I'm not sure this hold up to psychological scrutiny *SPOILERS*

I understand the film is far from rooted in any sort of realism, but I still took umbrage with its psychology. Namely, the idea that this 14-year-old kid has the capacity to kill, as he does late in the movie. Even taking into account how many cold-blooded murderers don't show signs of their pathology in their everyday lives, I didn't believe Simo could really do that. And considering the film plunges us deep into the recesses of his tormented psyche, I feel like we would have gotten a sense much earlier that he had this in him. There is, of course, his inappropriate outburst when a waiter refuses to serve him beer, but outside of that he just seems like any typical lost, disillusioned kid. I feel as if the movie was treating him like he was much younger - by 14, much has already concretized, and the stray noxious advice from your brother isn't going to be enough to completely pull you over to the dark side. The ending suicide, then, feels like something of a cop-out, or at least a contrived conclusion, especially considering the somewhat phony addition of his suicidal dream sequence at the film's opening. Why did he even have that dream? Was he contemplating killing himself by that point? His suicide seems less like an organic reaction to anything we see him go through than something dictated by the plot.

However, taken as a purely expressionistic representation of a wildly mutable, unformed mind, it is pretty sensational. Visually this is about as gorgeous as you can get.