing apart and eventually becoming estranged to the point of them practically being strangers as the youngest of the two, Lucille, becomes ashamed of her own sister and rejects the plain existential life that she seems content to live, and who eventually leaves after she adopts herself to a school teacher, whereas the gangly and socially-awkward Ruth finds a true kindred spirit in her aunt and the two grow ever-closer and more isolated from the real world, which I found a little unsettling.. One of the things I loved about this movie was how it makes you think about and question the morals of the story, and how whether or not it was right or not for Ruth to be with Sylvie was very much a matter of perspective and entirely up to the viewer. To me the main theme of it seemed to be that of the differences between those who desire to be a part of things and those wandering souls who appear to derive more satisfaction from being apart and and being their own person no matter the consequences. And there was such an uncanny strangeness in the patterns of the 'madness' passed down from generation to generation, like the eerie story of the doomed train that was swallowed up by the icy lake in the dead of night, and how that was similar to the film's startling opening scene where the girls' mother calmly drives her car into the same waters. Christine Lahti gave such a phenomenal performance, I found her gentle character so fascinating, how she was extremely eccentric to the point where some may have been in their right to consider her mentally disturbed, yet she was completely sincere and lucid all at once. I loved how she used her eccentric view of things to make miserable and scary situations seem like whimsical games, to herself and to the girls. Perhaps as a subconscious way of dealing with the daunting obstacles. One of my favourite parts is when they visit the forsaken-looking wreck of an old cabin on a lonely frost-covered island and it looks like a very saddening place to be, but she makes it seem like such a magical dreamlike place. You really do get people like Sylvie in the world, the ones who despite themselves are just too damn odd to ever truly fit into the regular scheme of things, and that's okay, that's just the way it is sometimes. Some people are meant to be with others, and some are just different and for the most part prefer to be alone and don't care about fitting in. And I believe they do it because they have to, not want to, it's their nature. And I don't think it really matters where any of us lives, as long as we live well in ourselves. I was so engrossed all the way through to the final scene which had me in tears the first time I saw it, because it was just so moving. There was something so powerfully emotive and poignant about the visuals of it with the two figures running along the wooden train tracks until they eventually vanish into the night... It was very sad and haunting, but also kind of beautiful and uplifting at the same time, and it concluded the movie in the absolute perfect way. This is a lovably strange and exquisitely bittersweet gem of a picture. It's sad, soulful, thought-provoking, and very precious and I love it very much. "I never saw such a thing!"
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