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Reviews
Obratnaya storona Luny (2012)
Even more topical than before
While the first season has a surreal feel in its comedic take on the Soviet era, the second season is truly surreal in its depiction of an imaginary Soviet present. Americans are defecting to USSR, and only the Japanese are rich enough to pay for smuggled art. Soviet science can cure cancer and rejuvenate people, but Soviet products are as bulky as ever, as Mikhail finds when he is handed a "pocket phone" with a number disc. Like in the first season, every episode comes with a crime mystery to solve, while Mikhail continues his obsessive chase for "Red" and tries figure out how to return to the 2011 that he calls home.
The Ukraine situation being what it is now (in November 2022), I just had to re-watch the both seasons, to get a glimpse into the Russian soul. Unfortunately, the series still leaves me feeling that life in Russia is too alien for me to "get" every reference, to really understand which detail is just comedy, which is a political jab, and so on. But political it is, and I would be surprised if this series is not censored in today's Russia.
Trolltagna (1980)
A gem of folktales from a Swedish-speaking region of Finland
Trolltagna, written by Kurre Österberg and directed by Pontus Dammert, is a miniseries based on the folklore that Österberg collected in the Swedish-speaking Bromarv region on Finland's south-western coastline. 1970's was pretty much the last chance to collect oral tradition from old folks that grew up and lived without TV.
The story opens with a woman walking on an unpaved village road, making odd gestures while talking to herself, seemingly, and a little girl asking her grandfather why the aunt is behaving so strangely. The grandfather then tells how her whole family has succumbed to trolls, while audience sees all kinds of havoc caused by these trolls. The woman's father had bought the trolls from a traveling salesman to scare away a neighbor, so he could get the neighbor's land. Or some such thing. Anyway, after successfully achieving the result he had wanted, the father then neglected to pay for the trolls to the salesman, who in turn left the trolls to harass greedy man's own family. Eventually, until only one of the children, now a middle-aged or older woman, is left.
The voice over has someone local speaking in the local accent and dialect, which in itself is wonderful to hear, but the story is so chilling that it has left an indelible imprint in lots of minds in Finland. People here use Internet forums to ask if someone else remembers it, and where to find it. I have only ever seen the series once, and very much yearn to see it again.
Jordbrukerne (2021)
Tried ingredients for once falling together perfectly
Generally, I regard busy pace as a cover-up for hollowness, and I often turn away from comedies that come off as too ADHD for me. Yet this fussy production managed to completely hold my attention throughout, without ever overloading my nerves. A big part of the success is the strong emotional presence that especially Nader Khademi (as Marwan) and Arben Bala (as Khabib) had shining through, despite the caricaturish nature of the gallery of characters. Another part I guess is the particular ways the production intertwines threads of tragedy into it all. Comedy cannot exist without a touch of tragedy, and the crux is how you balance the two.
Non Profit (2007)
Finnish-Sami indie film with loads of themes not quite coming together
Whoever wrote the storyline is confusing this film with some other. As the Cast listing and the "findie" classification says, this is a Finnish film, in the "indie" class.
Anyway, the first time I saw it, I was completely confused, but after viewing it a few more times I began kinda like it, although it has the feel of being patched together from mismatching pieces. There area brilliant moments and then stuff that still confuses me. The actors though are wonderful.
Basically, the characters are a bunch of academic students from wildly different fields and with wildly different motives, coming together in a need for a place to work in, believing they have something in common. They keep bumping into the limits of their understanding of the environment they ended up in, in Finnish Lapland. Some struggle to find inner peace, some expose their limited understanding of Sami, the indigenous people of Northern Fennoscandia. Plus many other varying themes that collide. Eventually, they each run into a blind alley with their work and invite a professor to check out what they had done so far. The sequence around the professor's visit is visually brilliant, and a great homage to Kaisa Korhonen, a well know actress and also a professor in Theater School. But like everything else, things do not quite seem to come together. Yet I enjoy the film even more very time I see it. Can't explain why.
I'm not sure if it necessary to say that the directory is Sami herself.
Killer of Sheep (1978)
If Great Migration stories was a genre of its own...
When I first saw this film on Finnish TV, I was totally blown away. After, I tried in vain to find information on the Internet that could explain why I had this strange feeling that for once, I had seen an American film that didn't seem alien. The critics that I had found on the net kept talking about Italian neo-realism and such, as if the film's Europeanness was based on a decision of style or some such superficial aspect, but I found that hollow. It wasn't until I found the DVD (published by British Film Council), and had a chance to listen the commentary track that it dawned on me. The Great Migration! That's it! Living in Finland, and being a member of the first generation born in city right after an overwhelming majority of Finns had uprooted themselves from countryside, I am fully accustomed to the plethora of material (books, films, TV programs, bot fact and fiction) that we have needed to process the national trauma of the Great Migration. It all happened so quickly, in less that two decades, and we have had to come to terms with it and how it shaped us. The Italian neo-realism, too, appeared at a time when Italian peasants were flocking to cities and trying to redefine themselves. Content is what dictates the similarity style, obviously.
Once I had realized this, I was left wondering why the Americans have done so little to address this topic on film. There are books, probably much more than I know of, that deal with the Great Migration, but strangely, it seems almost non-existent on film. The only films I can mention, besides Killer of Sheep, are the many documentaries on the Dust Bowl, and of course Grapes of Wrath on the fiction side. But these films only skirt around the Great Migration. Killer of Sheep is right at the heart of it. I amazes me that Americans have not felt it necessary to take up this theme more prominently.
The children's play at the opening of the film reminds of myself, at ten, moving for the first time to an area that in American parlance would be called a project, and playing with all these other newcomer kids in the dusty environment that was still being built around us. Getting immersed in the film from get-go like this, I never could distance myself from it. The existentialism is so close to a selection of Finnish cinema from the '70s. The Chaplinesque "I'm not poor" monologue that seems totally improvised, but is not, could well be from a Finnish movie too - if our actors ever could act that well. By Chaplinesque, by the way, I am not referring to the old slapstick chap, but to the later Chaplin of Limelights.
This film is rare gem of totally recognizable we-have-been-through-it-too, in a desert of make-believe reality. I do realize that for (a great majority of) Finns, what followed the first landing in cities is rather different than what happened to the characters of this film. I tend to think of Boyz n the Hood as a sort of follow-up, the next generation telling their story. But to me that story is, like I said about American cinema in general, totally alien to me. I just cannot fit myself into it. But that doesn't take away the fact that to me, Killer of Sheep feels so thoroughly familiar.