Here's a change-of-pace film that isn't going to tie you down in tedium. The Finnish independent filmmaking Kaurismäki brothers are currently producing about one fifth of all of the films emerging from their Scandinavian homeland, but, more importantly, some are pretty darn good. The films of the younger brother, Aki, have gained quite a cult following here in America and you may want to find out if it's a bandwagon that you want to climb aboard.

Historical Background: Aki Kaurismäki, born 1957 in Orimattila, Finland, and his brother Mika, born 1955, are a pair of independent Finnish filmmakers who share the same crews and production equipment, taking turns directing films and collaborating on one another's scripts. They are also businessmen who own several bars and restaurants. Their style is refreshingly iconoclastic and disdainful of filmmaking taboos. Aki has gained a genuine following in places like New York City, where many of his films are shown. Ariel (1988) won an award for Best Foreign Film from the National Society of Film Critics. Some of the best of the rest of Aki Kaurismäki's work include Hamlet Goes Business (1987), The Match Factory Girl (1990) and The Man Without a Past (2002), which garnered an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film. Kaurismäki refused to attend the ceremony out of disgust over the Iraqi War.

The Story: The story opens in Lapland in northern Finland. A coal mine has just been shut down, leaving a bunch of men out of work. Our protagonist, Taisto Kasurinen (Turo Pajala), is sharing a last cup of coffee with a despondent coworker at a table in a café. The man gives Taisto the keys to his old Cadillac convertible, heads off into the bathroom, and shoots himself to death in one of the stalls. Taisto walks into the bathroom to investigate, finds his friend dead, and barely winces. Later, Taisto goes to a makeshift garage to pick up the white convertible. The ramshackle old garage collapses, seconds after he pulls away. So far, this is just a fair to middlin' day in the Taisto's life. He can't figure out how to operate the convertible top, which is down, so he wraps a scarf around his head and drives along in the cold breeze, with his car radio blaring some bluesy Finnish ballad.

He stops by the bank to withdraw his life's savings and heads south toward Helsinki in search of work. Along the way, he stops to buy a hamburger at a roadside restaurant but is soon mugged by a couple of punks. They clean out his life-savings, though they leave the convertible behind. Taisto comes to, after a while, and resignedly climbs into his car and drives off.

Life is not all rotten for Taisto – maybe just 75% of the time. He finds a place to stay in a rundown flophouse and washes up. Outside, he finds his car about to be ticketed by a metermaid, which, strangely enough, turns out to be his first piece of good fortune in a while. He asks the metermaid, Irmeli Pihlaja (Susanna Haavisto) if there's anything he can do to protest the ticket and she, eying his spiffy Cadillac, suggests that dinner would be a good start. He invites her to climb in, so she ditches her metermaid hat, discards her book of tickets, and the two are off together, just like that. It turns out that Irmeli is a divorcee with a young son. After a nice evening out together, she invites him up to her place for coffee and you-know-what-else. Later, as he smokes the mandatory post-coital cigarette, she asks, "Will you disappear in the morning?" He responds, "No, we'll be together forever." She says, "That's good," and it's all pretty much settled.

Taisto spends his days looking for work and his evenings connecting with Irmeli and her son Riku (Eetu Hilkamo), who is no more animated than the adults in his life. One day, Taisto spots one of the assailants (Matti Jaaranen) who stole his cash and corners the man. When the punk pulls a switchblade, Taisto knocks him to the ground and starts to wail on him. Unfortunately, all of this is caught on a security camera and Taisto is soon arrested by a couple of security policemen. He is convicted of assault and resisting arrest and is sentenced to just under two years in prison. There, he develops a friendship with his bespectacled cellmate, Mikkonen (Matti Pellonpää), who has spent most of his life in either juvenile detention facilities or prison and has another eight years on his present rap to go.

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Together, Taisto and Mikkonen hatch a plan of escape and even have the foresight to anticipate what they'll need to do, once they're out, to get out of the country for good. After escaping, Taisto's first priority is to marry Irmeli. Then, he and Mikkonen arrange for fake passports. To pay for them, they stick up a bank. The hoodlums that are forging the passports provide the guns and getaway car, but when the job is done, they pull a double-cross, stabbing Mikkonen. Taisto, who had waited outside during the rendezvous, walks in on the thugs divvying up the stolen cash, sees his pal laid out, and shoots the two gangsters dead. Mikkonen is alive, but barely. Taisto calls Irmeli and they load him into the back seat of the Cadillac. Mikkonen, who knows that he's dying, asks them to bury his heart at the dump. In one last useful act in life, he accidentally discovers the button that operates the convertible top. Taisto and Irmeli bury their companion, pick up Irmeli's kid, and head for the prearranged rendezvous with a sailor and the freight ship Ariel, which will smuggle them all out of the country. As they glide across the water toward a new life in Mexico, we hear the strains of a Finnish rendition of "Somewhere, Over the Rainbow."

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Themes: The Finnish people are notorious for their extreme emotional reserve. Apparently life in Finland can be cold and drab and the people have learned to bear it all with a stoicism than borders on resignation. Life is going to kick them down and impose on them most every day, so there's no point, as they see it, getting too excited by either the downs or the much rarer ups. The Finns have the lowest rate of alcohol consumption for any Western country, so they don't drink their blues away; they just internalize their pain in quiet fortitude, and manifest it as a perpetual world-weary demeanor.

Taisto is like every other Finnish person. He's not angry at the malice of the world he occupies; he's just been knocked loopy by the nonstop string of ill fortune. He's one of life's losers but he'll just keep truckin' along anyway. When good luck makes an occasional unfamiliar appearance, he greets it with the same indifferent passivity. Taisto and Irmeli meet and don't so much fall in love as reach an offhand agreement to spend the rest of their lives together. There's no passion, no fireworks – just a choice to share ordeals.

Production Values: The story is a good one that keeps viewers engrossed. It is less predictable than the average film out of Hollywood. More important than the story, however, is the unique stylistic characteristics that Aki Kaurismäki brings to his filmmaking. His characters seem much more true to life than we're used to encountering in American-made movies. The characters are not all physically gorgeous beings, though attractive enough. Instead of witty, hyper-literate dialog, Kaurismäki gives us simple, direct conversation, as it occurs in real life. The characters move with a degree of awkwardness and sometimes make bumbling mistakes – much like real life people. Taisto and Mikkonen come racing out of a bank where they've just pulled a holdup and one of them accidentally drops some of the bills on the sidewalk.

The special thing about Kaurismäki's perspective in Ariel is that he manages to find both humor and a kind of transcendent good in what would be crushing misfortune in the hands of another director. There is a kind of humor in unrelenting misfortune and Kaurismäki is a master at revealing it. Life in Finland is apparently a bit like a Roadrunner cartoon, except that everyone is Coyote. His characters don't emote, don't get excited, they just endure. This is the comedy of desperation. There's a kind of minimalism at work here by which the lack of big emotions makes the affective nuances that much more apparent.

Turo Pajala is prefect in the role of Taisto. He maintains an unrelenting deadpan delivery, which we understand is his defense against the hapless life he's been dealt. It's a little bit of Gary Cooper, but without the swagger. It's the hangdog demeanor of Philippe Noiret melded with the impenetrability of Eastwood. Susanna Haavisto is also very effective as Irmeli and Matti Pellonpää is superb as Mikkonen. The cinematography is pretty good, though there were a few too many dimly lit scenes for my taste. The soundtrack includes a rich variety of music, from some Finnish blues numbers, to some classical excerpts by Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, to the final sentimental Finnish rendition of the Judy Garland classic, Somewhere, Over the Rainbow.

Bottom-Line: This is an outstanding piece of "alternative" cinema, well outside the mainstream of American fare and all the better for being so. There's none of the Hollywood clichés of plot, dialog, or casting, but this a well-paced film without a dime's worth of dead space. It's only 74 minutes to begin with and every one of those minutes is engaging. This is the best known of the films of either Kaurismäki brother, at least in America, but you may find yourself wanting to check out some of the others. The Kino VHS release is in Finnish with English subtitles, which are especially easy to read because the dialog is sparse.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age