Friday, December 05, 2008

Putoavia enkeleitä / Falling Angels


Heikki Kujanpää: Putoavia enkeleitä / Falling Angels (2008) with Elena Leeve (Helena the daughter) and Tommi Korpela (Lauri Viita).


Fallande änglar
    FI © 2008 Blind Spot Pictures. P: Petri Jokiranta, Tero Kaukomaa.
    D: Heikki Kujanpää. SC: Sami Parkkinen, Heikki Kujanpää, Heikki Huttu-Hiltunen – based on Aila Meriluoto's memoir book Lauri Viita – legenda jo eläessään (1974). DP: Harri Räty – digital intermediate DFF.
    C: Elena Leeve (Helena), Tommi Korpela (Lauri), Elina Knihtilä (Aila), Oiva Lohtander (Lars Djupsjöbacka), Juhani Niemelä (Hermanni), Hannu Kivioja (Juha Mannerkorpi), Erica Pitkänen (Helena at 5-6), Tiina Pirhonen (Svea), Antti Litja (the publisher), Taisto Oksanen (the publisher's son), Taneli Mäkelä (Aila's father), Jaana Pesonen (Aila's mother).
    102 min.
    Released by Sandrew Metronome Distribution Finland with Swedish subtitles by Joanna Erkkilä.
    Viewed at Kinopalatsi 2, Helsinki, 5 Dec 2008.

A shoddy digital intermediate look, unpleasant colour gamut dominated by a dull brown.

"When you create, create a world" (Lauri Viita). Motto of the film.

I loved Pieni pyhiinvaellus / The Little Pilgrimage (1999), Heikki Kujanpää's cinema debut feature, one of my favourite Finnish films of the last ten years, and one of my favourite Pohjanmaa films of all times.

Lauri Viita and Aila Meriluoto are two great and widely loved poets of the post-WWII era in Finland.  Kujanpää's theatre production of Falling Angels was acclaimed in Q Theatre in Helsinki in spring 2005, and my wife Laila confirms that it was a powerful production full of poetry. Now there is the cinema film of the same subject and based on the same cast (TK, EK). But unfortunately there is something wrong now. Poetry is missing.

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