WE ARE THE BEST!: It's the Best

In which three young girls kick ass and take names--ideologically.

Director: Lukas Moodysson
Writer: Lukas Moodysson
Cast: Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin, Liv LeMoyne
Runtime: 102 mins.
2014

Normally going into these things I have a structure outlined in my head, and I work through the review beat by beat. I don't have that for We Are the Best! I think, in the spirit of punk, I'll bang this one out as I go along.

We Are the Best! follows two thirteen year old girls in 1980's Sweden as they sort of fumble around from day to day, hating what they hate and loving what they love, until they happen into this idea that they should really just start their own punk band--despite having no previous musical experience. Once they recruit an unlikely third member--a young Christian girl who has years of experience on the guitar--the band starts becoming something and taking on a central importance in their lives. Meanwhile they deal with drama and trauma surrounding school, parents, and especially love interests.

More than all that, this movie is about the spirit of PUNK. And the spirit of GIRLS. And the spirit of GIRLS doing PUNK.

But more than THAT this movie is about those girls--as people.

I'm going to reiterate because that is the most important thing I can say about this movie, as it is 2014 and this sort of thing is still a revolutionary concept in cinema:

We Are the Best! treats children as though they are people. We Are the Best! treats girls as though they are people. These are two of the most egregiously uncommon achievements of contemporary film, and two reasons why We Are the Best! has to be considered one of the most incredible things to be released in 2014.

If you're already hooked by that description, go ahead and watch it now. It's not a long movie, and it streams instant on Netflix. Discover the characters for yourself.

If you're still here, I want to talk about the three characters.

Bobo - Bobo is our perspective character. We begin the film at a party, taking in the general revelry until the film slowly focuses our attention to this sullen thirteen year girl with the strange haircut. The movie is at its best in moments like these, when we are given quiet, underplayed scenes with Bobo, times of stillness or introspection. When Bobo spends a few moments looking in a mirror, or sitting alone in her room, we can feel the suffocation of youth, and more particularly the suffocation of a young girl who just doesn't fit with the world around her. Punk is loud and proud, but it always has to start in this place of loneliness. That is Bobo.

Klara - Klara is Bobo's best friend. They are inseparable. They rely on each other with a fervent intensity that can only be described as love. Their entire lives are structured around each other.
Fittingly, they are perfect foils. For every downcast glance that Bobo gives, Klara shoots off a defiant in-your-face glare. For every mumbled response Bobo offers, Klara lets loose on a rambling, unfocused diatribe. This movie is at its best when Klara's ceaseless energy bubbles up and out of her, spilling over to everyone and everything she touches. Punk is vocal, opinionated, spontaneous, and merciless. That is Klara.

Hedvig - Hedvig is the friendless Christian girl who Bobo and Klara decide would round out their band quite nicely. Nobody really talked to Hedvig before these two, especially with such forwardness and friendliness. At first she is reluctant, but she finds herself increasingly drawn into their world not because she is forced, but because what she feels with them is more real than anything else in her life. Hedvig is by far the character who has the most drastic arc over the course of the film--she is still the same person at the end, but everything about her appearance, demeanor, confidence... everything about everything about her has changed in how it manifests. She also plays a critical role in the group dynamic that the other two had never realized was something they lacked. This movie is at its best when Hedvig surprises us again and again by breaking out of cliches and discovering an agency that had hitherto been dormant. Punk is a force for social change, stripping away stale worldviews and giving misfits a place to feel alive. That is Hedvig.

But Ryan, why are you lecturing me about what punk is? You're the least punk person I know. You're punkless.

I'm lecturing you about punk because everything I just said about punk, I learned definitively from this movie. It's amazing, really. We Are the Best! establishes a whole world of what is or isn't possible for a trio of thirteen year old girls; it's one of the film's major themes. The people in their lives--men, women, adults, children--put them into box after box after box, when the only box they really want to be in is the cardboard box they all screw around with at the end.

I'm going to say this for a third time because I am so taken with it--for a movie that is directed by a middle aged white man, We Are the Best! never even comes close to infantalizing or condescending to its main characters. It merely follows them, lets them live, lets them yell into microphones and discover their lives. It's a movie that realizes how often thirteen year olds behave like little adults, with all the same stresses and problems. And then it also realizes that these are kids who like to fool around and chug milk and stay out late when they can get away with it. You're going to love these characters, and three different people watching will have three different favorites. (Mine is Hedvig.)

Children in movies are so often treated as objects or plot points. Even when they're not they tend to be grating, unnerving caricatures of sub-humanity. Between its superb screenplay, loving direction, and what are frankly three of the best performances I have seen all year from anybody whose name doesn't rhyme with Snake Snyllenhaal, We Are the Best! carves out more identities for itself than you can shake a stick at.

Eloquent Bildungsroman. Messy Künstlerroman. Child actor vehicle. Progressive political allegory. Heartwarming drama about friendship. Hilarious parody of cultural mores. Fun feminist tract. It's all there.

And it's the best.

4.5 / 5  BLOBS