2008 Woodie Awards
Deadpan fare offers enlightening life lessons
Finnish director continues trademark by setting new film in his native city of Helsinki
By: Matthew Freundlich
Issue date: 8/30/07 Section: Lifestyle
- Page 1 of 2 next >
Searching for grace amidst a soul-dampening industrial Helsinki, Finnish purveyor of the deadpan Aki Kaurismaki returns to the capital of his home country for "Lights in the Dusk."
The third installment to cap Kaurismaki's "Loser Trilogy," "Lights" follows another one of the director's docile ciphers, Koistenen, a lonely mall security guard. He's jostled through webs of underground crime and law that are as mutually sterile as the environs that locate them. Ridiculed and ignored by his co-workers, shunned by women and trampled by local thugs, Koistenen finds a few minutes of daily companionship with a timid snack-cart owner, Aila, to whom he reveals his entrepreneurial aspiration.
After the bank rejects his loan request ("Are you some kind of clown?"), his life takes a troubling turn when he is approached by blonde-hair-and-blue-eyed Mirja. She declares her specious romantic interest and awkwardly begins dating him. Her true motivations are confirmed when she meets with her mob husband, who she is assisting by using Koistenen to learn the mall's entry codes for a planned jewelry heist.
Taking full advantage of Koistenen's faithfulness (or ignorance, or indifference), Mirja swipes the info behind his back; the mob sucks the jewelry store dry and frames our helpless victim. Caught by the police, Koistenen loses his job and trades one prison for another. His year in jail-swiftly chronicled in just a few shots-strips away the humanity that once hid beneath his static veneer. While Koistenen's prior life on the outside was no more exciting than a dripping faucet, his undeserved punishment has nullified any spirit he once had, bringing his life to a standstill.
Though the movie closes with a memorable gesture of compassion, deduction is what gives this film its edge. As in the rest of Kaurismaki's mannerist tragicomedies, the director pares down genre, character, plot and form, chasing the old artistic value of economy down to its reductive yet satisfying ends. His poker-faced mannequins speak in punctuated proclamations, and their isolation is conveyed in formulaic shot/reverse shot routines.
The third installment to cap Kaurismaki's "Loser Trilogy," "Lights" follows another one of the director's docile ciphers, Koistenen, a lonely mall security guard. He's jostled through webs of underground crime and law that are as mutually sterile as the environs that locate them. Ridiculed and ignored by his co-workers, shunned by women and trampled by local thugs, Koistenen finds a few minutes of daily companionship with a timid snack-cart owner, Aila, to whom he reveals his entrepreneurial aspiration.
After the bank rejects his loan request ("Are you some kind of clown?"), his life takes a troubling turn when he is approached by blonde-hair-and-blue-eyed Mirja. She declares her specious romantic interest and awkwardly begins dating him. Her true motivations are confirmed when she meets with her mob husband, who she is assisting by using Koistenen to learn the mall's entry codes for a planned jewelry heist.
Taking full advantage of Koistenen's faithfulness (or ignorance, or indifference), Mirja swipes the info behind his back; the mob sucks the jewelry store dry and frames our helpless victim. Caught by the police, Koistenen loses his job and trades one prison for another. His year in jail-swiftly chronicled in just a few shots-strips away the humanity that once hid beneath his static veneer. While Koistenen's prior life on the outside was no more exciting than a dripping faucet, his undeserved punishment has nullified any spirit he once had, bringing his life to a standstill.
Though the movie closes with a memorable gesture of compassion, deduction is what gives this film its edge. As in the rest of Kaurismaki's mannerist tragicomedies, the director pares down genre, character, plot and form, chasing the old artistic value of economy down to its reductive yet satisfying ends. His poker-faced mannequins speak in punctuated proclamations, and their isolation is conveyed in formulaic shot/reverse shot routines.
Be the first to comment on this story