Ei mitään hätää (Oikeusjuttu) / It's All Right (The Trial)

Miia Tervo: the short film Ei mitään hätää (It's All Right) is also known as Oikeusjuttu (The Trial) in the compendium film Tottumiskysymys (Force of Habit). Johannes Holopainen as the prosecutor and Lotta Kaihua as the rape victim seeking justice.

Tampere Film Festival (TFF) wrapped up on International Women's Day. Finland's Prime Minister Sanna Marin, from Tampere, gave a speech at the International Women's Day event in the United Nations in New York City. Only three years ago she was with us at the TFF where the popular documentary film Taking the Floor (Hannes Vartiainen, Pekka Veikkolainen, 2017), starring her, was screened in the opening gala. Watching her matter-of-fact deadpan as the chair of the Tampere City Council, bringing to a finish a 110-year-old debate of a tram line, it was easy to predict that we might be hearing more about her. This year TFF programmed the remarkable feminist short film anthology One-Off Incident, two selections from which were also screened in the competition series: Play Rape by Anna Paavilainen and The Trial by Miia Tervo.

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At Tampere Film Festival I saw for the third time Miia Tervo's Ei mitään hätää / It's All Right (so called in the short film anthology Yksittäistapaus / One-Off Incident), also known as Oikeusjuttu / The Trial in the compendium film Tottumiskysymys / Force of Habit. It was my film of the year 2019 in the annual polls in which I participated. Each time it feels stronger. It's All Right was the only film which made me cry in this year's National Competition in Tampere.

There are Kafkaesque dimensions in this account of a trial which is based on Miia Tervo's multi-year research on rape cases. Instead of justice, there is an absurd, nightmarish travesty. A brutal, violent crime has taken place, but the case is about to disappear into the labyrinthine maze of the judicial system. The process is so prolonged and humiliating that in effect it is the victim who is being punished.

The titles are of course ironic. "It's All Right" (not). "One-Off Incident" (not). Maybe even the title "The Trial" should be put into quotation marks. Let's also register the wordplay and the double meaning in the English title "It's All Right".

The films of the One-Off Incident project are not Lehrstücke, but there is a Brechtian dimension. It's All Right is based less on identification than on the distancing effect. The horrible case stirs up outrage. Even more significantly it makes us think.

Miia Tervo avoids straightforward advocacy. Instead, she employs comedy, even farce, in the tragedy. In his first case, the rookie prosecutor makes one blunder after another, fumbling with his briefcase, letting documents fall on the floor, and soiling them with his takeaway lunch, but as interpreted by Johannes Holopainen, the prosecutor never loses dignity. The victim, played by Lotta Kaihua, suffers an ordeal in which basic conditions are not respected such as separate entrances and a functioning microphone.

The visual concept of the film is stark. Shot on location at the Helsinki Court House in Salmisaari, the modernist architecture by Väinö Vähäkallio is put to efficient use, including special elements such as the security check: the transillumination for smuggled weapons in the main lobby, with its associations to modern air travel from which all glory was stripped after 11 September 2001. We are transferred to a special zone like in high surrealism ("when Hutter crossed the bridge, the phantoms emerged to receive him"). Unconsciously we may even be reminded of the anterooms of the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

In the vision of Miia Tervo and her DP Päivi Kettunen the Helsinki Court House appears as a hall of mirrors which evokes the glass and mirror artworks of Gerhard Richter. The multiple reflections convey a sense of deep alienation in this hall of injustice.

More than that, these reflections are also a visual expression of the movie's deep drive. The film itself is a telescope which leads us to observe a wider reality: sexual violence in society at large, rampant and largely unpunished, for reasons that this film helps us understand. It also illuminates the history of sexual violence dating back to classical Antiquity and all periods of slavery, serfdom and subordination in which most people were fair game for sexual abuse. "Might is right" was the primitive human condition before the introduction of justice.

It's All Right reminds us that the primitive condition never disappeared and asks big questions about the letter of the law and the spirit of justice. Miia Tervo's film makes us think – that we must change the world.

Having heard of this film a Californian friend sent me a link to an article by Angelina Chapin in Huffpost (24 Feb 2020) reflecting the Weinstein trial: " The Weinstein Verdict Is a Complicated Win For Survivors. This verdict is empowering but won’t fix a broken system. "

Gerhard Richter: “Kartenhaus (5 Scheiben),” “House of Cards (5 Panes),” (2020), a new glass sculpture at Met Breuer, 945 Madison Avenue, Manhattan, New York. "Gerhard Richter: Painting After All", through July 5, 2020. Credit: Charlie Rubin for The New York Times, 5 March 2020.