Natura

Matti Harju: Natura (FI 2023).

2023

Humour / Experimental / Nature / Weird / Society

Theme: Finnish New Wave

Country: Finland

Director: Matti Harju

Screenplay: Matti Harju

Starring: Asko Lintunen, Jarmo Kämäräinen, Juha Lilja

Production: Matti Harju

Duration: 69 min

Rating: K12

Kino Engel 1, Love & Anarchy: Helsinki International Film Festival (HIFF), 17 Sep 2023

Roni Regnér (HIFF 2023): " Varoitus: Natura on hienovaraisen huumorin sävyttämä kertomus suomalaisen miehen epätoivoksi eskaloituvasta ahdingosta. Lupaus: juuri mitään muuta yhteistä tällä unenomaisen kaunista ja dokumentaarisen paljasta kerrontaa yhdistelevällä epäveijaritarinalla ei suomalaisen miehen loputtomasta ahdingosta loputtomasti ammentavan elokuvaperinteen kanssa sitten olekaan. "

" Joutilaan hellepäivän painostavalla verkkaisuudella koukuttavasti etenevässä “anti-trillerissä” seurataan kahden netissä toisensa tapaavan miehen kostoretkeä, jonka polttoaineena toimii jaettu kokemus osattomuudesta ja jonka kohteena on paikallinen kryptomiljonääri, eräänlainen moderni epäoikeudenmukaisen hyväosaisuuden arkkityyppi. "

 

" Vähäsanaisten lähiödesperadojen virtuaalivaluutan ryöstöretki ei kuitenkaan suju kuten (konventionaalisemmissa lajityypin) elokuvissa, vaan saa raa’ankin inhimillisessä realismissaan jopa absurdin käänteen. "

" Matti Harjun debyytti pitkän fiktion parissa on jo visuaalisesti nautinnollista katsottavaa asetelmallisia laajakuvia ja rujompaa lähiöestetiikkaa yhdistellessään, mutta myös ajatuksia herättävä tutkielma luokasta puhkidigitalisoituneessa kapitalistisessa yhteiskunnassa. " Roni Regnér

Roni Regnér (HIFF 2023): " Warning: Natura is a story about a Finnish man’s distress escalating into despair, coated with fine humour. Promise: This anti-rascal story combining dreamily beautiful and documentary-like natural narration has hardly anything else in common with the endless cinematic canon drawing from the endless despair of Finnish men."

"This anti-thriller addictively developing with the sluggishness of an idle day in a heatwave follows two men going on a revenge trip, having met each other online. As the fuel for their journey serves a shared sense of bereftness, and as the object of it a local crypto-millionaire – a sort of a modern archetype of fortune gone unfair."

"The virtual currency robbery expedition of the laconic hood desperadoes does not go as in (some more conventional) movies, but instead takes a turn, somewhat absurd in its almost brutally humane realism."

"Visually alone Matti Harju’s debut in feature-length fiction is a pleasure to watch for how it brings together still-life-like widescreen shots with some rather disfigured hood aesthetics, but the film also stands as a thought-provoking study of class within an entirely digitalised capitalist society." Roni Regnér (translated by Laura Nenonen)

Language: Finnish

Subtitles: English

Print source: Matti Harju

Cinematography: Matti Harju

Editing: Matti Harju

Music: Asko Lintunen

Sound: Petrus Rapo

Production design: Matti Harju

AA: Matti Harju's debut feature film Natura is not story-driven nor character-driven. There is a plot, but conventions and virtues of storytelling are ignored. Instead, our attention is focused on the surroundings in a way that has nothing to do with the story. 

As the title of the movie gives away, it is predominantly about nature - the indifferent nature around us, an experience of sounds and visions. The nature does not appear in natural colours but in denatured appearances, sometimes in views that are hard to make sense of.

Natura is an experimental film, and like most experimental films, a philosophical study: a study about perception, a meta-study about consciousness.

Two men, apparently marginalized, meet online, and plan a crypto robbery. The account of the action is oblique and elliptic. Some shots are interminable. On the other hand, vital information is withheld. The end montage is a mirror of the beginning.

Incidental details include metsäpaska (shitting in the forest), lakritsioksennus (liquorice vomit) and the birth trauma of being strangled by the umbilical cord. Men without women. Lost, isolated, marginalized. But the light of the sun is filtered through the foliage. And everything that rotates has a center.