Le Havre (Aki Kaurismäki, 2011)
The Man without a Past (Aki Kaurismäki, 2002)
The Proletariat Trilogy (Aki Kaurismäki, 1986, 1988, 1990)
Napoleon Dynamite (Jared Hess, 2004)
Night on Earth (Jim Jarmusch, 1991)
I am headed to Finland. I am headed to Finland to work for two months. I will be spending those two months largely inside of a windowless rehearsal space. I could probably have picked a better two months than December and January.
My only mental image of Finland comes from Aki Kaurismäki. I once assisted on a production of Bohème that borrowed heavily from his aesthetic. I thought it was brilliant, but everyone assured me that it was mostly stolen. I still haven’t seen the Bohème film.
But I did finally watch the Proletariat Trilogy. And I got my parents into him. They have seen more than I have at this point; odd thought. We watched Man without a Past together. I kind of like the little emotional affect that is characteristic of his style. It’s like Napoleon Dynamite except there’s a reason beyond hipster pretentions (please note: I enjoyed ND; I just have nothing to say about it).
And I watched Le Havre. For all that everything in these movies is stylized and generally drab, I have come to the conclusion that Mr. Kaurismäki is a humanist and an optimist. Stories have happy endings and senseless brutality is met with compassion and almost Christian levels of grace. This is good because mostly my image of Finland is that it is very cold. I think there is a section of Night on Earth in Finland. It’s cold there. Also dark.
Do I seem like I’m dwelling on fringe and unimportant parts of these films and not enough on the content? It’s a SAD world, my friends.