Product Description
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The poignant, deadpan films of Aki Kaurismäki are pitched
somewhere in the wintry nether lands between comedy and tragedy.
And rarely in his body of work has the line separating those
genres seemed thinner than in what is often identified as his
Proletariat Trilogy, Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, and The Match
Factory Girl. In these three films, something like social-realist
farces, Kaurismäki surveys the working-class outcasts of his
native Finland with detached yet disarming amusement. Featuring
commanding, off-key visual compositions and delightfully dour
performances, the films in this triptych exemplify the talents of
a unique and highly influential film artist.
.com
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Editors of the Eclipse series appear to taking some critical
political stances these days judging from their selection of Aki
Kaurismäkis Proletariat Trilogy as follow-up to the equally dour
Larisa Sheptiko boxed set. Whereas Sheptikos films portray
Soviet soldiers and workers toiling in war-ravaged Russia,
Kaurismakis films are set in and around bleak working-class
neighborhoods in Helsinki, and star characters who resort to
lives of crime because it is impossible to make ends meet.
However, similarities between the directors more or less stop
there. Kaurismakis more modern social critiques mercifully
employ deadpan humor to rescue the viewer from utter hopelessness
and to shield one from the bitterness his characters suffer. Like
Robert Bressons films, Kaurismakis rely upon understated acting
and long scenes in which the camera hardly moves, to allow plot
development that is slow, emotionally resonant, and ultimately
realistic. His three films included here are mid-career works
that share basic plots and even actors, though, of course, each
film merits close viewing. Shadows in Paradise (1986) is the
oldest film, and sets in motion the archetypal tragic character
who tries and fails at earning money honestly under depressed
economic conditions. Opening with s of dumpsters being
emptied during a snowstorm, one senses instantly that Nikanders
(Matti Pellonpää) life may be the ultimate drag. When his partner
invites him to start a new company, using the slogan "Reliable
garbage since 1968," and Nikander replies, "But thats now," it
becomes clear that neither he nor his peers are extremely bright.
His new girlfriend Ilona (Kati Outinen) leads an equally dreary
life as a grocer, and the pace speeds only slightly. Not until
Nikander meets Melartin (Sakari Kuosmanen) in prison does one
experience his adventurous side. Similarly, Ariel (1988) opens
with a wry scene starring Taisto Kasurinen (Turo Pajala), a
Finnish coal miner who witnesses his hers suicide after his
her wills him a fantastic vintage car. Taisto, dreadfully
impoverished, leaves for the city, where he meets Irmeli (Susanna
Haavisto), a kind-hearted woman who doesnt necessarily have
ambitious taste in men. As Taisto digs himself deeper into
trouble with the law, no thanks to his friend Mikkonen (Matti
Pellonpää), Irmeli chooses loyalty over protecting her son from a
man who is ultimately a criminal.
The most compact and stylistically impressive of Aki
Kaurismäki's perversely minimalist Finnish comedies, The Match
Factory Girl stars his blond, blank-faced Garbo, Kati Outinen, as
a downtrodden factory worker whose attempts to discover love and
companionship are constantly thwarted by her possessive parents
and a succession of cloddish, exploitative men. Kaurismäki's
deadpan style--the carefully inexpressive acting, motionless
camera, and rigidly geometrical compositions--avoids both
sentimentality and sarcasm. Although the girl's plight is taken
seriously, there is something in the extremity of the situations,
and in the lovingly depicted hideousness of her Helsinki home
life, that is irresistibly comic. Inspired by the Tiananmen
Square uprising, the match factory girl resolves to take a
revolutionary stand, arms herself with a packet of rat poison,
and sets out for revenge. The video includes an equally hilarious
music-video rendition of "Those Were the Days" by Kaurismäki's
house band, the Leningrad Cowboys. In each of these films, the
director relies on the publics understanding of poor economy to
order empathetic viewing. If one doesnt prescribe to blaming
government for societal hardships, his characters seem pathetic
and borderline idiotic. This gray area between sympathy and
contempt is Kaurismaki territory, and viewing his films reminds
one how the personal is political. --Trinie Dalton and Dave Kehr