H. K. Riikonen: Klinge (a book)

H. K. Riikonen: Klinge (FI 2024). The cover illustration: Edmond Dantès discovers the treasure of Abbé Faria in Alexander Dumas's Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, gravure by Gustave Staal, Jean-Adolphe Beaucé, Edmod Coppin, etc.

H. K. Riikonen, Klinge : Kirjoituksia tutkijan, tarkkailijan ja muistelijan 2000-luvun tuotannosta [Klinge : Writings on the Work of the Scholar, Observer and Memoirist in the 21th Century]. 362 pp. Illustrated. Soft cover. ISBN 978-952-215-912-0. Printed at: BoD - Books on Demand, Norderstedt, Germany. Helsinki: Ntamo, 2024. 

Matti Klinge (31 Aug 1936 - 5 March 2023) was a major Finnish historian and a towering figure on our country's intellectual sky over seven decades. He conducted solid research and indispensable work in key areas such as the University of Helsinki and the history of Helsinki. He made original contributions to our understanding of Finland's destiny with Sweden and Russia. He was an expert of the history of the Baltic Sea and ventured to imaginative historical speculations in Muinaisuutemme merivallat [The Sea Empires of our Ancient Past]. He was the editor-in-chief of the magnificent Finnish National Bibliography. He was a major representative of the French essay style in Finnish culture. He wrote a series of memoirs in six volumes and published 23 volumes of diaries from the last decades of his life, "in search of lost time" in honour to Marcel Proust. They are an invaluable contribution to Finland's intellectual history.

H. K. Riikonen's book is unique and original. It consists almost exclusively of Riikonen's previously published reviews of Klinge's books in this century, but because complete sets of Klinge's memoirs and diaries belong to this period, Riikonen's work grows into a comprehensive biography and meta-biography. Despite such genesis it is an organic whole and a page-turner.

"To think is to think otherwise" was Klinge's motto, and there is hardly a page in his works that leaves me indifferent. They are always stimulating and often irritating. Let's register one of his most sympathetic features: he loved to teach and was committed to his students, also as the perfect guide on cultural visits to cities of Europe such as Paris. He understood the mission of the university not only as a site of research and teaching but a birthplace of warm lifelong friendships and networks for new generations.

Since the end of WWII in the 1940s Finnish culture has been predominantly marked by Americanism. Klinge was a refreshing dissident, always defending our Nordic, European and Classical roots. He was a Latinist and a Francophile but most of all a Continental Europhile.

His most eccentric feature was a narrow power-admiring Russophilia, an indifference towards Vladimir Putin's neo-imperialism and threat to Ukraine and the Baltic States. Equally incomprehensible was Klinge's irrational antisemitism which fatally marred his record as a public intellectual.

A keyword in Klinge's public persona is indolence, not in the meaning of laziness but in the special meaning of cool detachment. In great public catastrophes he was not swept with shock, but he empathized with the suffering of children, especially war orphans. 

Klinge's cultural interests were wide, and he was even interested in the cinema. He loved Jacques Tati and David Suchet as Hercule Poirot. Klinge was an excellent writer, always great to read. Many found him insufferably arrogant, but I registered his sense of humour and self-irony. He named his last book after an aphorism by Lichtenberg: "Ein Messer ohne Klinge, an welchem der Stiel fehlt" ["A knife without a blade and with a handle missing"].

Riikonen's book has been illustrated by vintage gravures from 1852 for Klinge's favourite book, Alexandre Dumas's Le Comte de Monte-Cristo by Gustave Staal, Jean-Adolphe Beaucé, Edmond Coppin, etc.

I often saw him walking on Tehtaankatu with his wife, always the perfect gentleman, impeccably dressed and with a cheery, brisk carriage. I had been reading his work since the 1970s, starting from his popular pocket books Vihan veljistä valtiososialismiin [From the Brothers of Hate to State Socialism, 1972] and Bernadotten ja Leninin välissä [Between Bernadotte and Lenin, 1975], but I only had one conversation with him, at the short-lived Fazer Kapteeninpuistikko Bakery on Tehtaankatu. Klinge was lamenting the downfall of public speech in America. I offered that Barack Obama's speeches are worthy of the classics of Antiquity. He said nothing but clearly found the idea preposterous.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: THE PUBLICITY BLURB OF NTAMO:

Emilia Pérez (American premiere in the presence of Jacques Audiard)

Jacques Audiard: Emilia Pérez (FR 2024).

Viewed at Werner Herzog Theatre, Telluride Film Festival (TFF) 1 Sep 2024.

In person: Jacques Audiard, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldaña, Adriana Paz.

Larry Gross (TFF 2024): "Rita (Zoe Saldaña), a lawyer with career frustrations, has a fantastically cinematic way of expressing herself: a minute into Jacques Audiard’s film, she explodes eloquently into song. When the entire courtroom starts singing and dancing with her, you know you’re watching something entirely new. Audiard, who wrote the screenplay, initially imagined EMILIA PÉREZ as an opera and everything about it is oversized in the most vital way imaginable. As the film begins, Manitas del Monte is a terrifying drug cartel honcho who offers Rita a fortune if she’ll find the surgeon who’ll help him with a delicate procedure. Jessi (Selena Gomez) is Manitas’ abandoned young wife; Epifania (Adriana Paz), a victim of drug cartel violence, is Emilia’s new love; and Karla Sofía Gascón makes an unforgettable impression. The actresses shared the best actress award at Cannes, and Audiard regular Édgar Ramírez also appears in a small but important role." –Larry Gross (France, 2024, 132 min)

AA: Jacques Audiard's Emilia Pérez is big and bold and transgressive - also transcending the director's own boundaries. The protagonist experiences a sex change. It's in Spanish. It's an opera. It is perfectly ok for an opera film to be operatic. But loud voices, strong colours and shock value can turn tiresome. Audiard demonstrates convincingly that he can do something completely different, but an irresistible inner drive is missing.

No Other Land (US premiere in the presence of Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham)

 

Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor: No Other Land (Palestine/NO 2024). In the photo: Basel Adra puts his life in danger documenting feral settler violence, all recorded by Rachel Szor.

Viewed at Le Pierre, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 1 Sep 2024

In person: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham

Mark Danner (TFF 2024): "Since last October, as all eyes have focused on the ongoing carnage in Gaza, the quiet war in the West Bank has continued. This is a war intended to push Palestinians off their land. Home demolitions, settler attacks, arrests: since October 2023, more than 600 Palestinians have died in violence in the West Bank. NO OTHER LAND intimately records this quiet war. A young Palestinian filmmaker, Basel Adra, and a young Israeli reporter, Yuval Abraham, along with codirectors Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor, captured the story of the villages of Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank, as the Israeli army exerts growing pressure to push the Palestinians from their land. We see homes demolished—one family moves its tiny heap of belongings into a nearby cave—a young Palestinian shot and paralyzed. The filmmakers have crafted a matchless, intimate portrait of the day-in, day-out cruelty of a military occupation that has lasted more than half a century." –Mark Danner (Palestine-Norway, 2024, 95 min)

Premise from Wikipedia: "A young Palestinian activist named Basel Adra has been resisting the forced displacement of his people by Israel's military in Masafer Yatta, a region in the West Bank, since he was a child. He records the gradual destruction of his homeland, where Israeli soldiers are tearing down homes and evicting their inhabitants. He befriends Yuval, an Israeli journalist who helps him in his struggle. They form an unexpected bond, but their friendship is challenged by the huge gap between their living conditions: Basel faces constant oppression and violence, while Yuval enjoys freedom and security."

Yuval Abraham in Variety: "Basal’s family and neighbors had a huge archive of videos that were filmed over the course of 20 years. And then we as activists, we were there on the ground together, working together for almost five years, and we filmed a lot. We had Rachel, the cinematographer and co-director of the film, who was shooting us. So there was an abundance of footage. The military entered Basal’s home twice and confiscated computers and cameras. So we were always very, very stressed. It was complicated logistically and quite stressful, but in the end we managed."

AA: No Other Land is one of the greatest films of the year 2024.

This devastating account of war and occupation in Masafer Yatta in the West Bank is a collaboration between two Arab and two Jewish film-makers, the directors-screenwriters-editors Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor.

Although No Other Land has been filmed in almost impossible circumstances, under constant mortal threat from Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and brutal settler violence, the result is eloquent and convincing. The footage has been caught in hectic situations, in the heat of the moment, but the film is coherent and controlled.

The cellphone footage of the present is deftly linked with the historical video archive kept by Basal's family and neighbours over 20 years. The IDF and the murderous settlers threaten to destroy both the journalists and the family archive, but they fail. Instead, No Other Land and the footage from which it derives turn into evidence for international courts on war crimes, crimes against humanity and first degree murders of innocent demonstrators and other civilians.

The razing of a children's playground, the destruction of a school, the eviction of a family from land they have cultivated for 120 years, their turning into cave-dwellers, and a Bazinian plan-séquence of a settler killing an old unarmed farmer point blank belong to the unforgettable views.

No Other Land emerges also as a document of a Wile E. Coyote moment in the history of West Bank occupation violence. "With their strength they fail", states an old Arab farmer.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM WIKIPEDIA:

Saturday Night (2024) (world premiere in the presence of Jason Reitman)

 

Jason Reitman: Saturday Night (US 2024) with Emily Fairn (Laraine Newman), Kim Matula (Jane Curtin), Gabriel LaBelle (Lorne Michaels), Rachel Sennott (Rosie Shuster) and Matt Wood (John Belushi).

Centenary of Columbia Pictures.

50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live in 2025.

Made possible by a donation from Roger Durling.

Viewed at Palm, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 31 Aug 2024.

In person: Jason Reitman, Gil Kenan. Surprise guest: Bill Murray.

Larry Gross (TFF 2024): "It’s backstage at 30 Rockefeller Center, and the clock is ticking. Two young TV producers, Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) and Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), with the writers Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott) and Michael O’Donogue (Tommy Dewey), along with their unruly ensemble of twentysomething actors (including Andy Kaufman, John Belushi and Gilda Radner), are attempting something new: live sketch comedy, broadcast to the world. But there’s not enough time, too many vulnerable egos, a resistant old-school production team and a corporate overlord (embodied here by Willem Dafoe) that is at best indifferent to the show. Will their dream be crushed before it begins? Or will the show go on? Writer-director Jason Reitman (JUNO, UP IN THE AIR), co-writer Gil Kenan and the gifted cinematographer Eric Steelberg, who makes nearly every shot an elaborate Steadicam composition, have reconstructed a famous night in inventive, often poignant, often hilarious, dream-like fashion." –Larry Gross (U.S., 2024, 104 min)

AA: Hosted by the festival director Julie Huntsinger, Jason Reitman received a hero's welcome. Reitman in turn introduced a surprise guest, Bill Murray, to standing ovation. 

Murray does not appear in "Saturday Night", nor did he participate in the premiere of the show - he become a SNL member a bit later in 1977-1980. Murray is in Telluride because of another movie, the dog story The Friend by Scott McGehee and David Siegel. 

There is an emotional connection because Murray appeared in several films directed by Jason's father Ivan Reitman (1946-2022). The Centenary of Columbia Pictures logo in the start is also meaningful because Columbia distributed films directed by Ivan Reitman and with Bill Murray, as well as other SNL-launched stars.

I have been a Jason Reitman fan since Thank You for Smoking and Juno, and Saturday Night is a labour of love for him. (The show was known in 1975 as "NBC's Saturday Night", and since 1977, "Saturday Night Live").

The film unfolds in real time in the 90 minutes before the first show. The production looks like a catastrophe. But there is calm in the eye of the storm - the producer-creator-showrunner Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle). He is unable to explain the concept of the show to anyone, but the vision is clear in his mind. The chaos seems so extreme to David Tebet,  NBC's vice president of talent (Willem Dafoe), that to the last minute he is ready to postpone the show and broadcast a Johnny Carson videotape instead.

There is a plot similarity with Fly Me to the Moon, where a representative of the Nixon administration (Woody Harrelson) prepares a soundstage simulation of the Apollo Moon landing in case the real operation fails.

Films are in dialogue with each other at festivals, and in Telluride, we see another live broadcast drama, September 5, about the 1972 Munich Olympics. The ABC Sports Division was in charge of the first global live telecast of the Olympics - disrupted by the massacre of the Israeli team by the Palestinian terrorist organization Black September assisted by West-German Neo-Nazis.

It takes a great cast to personify the fantastic team that revolutionized comedy - and Jason Reitman succeeds in recreating such an ensemble. When David Tenet is about to run his dread videotape, the whole team launches in a chorus of "I am Saturday" as in "I am Spartacus". The generation gap seems unbridgeable, and that is the most fundamental theme of the saga. "We are the first generation who grew up watching television" - and therefore there is a new metalevel in everything.

As Larry Gross states in his program note, the contribution of cinematographer Eric Steelberg is dizzying in his extended takes. And Jason Reitman's mise-en-scène is breathtaking in keeping score of the multiple storylines. It all adds up to great momentum.

The final indispensable contribution is the live perfomance of the band of Billy Preston (Jon Batiste). Like a magician, he brings unity to the chaos - reminding us of the Billy Preston impact in the Get Back / Let It Be project filmed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg and re-edited by Peter Jackson.

While I love the thrill of the Billy Preston element in the finale, I find the preceding hyper-energic score overdone - a precaution for what I call "the pandemic-phlegmatic syndrome" (when in a pandemic year's film all elements are perfect but an engrossing irresistible drive is missing)?