 The third category included films about the underdog in Finnish society. The ‘working class trilogy’ consists of Shadows In Paradise (Varjoja Paratiisissa, 1986), Ariel (1988), and The Match Factory Girl (1990) (the laconic, almost cruel masterpiece that radiates suppressed tenderness) and can claim its place in international cinema as among the most sensitive and insightful descriptions of contemporary working class milieu and proletarian identity. They unfold in a kind of colonial Finland, a third-world Finland found in the depths and outskirts of towns, where resilient, authentic humanity prevails, spiced by biting humour and healthy contempt of the official way of life, the bureaucracy, their con men and speculators.
The follow-up Drifting Clouds (Kauas Pilvet Karkaavat, 1996) was the start of a new trilogy (the ‘losers’ trilogy), complemented by Man Without A Past (Mies Vailla Menneisyyttä, 2002) and Lights In The Dusk (Laitakaupungin Valot, 2006), respectively based on the themes of unemployment (‘I wouldn’t have the nerve to look at my face in the mirror if I would not make a film about unemployment now’, Aki Kaurismäki said at the time when Finland had been for years suffering from dramatic structural and, as many saw it, terminal unemployment), homelessness, and solitude. Their protagonists, have-nots or ‘losers’, will not give up, even if pressures bring them to the brink of human endurance. A ray of optimism shines through all this gloom (a vision that can be compared to the tradition of a Capra or a De Sica) – in the first two films. The third, mercilessly realistic, deals with the theme of man’s dignity as its foremost value. It may break the niceties of human fable, but is possibly, after consideration, the most optimistic of all. |
“My soul could not tolerate the kind of rough realism necessary to depict the modern city of Helsinki – I am as if forced against the stonewall. I am as well forced to redesign all the towns behind several decades. I can’t show a modern car, as they are so ugly and impersonal. I managed to photograph London and Paris without showing one single car, and in spite of that my films were set in modern times. I’m for a camera that gets identified with the sets of the epoch it is depicting – and represents that epoch in all its savagery.”
Aki Kaurismäki
Then comes a group of strange road movies, the charming “cheapies” that have attained a cult status in many countries. Calamari Union (1985) is based on an absurd anecdote and shows the odyssey of a group of guys (played by the most luminous rock’n’roll musicians of the day) from the poor parts of Helsinki to the rich downtown environments. All the characters are called Frank, several of them die along the way. Also in that group is Take Care Of Your Scarf – Tatjana (Pidä Huivista Kiini, Tatjana, 1993). Another stroke of genius, the film, is about two Finnish workingmen’s weekend takes place simultaneously in imaginary past, in the 60’s, and in a more realistic world. The efforts of the very Finnish heroes to be themselves are affected by the presence of Klaudia and the titular Tatjana, who obstruct the heroes’ search for Koskenkorva vodka and coffee. The films about the Leningrad Cowboys introduce ‘the world’s worst rock-n-roll band’, complete with their incredible cone-shaped hairstyles and spiked shoes. Two full-length films (one deeply entertaining, another a look at the margins of Europe that is worlds apart from the brave new Europe of Brussels and Strasbourg) were complemented by half a dozen superb short films, and Total Balalaika Show (1993), a documentation of the amazing meeting of East and West in the concert given by the Leningrad Cowboys together with the Red Army Ensemble and its 200 singers and musicians. These are the words of Chris Marker about ‘that milestone in post-modern kitsch’: “there are moments of pure emotion, and when historians will look for a vignette to encompass the brief autumn of utopia that followed the fall of the Empire, I doubt they can find a more significant and poignant one”.
