LUCKY DAY FOREVER
is a short animated film by Alek Wasilewski. LDF was also featured at a few festivals, including ITFS Stuttgart, Sci-Fi London, plus less recently Se-Ma-For Film Festival (awarded Festival Director's Award), IFF New Horizons, Ljubljana International Short Film Festival, "Youth and Film" Debut Films Festival and some others.
Prole 514 dreams about winning the Great Lottery. The lottery winner is transformed and allowed admission into the elite White society, where everyone is beautiful, young and happy and people spend their carefree lives solely on fun and partying. One day, 514's wish comes true... but was this what he really wanted?
Tropes in this story:
- The Alcoholic: 514. His fridge is filled with Little Prolie Beer. Used to show that 514 buys into the Whites' propaganda.
- Ambiguously Brown: This trope is used to make the Proles stand out from the Whites, which fall into the Uncanny Valley.
- Ascetic Aesthetic: The Whites' Society.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: 514 finally wins the lottery in this film, but he gets locked into the Lotus-Eater Machine and gets used as resources for the Whites.
- Bittersweet Ending: 514 got to be with B13, but they're in a Lotus-Eater Machine, unaware that they're being used to revitalize the Whites's bodies.
- Black Blood: This can be seen when Prole 514 tries to escape from the Whites.
- Book Ends: The story starts with 514 falling for the Whites' propaganda and ends with Sasiadka falling for the Whites' propaganda. This is a way to show that the Proles want to stand out like the Whites.
- Brand X: Little Prolie Beer
- Bread and Circuses:
- The Great Lottery.
- White society media seems to be comprised largely of pornography, sexually suggestive commercials, and bland pop T.V. shows.
- Catapult Nightmare: One of 514's dreams. Used to separate his fantasies from reality.
- Domestic Abuse: Implied with Sasiadka's boyfriend. When we see Sasiadka in some of the few scenes she's in, she has blackeye, which was probably caused by her boyfriend. Or, based on some dialogue thrown her way, he may have been her client.
- Dream Within a Dream: Used to reveal that the scene where 514 escaped and jumped into a screen to make love with a White with B13's face is all in B13 and 514's minds.
- Dystopia: The Proles are clearly living in the bottom of the totem pole.
- Which also propels the White's society straight into Crapsaccharine World...unless you're a member of the club.
- Fantastic Caste System: Whites are the upper class and Proles are the under class.
- Flipping the Bird: B-14 does this to Little Prolie.
- Glamour Failure: You thought Whites were unsettling with their frozen smiles? Wait until you see what lurks beneath the surface◊.
- Hollywood Hype Machine: The winners of the Lottery are frequently displayed through completely unrelated body doubles in their new White incarnation on the news and are frequently cast aside as soon as another Prole wins.
- Homage: Little Prolie looks like Classic-era Mickey Mouse.
- Human Resources: The Lottery winners get to be put into a coma as their bodies are drained. This is used to revitalize the Whites' bodies to keep them young.
- Light Is Not Good: The Whites, of course.
- Little People: The Proles
- Lotus-Eater Machine: Used to keep the Lottery Winners in stasis, so they can be used as living resources. This trope is used because it shows that the Proles' attempts at becoming accepted in society by finding the way out are futile.
- Love at First Sight: Prole 514 and Sasiadka.
- Meaningful Name: "Proles" are most likely derived from the word "proletariat", and the Whites have porcelain doll-white skin. "Sasiadka" literally means "neighbor" in Polish.
- Mythology Gag: Lucky Day Forever has some visible influence from Alek's other animations, like the robots from "Smile", the strange attitude of "Polsupah", and 514's facial structure which is comparable to the poet from "Hanged Man's Elegy".
- Nonstandard Character Design: The Whites. Both of these tropes are used to show that the Whites are inhuman in comparison to the Proles.
- Pretty Fly for a White Guy: The Whites seem to enjoy making use of this trope.
- Propaganda Machine: the Whites pull the wool over the eyes of the Proles via artificial culture aimed at them.
- Real Is Brown: The Proles' half of the city.
- Sigil Spam: The smiley face, which is seen in advertising, medals and basically anything to do with the Whites. Used to show that the society is a Dystopia.
- Special Snowflake Syndrome: Proles have this and use the Great Lottery as a way to become one of the Whites. The prole in this game, if you pay attention, never actually becomes part of the upper class independently from what they do. He never actually became somebody else or turn popular, it was only an illusion that kept him put so the rich could feed on him and on others who got into that position. They're all the same gullible people following their own pleasures, and the elite takes huge advantage of that.
- Stepford Smiler: The Whites
- Take That!: To the superficiality of Reality shows like American Idol because it depicts a future where the present-day glorification of the celebrity moron has been taken to society-destroying extremes
- The Beautiful Elite: The Whites, of the "evil" type.
- The Unsmile: The only expression the Whites can display. Used to show that they are in the Uncanny Valley.
- Together in Death: B13 and 514 in the Lotus-Eater Machine as their bodies are used as resources for the Whites.
- Totally Radical: The Whites' Society.
