Chronicles of World Cinema I: The Man Without A Past
(Been home for a full five days now….. time to kick-start the blog again)
When we finally got rid of the friendly neighbourhood cable guy and his spider-web of wires, hooks and assorted paraphernelia; and switched to a DTH service, the best thing which came with it was the World Movies channel. Now, this was a channel dedicated to showing quality cinema from around the world to an Indian audience. A couple of days back, I saw this brilliant Finnish film called “The Man Without A Past” by director Aki Kaurismaki.
Like many other great films, this one, too has a very simple story. A man, newly arrived in Helsinki, gets so severely beaten up, that he develops amnesia. The rest of the film deals with his attempts to start a new life and try and find out more about his past. This leads to some darkly funny, sometimes poignant scenes. The central character is played by the late Finnish actor Markku Peltola.
Several things about this film impressed me to no end. Kaurismaki doesn’t go for big flashy camera movements, but he does just enough to make sure the net import of the scene is conveyed to the audience. His films are people with funny, sometimes spooky characters with seemingly complex inner lives. In this film, you have a faux-sinister cop with a brutish dog he keeps threatening M(the titular character) with. When asked the name of the dog, he says in a deadpan whisper, “Hannibal”. Later on, we are told that Hannibal, is in fact a female, and a pretty docile and clingy one at that.
A couple, Nieminen and his strong, independent wife Kaisa take M in and help him get back on his feet. Nieminen is the kind of gently funny character who embodies the spirit of the film, yet you cannot help but think that there is much more to him than meets the eye. In fact, (and this goes for most of the film) Kaurismaki’s work tends to resemble avant-garde theatre more than anything else. The scenes where M starts to live in a container and makes friends with others like him are superbly done. M gets help from the Salvation Army, and even starts to go out with one of the officers there.
Kaurismaki likes his music, and indeed, many crucial or particularly poignant moments in the film are marked by distinctive music. In this film, music is also an important plot device as M starts to manage and organize rock’n'roll concerts in the neighbourhood with some of his Salvation Army friends. (Remember the the three roving balladeers in Dev D? )
Without giving out spoilers, I’ll say that the manner in which M discovers his past and the action which ensues is unlike anything else you would have seen. I thought that in a film like this, there was no easy way to bring the story to a satisfactory conclusion, without seeming to be contrived or over-written. But Kaurismaki’s treatment completely floored me.
You’ll find it hard to categorize the film, and I’ve got a sneaky feeling this is true for Kaurismaki’s body of work as a whole. There are existentialist moments on display here, a dash of Thoreau when M turns backyard farmer. The delightfully quirky side-characters brings to mind the Coens, and the overall humanity which pervades every minute of the film has something of Ray about it. This is heady company, but one which Kaurismaki deserves, I feel. After finishing the film I found out that it won the Grand Prix, the second most prestigious award at Cannes, and was also nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar.(Kaurismaki refused to attend the ceremony in protest against the US, which was in a state of war at the time)
UTV World Movies is, in fact, screening more of Kaurismaki’s work, every Saturday night, all this month, and there’ll be plenty of repeats, too.(I caught this one on the second repeat, I believe) I’ll be sure to catch all of them, and I urge you to try and catch’em, too !
Tags: kaurismaki, Review, World Cinema
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Nice post aditya…am also in d process of getting rid of cable n getting DTH…can u pls share which service is it that shows this ‘world movies’ channel?…thanks
aditya: hey, great post. i also watched this one on UTV World Movies two days back. i guess they r doing a retrospective of five films directed by Kaurismaki, to be shown each week of May 09.
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i was planning to do an article on this, but am glad i didnt do it, i wudnt hv been able to do the justice to it the way u hv analysed it…
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@ Ravi: dont know abt all the DTH services, but i have Tata Sky and got no complaints..
I watched ‘Lights in the Dusk’ some days back on TV, and I loved the film. I happened to miss this one unfortunately
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Hey,
Great Post!
Nice to see more inclusions in the Kaurismaki Club. Its fun to read his take on his own cinema, also saw another byte with Sudhir Mishra talking about him. Mishraji has such simple way of putting it. And I guess Aki’s cinema moves from complexity to simplicity, a tough feat no doubt.
@Ravi: I have Tata Sky, and like Satyendra, no complaints here, too
@Debarun: Lights in The Dusk will be shown later this month on World Movies… I hope to catch it then…
What a sweet surprise to find you talking about this movie here, and how nice to hear that Kaurismaki’s movies are being shown on Indian TV. Though I can’t remember the story very well now, I remember very strongly discovering this movie and filmmaker. Your phrase about “the humanity which pervades every moment of the film,” that is just right and that is what has stayed with me.
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I remember at the time thinking about a Christian background idea, of the kind of steady peace that is the ideal, but I think your phrase is better.
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Are they going to show Leningrad Cowboys Go America? more ancestors of the Dev D balladeers.
The Leningrad Cowboy shorts(these shoes, the take on rocky etc) are available on youtube.
@Virginia: I think it’s high time that filmmakers like Kaurismaki get a mainstream TV audience in India.. that’s the first step… hopefully, somewhere down the lime… we’ll see multiplexes showing these films
I don’t even know if Man Without A Face showed in US theatres – I found out about it because it was included in small film festival in London some years ago, also some years after it had been made.
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I saw another movie he made which was also about a loner kind of man, also brain-damaged, this time from war, who goes far far up into the fir-tree forests of Finland to look for work – he isn’t very able and people look after him. Same feeling to me. You’ve reminded me of it.
oops, Man Without a Past, not without a face.
His best, for me, would be La Vie Boheme.
Some more reccos-
I hired a contract killer
Drifting Clouds
Match Factory Girl
This is one filmmaker whose films I am not yet able to sit down and watch in full. I have had quite a few oppor..but a few scenes and I have to switch off.
I missed some on TV, some in a film fest…I cant watch his movies…not yet…