Helene

Laura Birn (Helene Schjerfbeck), Johannes Holopainen (Einar Reuter). Please click on the images to enlarge them!

Helene. Laura Birn (Helene Schjerfbeck).

Helene. Laura Birn (Helene Schjerfbeck).

Helene. Krista Kosonen (Helena Westermarck).

Helene Schjerfbeck: The Sailor (Einar Reuter) (1918). Oil on canvas 70 x 62,5, signed c.r. HS. Ahtela #502. HS 150 #400. Private Collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen. This is a reproduction of the original. In the movie, a variation painted by Anna Retulainen is seen.

Helene.
    FI © 2020 Finland Cinematic Oy. P: Mikko Tenhunen, Antti J. Jokinen. Assoc P: Evelin Penttilä. EX: Mikko Kodisoja, Tom Fanning.
    D: Antti J. Jokinen. SC: Antti J. Jokinen, Marko Leino – based on the novel (2003) by Rakel Liehu. DP: Rauno Ronkainen F.S.C. – colour – scope. PD: Jaagup Roomet. Cost: Eugen Tamberg. Makeup: Kaire Hendrikson. M+S: Kirka Sainio. ED: Benjamin Mercer F.C.E.
    Paintings by Helene Schjerfbeck and four variations of Schjerfbeck's works by Anna Retulainen.
    M selections include Bach, Debussy, Merikanto, Satie, Vivaldi.
    C: Laura Birn (Helene Schjerfbeck), Johannes Holopainen (Einar Reuter), Krista Kosonen (Helena Westermarck), Pirkko Saisio (Olga Schjerfbeck), Eero Aho (Magnus Schjerfbeck), Jarkko Lahti (Gösta Stenman), Saana Koivisto (Tyra Arp).
    Loc: Finland (Helsinki), Estonia.
    In Finnish.
    122 min
    Premiere: 17 Jan 2020 – distributed by Oy Nordisk Film Ab – Swedish subtitles by Heidi Nyblom Kuorikoski.
    DCP viewed at Tennispalatsi 2, Helsinki, 17 Jan 2020.

An extraordinary performance by Laura Birn in the leading role carries Antti J. Jokinen's movie about Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946), one of the greatest Nordic painters of all times. Schjerfbeck's most unique achievement was a cycle of devastating self-portraits created during seven decades (1884–1945). Inspired by them Laura Birn takes us on a subtle psychological journey.

She is often seen in close-up and extreme close-up in a way that invites comparison with Ingmar Bergman's work with Liv Ullmann. Birn's is an interpretation rich in nuance, emotion, intelligence, inspiration, sadness, longing, frustration and aggression. Helene's heart has been broken many times, and she has learned to become "hard and clear like metal". Her words are harsh but her gaze is deep.

Schjerfbeck lives in a world of discrimination against women, but she is always confident and inner-directed. She does not want to be labelled as a "woman artist" but artist, period. Already in the 1880s Schjerfbeck displayed genius in abstraction and explorations beyond realism, but she was too much ahead of her time in provincial Finland, and when we meet her in this film, which conveys the period of 1915–1925, she has become a recluse in the towns of Hyvinkää and Tammisaari.

In these very years she finds indefatigable friends and supporters: the art dealer Gösta Stenman and the collector and admirer Einar Reuter who writes the first biography about her. They draw her to recognition and admiration on a permanent and lasting basis. She has always been a seer. Now she is being seen. This is the drama of the movie, based on a novel by the poet Rakel Liehu, devised as a monologue intérieur of the painter.

The cinematographer Rauno Ronkainen succeeds wonderfully in creating a colour vision in synch with Schjerfbeck's idiosyncractic palette: "ochre, cobalt blue and coal black" quoted in the dialogue, not forgetting zinc, vermilion and sienna. "Viridian brings a beautiful glow on the skin". Watching the movie on the scope screen of the cinema we enter the world of Helene Schjerfbeck. It can be seen as a suite of essays on light. Mirror reflections are a central motif.

Reportedly 150 works by Schjerfbeck are on display (from a total oeuvre of some 1000). Four paintings are not seen in originals but in fascinating recreations by the artist Anna Retulainen. They are not certified copies (copies conformes) but subtle variations faithful to the originals. Laura Birn learned to paint for the role, and the movie is rewarding for connoisseurs and professionals of the art scene.

"All artists are sad", states Schjerfbeck, but she has sisters in art such as Maria Wiik, and most importantly Helena Westermarck (Krista Kosonen), a fighter for women's rights (and sister of the progressive sociologist Edvard Westermarck). Helene's next of kin brings her nothing but grief. Her mother Olga (a strong performance by Pirkko Saisio) and brother Magnus (Eero Aho) fail to understand and support her. The lifelong friendship between the two Helenas is the warmest emotional bond of the movie conveyed by Birn and Kosonen in a way that again invites comparison with Bergman.

This is a women's film, but the main plot is about the friendship between Schjerfbeck and Reuter. Reuter and Stenman were the first to recognize Schjerfbeck's achievement in world art. They were her soul brothers. Reuter also became a personal friend, and they shared a passion of painting and art. For Helene the relationship meant even more, but it remained a one-sided love affair. Reuter married another woman and became a father of four children, yet his friendship with Schjerfbeck lasted to the end of her life. She was 19 years older and had had a painting of hers purchased to the Finnish National Gallery before Einar was born.

The male performances are of weaker wattage. Perhaps the film has been tuned intentionally in this way. The presence of Johannes Holopainen as Einar is so distant and laid back that the main relationship never feels as engrossing as we are supposed to think. Even so the reverent friendship is different and unique and a refreshing exception to biopic clichés.

Helene is a welcome entry to the roster of Finnish female biopics among which we have seen in recent years films about Aila Meriluoto, Hella Wuolijoki and Armi Ratia. The film is in Finnish although all characters in reality spoke Swedish. In performing arts since the classical antiquity liberties like this have always been taken for practical reasons. The atmosphere of contemplation is refreshing, but there are needless longueurs, and the film might benefit from pruning twenty minutes. Helene is a quality film, a prestige film and a heritage film, but it transcends the superficial expectations of such categories.

Helene Schjerfbeck was a passionate artist and a stranger in her own exhibitions. Already in the period depicted she stated that she has moved beyond realism long ago. In her haunting self-portraits she even moved beyond identity, towards a transcendence of a unique kind. This film helps convey the cosmic solitude of hers.

On her long trajectory she achieved mastery in completely different idioms. Her early vibrant realism of the 1880s and the 1890s is easy to love, and the radical austerity of her 1940s strikes us as timeless. In between it is complicated. Sometimes, as in certain works recreated in this film, the form and the composition may seem unrewarding, but the viewer is recommended to conduct a "forward tracking movement" to the point of examining brushstrokes. At that point secret gardens, bordering on the abstract, emerge. The thrill of the middle periods lies in surprising revelations like this. Somehow, in Helene the movie, although the paintings are blown up to fill a scope screen, I often fail to discover brushstrokes. They can be examined in the internet in excellent digital reproductions legally online.

I have been a fan of movies on artists since I saw as a child Renato Castellani's La vita di Leonardo da Vinci. Excellent documentary series of artists have been made by Hans Cürlis, Luciano Emmer and Alain Resnais. But also many fictional films have great value, including those by Kenji Mizoguchi (on Utamaro), Vincente Minnelli (on Van Gogh), Andrei Tarkovsky (Andrei Rublev) and Mike Leigh (on Turner). There is something stilted in Helene, but a profound current is alive in it that feels true to the great artist. Helene is a distinguished entry to films about artists.