Tag: lilo and stitch meta

king-of-the-lost-and-found:

bobbelcher:

You could be our baby and we’d raise you to be good.
Lilo & Stitch (2002)

Okay listen up fucknuts because I’m gonna day some things. This scene right here is one of my all time favourite scenes in cinema. I have a degree in film studies, I’ve seen all the greats, And in my humble opinion few scenes surpass this scene in terms of sheer brilliance. First of all it looks gorgeous, the art style in this movie is consistently the prettiest fucking thing you’ll ever see. But what really makes this scene for me is how clearly the characters motivations and by extension their personalities are shown in such a simple way.

First we have Lilo, who with a few short lines of dialogue manages to convey the aching loss she feels for her family. She never even says they died it’s just implied but we feel it. As an audience the tone of voice and music and artwork all convey so accurately exactly how that feels to her. And because of this we understand that she looks as stitch not as a replacement for her family but as a way of moving on. Of coping with her grief by allowing herself to love something else. But then she asks stitch about his family and then we get to my absolute favourite part of this movie.

Stitch doesn’t say a word. He simply retrieves a book and leaves. He looks back for a second as Lilo says goodbye and then silently climbs out of the window. But without saying a word we again understand exactly what he is feeling. Because of the sheer brilliance of the animation. The choice of book (which we as an audience know from an earlier scene) tells us that stitch feels lost and wants the same thing that Lilo wants. He wants a family. It’s important that he leaves though because he wants to find this family for himself. He wants to make it. Because he was only told that he could destroy until a little girl with a big heart told him otherwise.

Lilo and stitch at its core is a film about grief and growth. Lilo mourns her family. Stitch laments his loneliness, somehow together they work out how to heal each other’s scars and find what they were looking for.