Kalle Kinnunen and Matti Rämö: Hymypoika. Dome Karukosken tie Lepsämästä Hollywoodiin (a book on the director Dome Karukoski)

Kalle Kinnunen and Matti Rämö: Hymypoika. Dome Karukosken tie Lepsämästä Hollywoodiin. [The Smiling Boy. The Way of Dome Karukoski from Lepsämä till Hollywood]. Helsinki: Otava, 2020. 352 p.

FEATURE FILMS DIRECTED BY DOME KARUKOSKI:
Beauty and the Bastard (Tyttö sinä olet tähti) (FI 2005)
The Home of Dark Butterflies (Tummien perhosten koti) (FI 2008)
Forbidden Fruit (Kielletty hedelmä) (FI 2009)
Lapland Odyssey (Napapiirin sankarit) (FI 2010)
Heart of a Lion (Leijonasydän) (FI 2013)
The Grump (Mielensäpahoittaja) (FI 2014)
Tom of Finland (FI 2017)
Tolkien (US 2019)

The title of the book is a reference to a tradition in Finnish schools since 1954. The Smiling Boy and the Smiling Girl busts are awards for fair and friendly behaviour in the school community.

The title is poignant and meaningful in many ways because Dome Karukoski was the victim of brutal school bullying for many years. He transcended this and became well-known for his sunny disposition and sportsmanship. The English idiom "a good sport" might come close to "hymypoika".

The brutal school years have been frankly discussed over the years by Dome Karukoski himself, who has become a champion in fighting school bullying. We know that it can injure and scar a person permanently. Teachers and school psychologists do nothing. They look the other way and perhaps perform some cosmetic action, and nothing changes. Usually the victim must move to another school, just like Dome Karukoski had to do.

The biography written by Kalle Kinnunen and Matti Rämö, two of the most experienced film journalists in Finland, is surprisingly candid in discussing this and other adversities that Karukoski has faced. The book is a tale of the spirit. A spirit that is indomitable. The word in Finnish is sisu, which means perseverance, grit, nerve, cojones, never giving up, going against all odds.

The book is a jungle adventure in the tough world of film production. Dome Karukoski got a flying start with his first six Finnish films which were all good, popular and well received by critics. More than that, Karukoski has launched careers of beloved actors who have become mainstays. Films directed by him have spawned sequels. Karukoski is equally at home in comedy and tragedy, and he knows that the best comedy is founded in tragedy.

The going gets tougher in international co-production. Ingmar Bergman warned Jörn Donner: "never make a film with more than one financer". Directors like Jim Jarmusch, Pedro Almodóvar and Aki Kaurismäki have solved this by establishing production companies of their own.

With co-production or as a part of a huge commercial juggernaut a dispiriting and soul-wrenching process may start where bit by bit you lose the inspiration which made you want to do the film in the first place, and the end result may turn out to be bland, predictable and without personality. But of course with edge and a tough skin you can survive in conditions like this and bring about personal work. It's much more difficult than it used to be in the classical studio era of film production.

Kalle Kinnunen and Matti Rämö present a wealth of fascinating minutieae about the concrete processes of film production from modest Finnish home market circumstances to Hollywood size budgeting. It is a rewarding nonfiction book with an emphasis on the external and practical side of movie-making. (I find incomprehensible the occasional penchant for an art vs. commerce dichotomy. From day one, since 125 years this year, art and commerce have walked hand in hand in the cinema: Edison, Lumière, Méliès, Paul, Dickson, Pathé, Gaumont, Nordisk, Griffith... ).

Dome Karukoski has had an original spirit and a personal voice from the start. His is a spirit of generosity. He understands young people (Tyttö sinä olet tähti) and old-timers (The Grump: the curmudgeon of this tale is a Finnish equivalent to About Schmidt). He goes deep into the phenomenon of Neo-Fascism (Heart of a Lion) but also into the international gay liberation (Tom of Finland). Napapiirin sankarit is a poignant comedy about marginalization beyond the Polar Circle in Lapland. The director himself and the writers of this book do not seem to appreciate very much Forbidden Fruit which to me is special: a tender and unexpected growing-up tale in a severe religious community. I predict that its value keeps growing, as does the value Dome Karukoski's oeuvre in general.

Yuri Dud: vDud: Balagov – yemu 27, a on snova na Canneskom festivale / [Balagov – He's 27 and He's at the Cannes Film Festival Again] (YouTube)

Yuri Dud: vDud: Балагов – ему 27, а он снова на Каннском фестивале. YouTube 11 June 2019. Kantemir Balagov and Yuri Dud.

Балагов – ему 27, а он снова на Каннском фестивале
[Balagov – He's 27 and He's at the Cannes Film Festival Again].
    RU 2019. P: Yuri Dud, his vDud channel in YouTube at UCMCgOm8GZkHp8zJ6l7_hIuA
    D+SC: Yuri Dud. Camera: Sergei Lynkov, Danila Yakovlev, Yuri Burykin. нежный редактор: Tatyana Mingalimova. опорный редактор: Yevgeni Statsenko. новенький: Aleksandr Golovin. императорский монтаж: Dmitri Paryonin.
    Yuri Dud interviews: Kantemir Balagov, Vladimir Bitokov (young director colleague who also visited Sokurov's workshop), Aleksandr Rodnyansky (producer of Beanpole).
    76 min
    Geheimtip from a trusted friend.
    Viewed at home in Helsinki with English subtitles on a television screen, 5 April 2020

Yuri Dud is a sports journalist who also runs the popular YouTube channel vDud. He interviews prominent Russian and CIS region figures and has more than 6 million subscribers.

Kantemir Balagov has been winning awards in Cannes for his first feature films Closeness (Теснота, 2017) and Beanpole (Дылда, 2019).

Coincidentally, having seen yesterday the Leo Tolstoy film adaptation The Cossacks (1961), set in Chechenia, I now view Yuri Dud's YouTube programme which starts in the neighbouring Kabardino-Balkarian Republic in the North Caucasus.

We find ourselves in its capital, Nalchik, the home town of the film director Kantemir Balagov. We get acquainted with its Potemkin facades and reminiscine on three movie theaters which carry heroic Soviet era names. A ghostly image of Stalin appears on a wall. Georgia is to the south from here, on the other side of the Caucasus.

As Yuri Dud and Kantemir Balagov wander around the discussion moves from self-censorship ("Russian cinema is afraid of its own shadow") to a lost sense of good neighbourhoodness, tattoos and clothes as statements ("green and ochre: the rust of life"), the key influence of Alexander Sokurov's workshop in Nalchik in 2010 and the moral inspiration of Svetlana Alexievich. Men are more deeply stuck in tradition while women have more freedom and strength of character. "I have deleted my Twitter and Instagram accounts to avoid distraction". Time is the greater auditor of a film's merit, not awards. When would you say that you have justified it all? "When Alexander Nikolayevich Sokurov says I made a good, worthwhile film".

Balagov's favourite Russian films: The Cranes Are Flying, My Friend Ivan Lapshin and Flights in Dreams and in Reality (Полёты во сне и наяву, Roman Balayan, SU 1983). Favourite actors: Andrei Mironov, Oleg Yankovsky, Daniel Day-Lewis.

"Only a close person can really hurt you" (Kantemir Balagov on Closeness).

Kazaki / The Cossacks (1961)

Kazaki / The Cossacks (1961). Maryana (Zinaida Kirienko). From: Internet Movie Database.

Kazaki / The Cossacks (1961): Maryana (Zinaida Kirienko) and Olenin (Leonid Gubanov). Poster art and design: Mikhail Nakhmanovich Khazanovski; ОАО «Рекламфильм» (издательство, выпустившее киноплакат). http://cinema.mosfilm.ru/films/film/1960-1969/kazaki/. From: Russian Wikipedia.

Казаки.
    SU 1961. PC: Mosfilm. P: Aleksandr Ashkinazi.
    D: Vasili Pronin. SC: Viktor Shklovski – based on the long story (povest) (1863) by Leo Tolstoy. Cin: Igor Gelein, Valentin Zakharov – Sovcolor. PD: Mikhail Bogdanov, Gennady Myasnikov. Cost: Mikhail Chikovani. Makeup: N. Antonova, B. Vikentyev. M: Gavriil Popov. Orchestra: Orkestr upravleniya po proizvodstvu filmov. Conductor: Veronika Dudarova. S: Evgeniya Indlina. ED: Yelena Kamagorova.
    C: Leonid Gubanov (Dmitri Olenin), Zinaida Kirienko (Maryana), Boris Andreyev (Eroshka), Eduard Bredun (Lukashka), Boris Novikov (Nazarka), German Kachin (Vanyusha), Vera Yeniutina (Maryana's mother).
    Shot at the studio of Mosfilm.
    2660 m / 97 min.
    Festival premiere: May 1961, Cannes Film Festival – Palme d'Or.
    Soviet premiere: 16 Aug 1961.
    Not released in Finland.
    Free online access: Online-kinoteatr Mosfilma / YouTube.
    Viewed at home with English subtitles on a television screen, 4 April 2020.

Leo Tolstoy wrote The Cossacks in 1863 as a kind of a sequel to his trilogy of youth, Childhood, Boyhood and Youth, soon after getting married, to clear his gambling debts. The Bildungsroman of Olenin, a young nobleman, proceeds in the spirit of Rousseau. Olenin enters Caucasus as a cadet (junker) to fight among its wild peoples in the Caucasian War. The Cossacks is a war story without hate or racism.

Agonizing at the emptiness of his life Olenin suffers from an identity crisis. He starts to wear Cossack dress and falls in love with Maryanka although she has already been promised to his friend Lukashka. He fails in bonding with the peoples of the mountains, and Maryanka turns him down. The foreign peoples remain foreign, but their freedom fight is discussed with respect and dignity.

The young man's inner crisis, "a philosophical adolescence" and the problem of consciousness had already been discussed by Tolstoy in his trilogy so incisively that the philosopher G. H. von Wright has seen in it "in a way a philosophical achievement".

During a hunting trip in the forest Olenin gets lost – and finds himself. He finds a path out of his identity crisis. He has an epiphany and finds an insight into the secret of happiness. Until now he has been gazing inside. Now there is a reversal to the world outside: "Happiness lies in living for others".

This is a profoundly Tolstoyan moment, his first turning-point of such magnitude, decisive in Tolstoy's oeuvre as a writer and also in his own life, first as the father of a large family, and later as a prophet of mankind for whom everybody is equal in value and dignity regardless of wealth, status, class, nationality, education or race.

The film adaptation of The Cossacks (1961) is a rare case of a major Soviet film (a Palme d'Or winner in Cannes) of its period that has never been screened in Finland. I became intrigued having read Valérie Pozner's discussion in the book Tolstoï et le cinéma (2005), and happily it's available in Mosfilm's Online Cinema in YouTube.

The screenwriter of not only this but also a previous film adaptation, The Cossacks (1928), was Viktor Shklovsky, a major Tolstoy expert. Paradoxically, he was also well-known for his conviction that a successful film adaptation of a work of literature is impossible because of the incompatibility of the verbal and the visual.

According to Pozner, both times Shklovsky's screenplay was fundamentally changed in the production process. In the 1928 adaptation the anticolonialistic, anti-imperialistic angle was so heavily emphasized that Olenin's coming of age story turned to its opposite, a tale of corruption. On the plus side, produced by Georgian-Film, the film was shot on location.

In the 1961 version topical new emphases of the party line were observed: the fight for peace and the condemnation of an offensive war. There was a problem of how to discuss an internal war. The doctrine of the brotherhood of peoples made it necessary to tone down the conflicts between Checkens and Cossacks. They are seen as deeply familiar, their disagreements of a provisional nature – a horse theft. Chechens checked the screenplay and their remarks were observed.

Ingushetia had voluntarily joined Imperial Russia in 1810, and in 1859 Chechnya was annexed to Russia during the Caucasian War. In the USSR the Checheno-Ingush autonomous republic was disbanded by Stalin in 1944 after accusations of collaboration with invaders and separatism. The republic had been restored in 1957 by Khrushchev.

The plan had been to shoot The Cossacks on location in the Checheno-Ingush republic in the summer of 1960. A Cossack village had been designed in the neighbourhood of Stavropol but there was no view of the Caucasian mountain tops from there. The planned location was changed to Grozny, but the bureaucracy of licenses took too long. The production was delayed, the original producer became incapable, and the production was executed at the Mosfilm studios instead of on location.

A mediocre director took the helm instead of Boris Barnet who had been the original choice. Vasili Pronin had been an excellent cinematographer in the 1930s but he never seems to have directed an outstanding film. Leonid Gubanov is a decent Olenin: his presence is convincing. But particularly great is Zinaida Kirienko (Quiet Flows the Don, A Poem of the Sea, The Fate of a Man, The Story of the Flaming Years, The Enchanted Desna) in the female leading role as Maryanka. Her proud demeanour is right for the part.

It could have become an engrossing film, but a major directorial voice, somebody like Mark Donskoy, Mikhail Kalatozov or, why not, Sergei Bondarchuk, would have been needed to lift the film from mediocrity. The scene of Tolstoyan epiphany during the hunting trip is included, but it lacks build-up and a devastating conviction.

The force of the revelation should have been of the caliber of Rainer Maria Rilke in "The Archaic Torso of Apollo": you must change your life.

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS FROM THE MOSFILM WEBSITE
О фильме:
По одноименной повести Л. Н.Толстого. Несмотря на юные годы, богатый московский барин Дмитрий Оленин уже успел наделать немало ошибок, разочаровался в жизни и решил уехать юнкером на Кавказ. Прибыв к месту службы в казачью станицу, Оленин начинает жадно впитывать новые впечатления. Он покорен величественной кавказской природой, его привлекают цельные, сильные характеры казаков, их вольная жизнь. В фильме показан мучительный поиск нравственного идеала через попытку приобщения к простой жизни народа, к природе.
https://cinema.mosfilm.ru/films/34740/

Rainer Maria Rilke: Archaïscher Torso Apollos / Archaic Torso of Apollo (a poem, 1908)

Dugald Stewart Walker: title-page illustration in Rainer Maria Rilke: Poems (1918). Processed with IrfanView, gray-scaled; contrast heightened by 50; gamma correction of 2.5. Source: archive.org. From: Wikisource.

The poem collection is dedicated to Rodin. Rilke had been Rodin's secretary and biographer. French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) in his Paris studio in 1905. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952). This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division. Photo, caption and data: Wikipedia.

A possible inspiration for Rilke. Unknown: Male torso. Statue. Between 480 and 470 BC. Parian marble. 132 cm. Louvre Museum. Antiquités grecques, room 3: Epoque du style sévère, 480 - 450 avant J.-C.. Denon, Entresol. Accession number Ma 2792. Object history: 1873: discovered by Olivier Rayet and Albert Thomas (Miletus). 1873: given to Louvre Museum by Salomon and Gustave de Rothschild. References: Musée du Louvre, Atlas database: entry 5482. Authority control: wikidata: Q20018546: Q20018546. Atlas: 5482. Data and photo: Wikipedia.

Wir kannten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt,
darin die Augenäpfel reiften. Aber
sein Torso glüht noch wie ein Kandelaber,
in dem sein Schauen, nur zurückgeschraubt,

sich hält und glänzt. Sonst könnte nicht der Bug
der Brust dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen
der Lenden könnte nicht ein Lächeln gehen
zu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug.

Sonst stünde dieser Stein entstellt und kurz
unter der Schultern durchsichtigem Sturz
und flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle;

und bräche nicht aus allen seinen Rändern
aus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle,
die dich nicht sieht. Du mußt dein Leben ändern.

Rainer Maria Rilke: Der neuen Gedichte: Anderer Teil. À mon grand ami Auguste Rodin. Leipzig, im Insel-Verlag, 1908.

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

From Ahead of All Parting: Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell and published by Modern Library. © 1995 by Stephen Mitchell.

Reading Tolstoy, reading about Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy tells a story to his grandchildren Sonya and Ilya in 1909 in Kryokshino, Moscow province. According to Tatiana Tolstoy (Anni con mio padre, Garzanti, 1978) the story is about a boy who enters a garden and eats cucumbers, each one bigger and bigger. Photo: Vladimir Chertkov. From: Толстой Лев Николаевич. Собрание сочинений / Электронное издание. - ИДДК, 2001. Photo and data from Wikipedia.

Leo Tolstoy tells a story to his grandchildren Sonya and Ilya in 1909 in Kryokshino, Moscow province. According to Tatiana Tolstoy (Anni con mio padre, Garzanti, 1978) the story is about a boy who enters a garden and eats cucumbers, each one bigger and bigger. Photo: Vladimir Chertkov. From: http://jecoutemaconscience.one-voice.fr/leon-tolstoi-precurseur-de-la-non-violence [extinct]. Photo and data from Wikipedia.

During the corona lockdown I have been reading Leo Tolstoy, also works that I did not know before. It's all free online in many languages. I think Tolstoy would have embraced the Internet.

Leo Tolstoy (1892): Luonnosta ja elämästä. Satuja ja kertomuksia lapsille [About Nature and Life. Fairy-Tales and Stories for Children]. Porvoo: WSOY 1892. A selection from Tolstoy's Russkaya kniga dlya cheniya collections (1875). – Web: Projekti Lönnrot n:o 951 http://www.lonnrot.net/etext.html#Tols
    Leo Tolstoy (2008): Kuinka hanhi jaetaan. Satua ja totta [How To Share a Duck. Fairy-Tales and True Stories]. Ed. and Finnish trans. Martti Anhava. Helsinki: Otava. A selection from Tolstoy's Russkaya kniga dlya cheniya collections (1875).
    A special talent of Tolstoy's was his ability to write for children – both original stories and adapted ones. He wrote fiction and non-fiction with equal flair. In his novels animals and trees are almost characters in their own right: Vronsky's mare Frou-Frou in Anna Karenina, the ancient oak at Bald Hills on the Bolkonsky country estate in War and Peace. In the stories for children his fauna expands from elephants to silkworms and his flora opens to an entire series about trees, among others. He even widens his field to the non-organic in stories about dew, fog, wind and magnetism. The suite of eight stories about his hunting dogs Burka and Milton has also been published as a separate volume.

"God Sees the Truth, But Waits" ("Бог правду видит, да не скоро скажет", 1872). Stephen King's novella "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" (1982) was inspired by this Tolstoy tale about an innocent man framed for murder and sentenced to hard labour in Siberia. Online: Project Gutenberg. The Literature Network.
"The Prisoner in the Caucasus" ("Кавказский пленник", 1872). One of the most beloved stories written by Tolstoy for his ABC book, still a perennial favourite for schoolchildren. One of Tolstoy's memories from his service in the Caucasian War, distinguished by a sense of mutual respect between Chechens and Russians.
"What Men Live By" ("Чем люди живы", 1881). A haunting mystery play written as a short story. I find in it an affinity with the saga of Philemon and Baucis (Ovid's Metamorphoses, VIII). A film adaptation: Wilhelm Dieterle's first film as a director, Der Mensch am Wege (1923) with himself as Archangel Michael.
"Where Love Is, God Is" ("Где любовь, там и бог", 1885). A reworking of Ruben Sailers's Vater Martin, the story of a cobbler who loses everything and discovers everything. The story had come to Tolstoy's knowledge without a credited source, and he apologized for the recycling when he found out about the author. He made the story his own anyway.
What Then We Must Do? / What To Do? / What Is To Be Done? (Так что же нам делать?, 1886). A full-length pamphlet, a classic exposé on urban poverty in Moscow, and a key document of Tolstoy's awakening to the social reality in Imperial Russia. The Aylmer Maude translation is available online. In Finnish: Mitä meidän siis on tekeminen?, translated by K. W. Järnefelt, Helsinki: Otava, 1908. There are several editions in Project Gutenberg.
"How Much Land Does a Man Need?" ("Много ли человеку земли нужно", 1886). For James Joyce "the greatest story that the literature of the world knows" and a favourite of Ludwig Wittgenstein's. Stefan Zweig compared it with the stories of the Old Testament. A classic story about greed. How much land does a man need? Six feet above his head. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg filmed it as Scarabea. The title of the story has become a winged word, ἔπεα πτερόεντα.
"Croesus and Fate" ("Крез и судьба", 1886). Tolstoy retelling of the opening of Herodotus' Histories: the tale of Croesus, Solon and Cyrus.
"Kholstomer" ("Холстомер", 1888). Told largely in flashback, much of it a first-person narrative of a horse made into a gelding, his story compared with that of a land-owner who is being weighed and found wanting. I am reminded of Robert Bresson's Balthazar.
"Walk in the Light While There is Light" ("Ходите в свете, пока есть свет", 1893). A tale of the Early Christians in the Roman Empire from the period of the Christian persecutions after Nero, the tale of Julius torn between the Roman and the Christian ways. Much of it is an intelligent dialogue for an against Christianity. Could this tale have influenced Henryk Sienkiewicz's Quo vadis (1895–1896)? King James: John 12:35 "Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth." Johannes 12:35 Jeesus sanoi heille: »Vielä hetken aikaa valo on teidän keskellänne. Kulkekaa niin kauan kuin teillä on valo, ettei pimeys saisi teitä valtaansa. Joka kulkee pimeässä, ei tiedä, minne on menossa. 36 Niin kauan kuin teillä on valo, uskokaa valoon, jotta teistä tulisi valon lapsia.»
"Divine and Human, Or, Three More Deaths" ("Божеское и человеческое", 1906). A sequel, written decades after the original story "Three Deaths", now focuses on political and religious persecution in Russia. This story inspired Paolo and Vittorio Taviani in their modern adaptation San Michele aveva un gallo (1973). In Finnish in the collection Jumalallista ja inhimillistä eli vielä kolme kuolemaa (in Finnish by K. Suomalainen, Porvoo : WSOY, 1907).
"I Can't Be Silent!" ("Не могу молчать!", 1908). One of Tolstoy's most famous declarations: against the capital punishment inflicted on rebellious peasants in mass hangings (thousands were executed). In the final paragraph he also condemns the Russian Empire's actions against Finns.

Leo Tolstoy (1928–1958): Polnoye sobraniye sochinenii L. N. Tolstogo v 90 tomah [The Complete Works of L. N. Tolstoy in 90 Volumes]. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoye izdatelstvo ”Hudozhestvennaya literatura”, 1928–1958. Web: http://tolstoy.ru/creativity/90-volume-collection-of-the-works/ – I cannot read Russian, but this resource is a goldmine, and one can get an overview of the scope of Tolstoy's interests and achievements. In the hosting Tolstoy.ru homepage there are also photographs, paintings and films.

Aylmer Maude (1908): The Life of Tolstoy. First Fifty Years. London: Archibald Constable and Co., Ltd.
    Aylmer Maude (1910): The Life of Tolstoy. Later Years. London: Constable and Company Limited.
    A. N. Wilson (1988) : Tolstoy : A Biography. London: Hamish Hamilton.
    The Aylmer Maude biography, totalling over a thousand pages, is an invaluable first hand source written by Tolstoy's friend, translator and publisher. It was published during Tolstoy's lifetime: the preface of the second volume is signed in August 1910, and Tolstoy died in November 1910. It is an authorized work fact-checked by Countess Sophia Andreyevna Tolstaya. Maude gives a honest and critical acccount of Tolstoyanism. A. N. Wilson's book is a good overview. On second reading, he seems slightly condescending. I think both Maude and Wilson have a good instinct about the truth about the Tolstoy family. It's all true, life is complex, we can never know everything, and it is none of our business.

Valérie Pozner (2005), ed.: Tolstoï et le cinéma. Cahiers Léon Tolstoï 16. Paris: Institut d’Études Slaves.
    Anna Kovalova (2018): ”Anna Karenina (1914) : Reconstructing and Interpreting a Lost Russian Film". Film History, Volume 30.2, pp. 35–78.
    The book edited by Valérie Pozner gives a wonderful Tolstoy filmography and a set of in-depth excursions, rewardingly on the two Soviet film adaptations of The Cossacks by Pozner herself. Anna Kovalova performs a miraculous job of conjuring a virtual reconstruction of the lost first feature length film adaptation of Anna Karenina of which only fragments remain.

Georg Henrik von Wright (1955): Tanke och förkunnelse [Thought and Sermon]. Helsingfors: Söderström. Includes four essays on Tolstoy, first published in Nya Argus 1952–1954, in Finnish Jussi Aro in Ajatus ja julistus, Porvoo – Helsinki: WSOY, 1961. Republished in Tieto ja ymmärrys, Helsinki: Otava, 1999.
    Harold Bloom (1994): The Western Canon. New York: Harcourt Brace. 14. Chapter ”Tolstoy and Heroism”.
    G. H. von Wright's essays on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky have a classical status in Swedish and Finnish. He brings his full philosophical weight into them. Wright does not seem to have understood what Tolstoy means when he says that all men are created equal. Harold Bloom's stunning essay on Hadji Murat builds on Viktor Shklovsky's insight in defamiliarization (остранение): "This technique of strangeness, combined with Tolstoy's tonality, results in the reader's happy conviction that Tolstoy enables him to see everything as if for the first time, while also giving him the sense that he has seen everything already. To be both estranged and at home seems unlikely, but that is Tolstoy's all but unique atmosphere." Then Bloom remarks that being at once uncanny and natural is a feature in all of the highest fictions. In them those antithetical attributes are fused.

Bob Dylan: "Murder Most Foul" (official audio, released on YouTube 27 March 2020)

Bob Dylan: "Murder Most Foul". 17 minutes. Released on Friday, 27 March 2020, past midnight on Bob Dylan's YouTube channel and social media. Also available via Sony on major music streaming platforms.

"Greetings to my fans and followers with gratitude for all your support and loyalty across the years. This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting. Stay safe, stay observant and may God be with you." - Bob Dylan [27 March 2020]

Yesterday Bob Dylan released a new song, "Murder Most Foul", a stream of consciousness recitative, a lament of the assassination of President Kennedy and its soul-killing reverberations, at 17 minutes the contemporary Bard's longest song.

Nearly every verse contains a reference or is a direct quotation. Many verses consist of names of artists and their works. Based on recycling, there is an affinity with the Dadaist découpé / cut-up method. In the cinema, we may be reminded of the art of poetic compilations, such as late Godard since Histoire(s) du cinéma.

During the Corona pandemic, we need storytellers no less than in the times of Boccaccio's Decamerone when survivors kept up morale during the Black Death. Via the Internet, Bob Dylan speaks to the world.

Starting to unravel the puzzle of associations, here are two for the starters.

The title "Murder Most Foul" is from Hamlet. The ghost of Hamlet's father reflects upon his own death:

Murder most foul as in the best it is
But this most foul, strange and unnatural.

"It is what it is": I don't know where this comes from, but it is a key sentence in Martin Scorsese's The Irishman, a reference to death, and in the context, contract killing. Although nobody states it directly in the movie, we are left with the suspicion that organized crime was behind the JFK assassination, the mob being disappointed with the President's failure to oust Castro.

PS. 31 March 2020. The profusion of allusions evokes T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land (1922) to Mark Beaumont (NME New Musical Express, 29 March 2020).

Collected commentary on the Expecting Rain site:
https://www.expectingrain.com/

I copy the lyrics from Genius.com:

VERSE 1

It was a dark day in Dallas, November '63
A day that will live on in infamy
President Kennedy was a-ridin' high
Good day to be livin' and a good day to die
Being led to the slaughter like a sacrificial lamb
He said, "Wait a minute, boys, you know who I am?"
"Of course we do, we know who you are!"
Then they blew off his head while he was still in the car
Shot down like a dog in broad daylight
Was a matter of timing and the timing was right
You got unpaid debts, we've come to collect
We're gonna kill you with hatred, without any respect
We'll mock you and shock you and we'll put it in your face
We've already got someone here to take your place
The day they blew out the brains of the king
Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing
It happened so quickly, so quick, by surprise
Right there in front of everyone's eyes
Greatest magic trick ever under the sun
Perfectly executed, skillfully done
Wolfman, oh wolfman, oh wolfman howl
Rub-a-dub-dub, it's a murder most foul

VERSE 2

Hush, little children, you'll understand
The Beatles are comin', they're gonna hold your hand
Slide down the banister, go get your coat
Ferry 'cross the Mersey and go for the throat
There's three bums comin' all dressed in rags
Pick up the pieces and lower the flags
I'm goin' to Woodstock, it's the Aquarian Age
Then I'll go to Altamont and sit near the stage
Put your head out the window, let the good times roll
There's a party going on behind the Grassy Knoll
Stack up the bricks, pour the cement
Don't say Dallas don't love you, Mr. President
Put your foot in the tank and then step on the gas
Try to make it to the triple underpass
Blackface singer, whiteface clown
Better not show your faces after the sun goes down
Up in the red light district, they've got cop on the beat
Living in a nightmare on Elm Street
When you're down on Deep Ellum, put your money in your shoe
Don't ask what your country can do for you
Cash on the ballot, money to burn
Dealey Plaza, make a left-hand turn
I'm going down to the crossroads, gonna flag a ride
The place where faith, hope, and charity lie
Shoot him while he runs, boy, shoot him while you can
See if you can shoot the invisible man
Goodbye, Charlie! Goodbye, Uncle Sam!
Frankly, Miss Scarlett, I don't give a damn
What is the truth, and where did it go?
Ask Oswald and Ruby, they oughta know
"Shut your mouth," said a wise old owl
Business is business, and it's a murder most foul

VERSE 3

Tommy, can you hear me? I'm the Acid Queen
I'm riding in a long, black Lincoln limousine
Ridin' in the backseat next to my wife
Headed straight on in to the afterlife
I'm leaning to the left, I got my head in her lap
Hold on, I've been led into some kind of a trap
Where we ask no quarter, and no quarter do we give
We're right down the street, from the street where you live
They mutilated his body and they took out his brain
What more could they do? They piled on the pain
But his soul was not there where it was supposed to be at
For the last fifty years they've been searchin' for that
Freedom, oh freedom, freedom over me
I hate to tell you, mister, but only dead men are free
Send me some lovin', then tell me no lie
Throw the gun in the gutter and walk on by
Wake up, little Susie, let's go for a drive
Cross the Trinity River, let's keep hope alive
Turn the radio on, don't touch the dials
Parkland hospital, only six more miles
You got me dizzy, Miss Lizzy, you filled me with lead
That magic bullet of yours has gone to my head
I'm just a patsy like Patsy Cline
Never shot anyone from in front or behind
I've blood in my eye, got blood in my ear
I'm never gonna make it to the new frontier
Zapruder's film I seen night before
Seen it thirty-three times, maybe more
It's vile and deceitful, it's cruel and it's mean
Ugliest thing that you ever have seen
They killed him once and they killed him twice
Killed him like a human sacrifice
The day that they killed him, someone said to me, "Son
The age of the Antichrist has just only begun"
Air Force One comin' in through the gate
Johnson sworn in at 2:38
Let me know when you decide to throw in the towel
It is what it is, and it's murder most foul

VERSE 4

What's new, pussycat? What'd I say?
I said the soul of a nation been torn away
And it's beginning to go into a slow decay
And that it's thirty-six hours past Judgment Day
Wolfman Jack, he's speaking in tongues
He's going on and on at the top of his lungs
Play me a song, Mr. Wolfman Jack
Play it for me in my long Cadillac
Play me that "Only the Good Die Young"
Take me to the place Tom Dooley was hung
Play "St. James Infirmary" and the Court of King James
If you want to remember, you better write down the names
Play Etta James, too, play "I'd Rather Go Blind"
Play it for the man with the telepathic mind
Play John Lee Hooker, play "Scratch My Back"
Play it for that strip club owner named Jack
Guitar Slim going down slow
Play it for me and for Marilyn Monroe

VERSE 5

Play "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"
Play it for the First Lady, she ain't feeling any good
Play Don Henley, play Glenn Frey
Take it to the limit and let it go by
Play it for Carl Wilson, too
Looking far, far away down Gower Avenue
Play tragedy, play "Twilight Time"
Take me back to Tulsa to the scene of the crime
Play another one and "Another One Bites the Dust"
Play "The Old Rugged Cross" and "In God We Trust"
Ride the pink horse down that long, lonesome road
Stand there and wait for his head to explode
Play "Mystery Train" for Mr. Mystery
The man who fell down dead like a rootless tree
Play it for the reverend, play it for the pastor
Play it for the dog that got no master
Play Oscar Peterson, play Stan Getz
Play "Blue Sky," play Dickey Betts
Play Art Pepper, Thelonious Monk
Charlie Parker and all that junk
All that junk and "All That Jazz"
Play something for the Birdman of Alcatraz
Play Buster Keaton, play Harold Lloyd
Play Bugsy Siegel, play Pretty Boy Floyd
Play the numbers, play the odds
Play "Cry Me A River" for the Lord of the gods
Play Number nine, play Number six
Play it for Lindsey and Stevie Nicks
Play Nat King Cole, play "Nature Boy"
Play "Down In The Boondocks" for Terry Malloy
Play "It Happened One Night" and "One Night of Sin"
There's twelve million souls that are listening in
Play "Merchant of Venice", play "Merchants of Death"
Play "Stella by Starlight" for Lady Macbeth
Don't worry, Mr. President, help's on the way
Your brothers are comin', there'll be hell to pay
Brothers? What brothers? What's this about hell?
Tell them, "We're waiting, keep coming," we'll get them as well
Love Field is where his plane touched down
But it never did get back up off the ground
Was a hard act to follow, second to none
They killed him on the altar of the rising sun
Play "Misty" for me and "That Old Devil Moon"
Play "Anything Goes" and "Memphis in June"
Play "Lonely At the Top" and "Lonely Are the Brave"
Play it for Houdini spinning around his grave
Play Jelly Roll Morton, play "Lucille"
Play "Deep In a Dream", and play "Driving Wheel"
Play "Moonlight Sonata" in F-sharp
And "A Key to the Highway" for the king on the harp
Play "Marching Through Georgia" and "Dumbarton's Drums"
Play darkness and death will come when it comes
Play "Love Me Or Leave Me" by the great Bud Powell
Play "The Blood-stained Banner", play "Murder Most Foul"

Lyrics copied from Genius.com.

Lucia Bosè morta di Coronavirus

Luis Buñuel: Cela s'appelle l'aurore (1956): Georges Marchal and Lucia Bosè.

Michelangelo Antonioni: Cronaca di un amore (1950), co-written by Francesco Maselli, starring Lucia Bosè.

Giuseppe De Santis: Non c'è pace tra gli ulivi (1950) starring Lucia Bosè.

Luciano Emmer: Le ragazze di Piazza di Spagna (1952): Lucia Bosè, Liliana Bonfatti and Cosetta Greco.

Juan Antonio Bardem: Muerte de un ciclista (1955) with Lucia Bosè.

Francesco Maselli: Gli sbandati (1955) with Lucia Bosè.

Discovered by Luchino Visconti while she was still a teenage saleslady at the Pasticcheria Galli in Milan in 1947, Lucia Bosè (1931–2020) soon emerged as a uniquely soulful presence in the cinema: in the militant branch of Neorealism (Non c'è pace tra gli ulivi and Roma ore 11 by Giuseppe De Santis), as the first and original incarnation of the alienation of the modern woman in the oeuvre of Michelangelo Antonioni (Cronaca di un amore and La signora senza camelie), in a sunnier variant of new Italian cinema (Luciano Emmer's Le ragazze di Piazza di Spagna) and in a key settling of accounts of the war years (Franceso Maselli's Gli sbandati). She branched out in the Spanish direction in an unforgettable leading role in Juan Antonio Bardem's Muerte de un ciclista and a noble militant part in Luis Buñuel's Cela s'appelle l'aurore. She moved to Spain and took a break in her career to raise her children, Miguel Bosè, Lucía Dominguín and Paolo Dominguín, with her husband, the bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín. Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway were friends of the family. Visconti was Miguel's godfather while Picasso was the godfather to Paolo. Lucia Bosè died at the General Hospital of Segovia on 23 March 2020 from pneumonia complicated by COVID-19 during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in Spain.

Watching Northern lights in Lapland

Northern lights, 19 March 2020, Äkäslompolo. Camera phone snapshot through the ski cottage window by Laila Alanen.

 Generic photo: Ylläs: tracking Northern lights, https://www.yllas.fi/ajankohtaista/revontulivinkit.html . Photo: Visit Finland.

Last night I saw for the first time in my life Northern lights (revontulet / aurora borealis / polarsken / Polarlicht / Полярное сияние / aurora polar / aurore polaire / aurora polare). It was a clear and starry night, and the village lights of Äkäslompolo were out. I was able to observe the spectacle for some fifteen minutes. It filled the sky and was constantly changing, sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly. Mostly it was colourless: just luminous light dancing in magnificent formations.

The cinemas of Finland closed on Tuesday, 17 March 2020, including Kino Kellokas at Ylläs. Because of the coronavirus pandemic there is the first state of emergency in Finland since WWII. But here we can view the most haunting and sublime spectacles of light – the ones that inspired ancient shamans of the Sami people.

PS. 31 March 2020: Last week, Gian Luca Farinelli sent a letter from Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna stating: "Dal 1895 è la prima volta che l’umanità non può godere dell’invenzione dei fratelli Lumière, del piacere di stare assieme, in una sala cinematografica, davanti a uno schermo. Non era mai accaduto, nemmeno negli anni tragici della guerra." (Gian Luca Farinelli: "La Cineteca 'resta a casa' ma non si ferma", circular e-mail 26 March 2020, 5:49 pm).

This year is the 125. jubileum year of the cinema. Never before have cinemas been closed worldwide, not even during wartime, as Farinelli was the first one to point out.

Der lebende Leichnam / Zhivoi trup / The Living Corpse

Живой труп / Elävä ruumis / Det levande liket / Le Cadavre vivant / Il cadavere vivante.
     DE / SU 1929. PC: Mezhrabpom-Film (Moscow) / Prometheus Film-Verleih und Vertrieb GmbH (Berlin) / Länderfilm (Berlin). P: Willi Münzenberg. P manager: Conny Carstennsen.
    D: Fedor Ozep. SC: Boris Gusman, Anatoli Marienhof – based on the play by Leo Tolstoy, written around 1900 and premiered posthumously in 1911 (Moscow Art Theatre) – also in Finland in 1911 (Tampereen Teatteri). Cin: Anatoli Golovnya, Phil Jutzi. AD: Sergei Kozlovski, Viktor Simov. M (for a cinema orchestra): Werner Schmidt-Boelcke (1929). ED: Fedor Ozep, Vsevolod Pudovkin. Ass D: Georg Friedland.
    C: Vsevolod Pudovkin (Fedya Protasov), Maria Jacobini (Liza = Yelizaveta Protasova), Viola Garden (Sasha, Liza's sister), Julia Serda (Anna Pavlovna), Nato Vachnadze (Masha, a gypsy), Gustav Diessl (Viktor Karenin), Vera Maretskaya (the "dame"), Daniil Vvedenski (Artemev, the good spirit), Vladimir Uralski (Petushkov), Boris Barnet (pickpocket / sailor in tavern), Mikhail Zharov, Carola Höhn, Sylvia Torf.
    2968 m.
    Berlin premiere: 14 Feb 1929.
    Russian premiere: 26 March 1929.
    Finnish premiere: 2 Sep 1929.
    1988 ZDF reconstruction: Gerd Luft and Frank Strobel based on a cue sheet conserved at the MoMA. Conductor: Kurt Graunke (1988). Orchestra: Orchester des WDR (Cologne) (1988). Pordenone GCM 1989: 120 min, in the presence of Georg Friedland and Martin Koerber (curator of the restoration), music in playback courtesy ZDF.
    2012 restoration, based on six different versions: Österreichisches Filmmuseum / Deutsche Kinematek, premiere: Berlinale 2012 (Die rote Traumfabrik), 121 min.
    A Russian RVision YouTube link of a 3sat telecast of the 1988 version with live orchestra performance inserts – viewed at a ski cottage, Äkäslompolo, 17 March 2020.

I saw for the first time Fedor Ozep's The Living Corpse, the famous film having somehow always eluded me until now. Together with The Yellow Ticket (1928, starring Anna Sten), it was Ozep's breakthrough into an international career. For Vsevolod Pudovkin as an actor, it was his only leading role in a film, and his sober and intensive performance carries it memorably. The Living Corpse was a highlight in the illustrious collaboration between the Russian Mezhrabpomfilm and the German Prometheus-Film. It was based on Leo Tolstoy's popular play which has been filmed dozens of times, but the two major film adaptations are this one and the 1969 Lenfilm production directed by Vladimir Vengerov and starring Aleksei Batalov.

Granted that the protagonist is a passive character getting slowly detached from life it is surprising that the subject has been so popular in films. There is an affinity in the play with Pirandello's The Late Mattia Pascal, who has been interpreted in films by Ivan Mosjoukine, Pierre Blanchar and Marcello Mastroianni. Another connection might be Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger in which Jack Nicholson plays a similar role. Here the ennui derives from the all-Russian tradition of the лишний человек – "the superfluous man".

Fedor Ozep and Vsevolod Pudovkin dare to be slow in sequences of contemplation and resignation. Pudovkin's acting is dignified as Fedya, as are the performances of the other members of the trio, Maria Jacobini as Liza and Gustav Diessl as Viktor. Likewise with Viola Garden as Liza's sister. Jarringly many of the other performances are in a grotesque register which might be a daring and interesting choice, but clearly Ozep is not at home in this mode.

Also the visual approach is based on two contrasting modes: a sober one for the human drama, and a Soviet montage school approach for quite a number of other occasions. The Blitz montage sequences feel like musical production numbers (not least the inevitable gypsy orchestra scenes) or special effects. They are elaborate and well made but feel like pastiches of Eisenstein and Pudovkin (and perhaps even Gance). Interestingly, Pudovkin himself is the co-editor, but an organic quality is missing. The montage in this film does not stem from the soul, from the heart, from the balls; it is meant for the show. The film feels like a calling card for Ozep in introducing him to an international career. In this he succeeded.

The cinematography by Anatoli Golovnya and Phil Jutzi is first rate, and the art intertitles with their expressionistic, exaggerated and elongated letters add to the polish – and the anguish.

Täydellinen joulu

FI 2019. PC: Bronson Club Oy. P: Jesse Fryckman. EX: Max Seeck.
    D: Taru Mäkelä. SC adaptation: Kris Gummerus – based on the film Tomten är far till alla barnen / Joulupukki vieraissa / In Bed with Santa (SE 1999, D: Kjell Sundvall, SC: Monica Rolfner) – original screenplay by Monica Rolfner, Eva Callenbo and Harald Hamrell. DP: Juice Huhtala. AD: Tiina Paavilainen. Cost: Sanja Kangas. Makeup: Anne Airaksinen. M: Joel Melasniemi. S: Jyrki Rahkonen. ED: Antti Tuomikoski.
    C: Elena Leeve (Outi), Antti Luusuaniemi (Janne), Mikko Leppilampi (Paavo), Maria Ylipää (Riitta), Aku Hirviniemi (Oskari), Lotta Lindroos (Eeva), Iikka Forss (Eki), Saara Kotkaniemi (Paula), Pirkko Mannola (Kyllikki), Pihla Maalismaa (Marika), Kari Ketonen (Matias), Krisse Salminen (Helena), Saimi Kahri (Janette), Eeti Salovuori (Riku), Annikki Hirviniemi (Liisa-Lotta), Sara Pehrsson (Johanna), Matilda Pirttikangas (Elina), Oscar Kalenius (Taneli), Wanda Dubiel (Karin), Leon Johannes Mingas (Junior), Alen Nsambu (Nelson).
    94 min.
    Premiere: 25 Oct 2019 – distributed by SF Studios.
    Vimeo link viewed for Jussi Awards, on a 4K tv screen at home, 11 March 2020.

Official introduction: "The new comedy Täydellinen joulu by the director of the successful Varasto (The Storage) movies is a tale of the all time extended family Christmas. It is a comedy about ex-partners, new partners, relationships, families, traditions and breaking traditions."

"A Christmas to remember awaits when the gentle powerhouse Outi (Elena Leeve) decides to celebrate by inviting all her three ex-husbands, their mutual children and the men's new companions with their new children. Although Outi's current husband Janne (Antti Luusuaniemi) rejects the plan outright, this year's Christmas table overflows with new, old and freshly exposed family knots".

"The schnapps drinks, the rosolli salads and other Christmas traditions are turned upside down when the guests set out to remember times shared with the lady of the evening. A high point is a speech given by Outi in which she declares that she is about to give Janne the greatest of gifts: she is pregnant. Janne's reaction is not exactly what one might have expected, and there is a further twist which needs to be processed with many others, even involving the Santa Claus next door." (Official introduction, my translation).

AA: The title Täydellinen joulu [The Perfect Christmas] is of course ironic. On display is a human catastrophe.

Taru Mäkelä is an experienced director of both distinguished documentaries (David, the saga of Finnish Jews in WWII) and hit comedies. It's rare to possess a talent in both.

Technically, The Perfect Christmas is perfect: a well-made screenplay (from a Swedish hit original), a wonderful cast and a proper rhythm for the artificial approach necessary in a comedy like this. A tempo fast enough to forget thinking.

The history of film comedy started with catastrophe comedies in which the room – the house – the community – the world perished utterly. There is some external catastrophe here, too, but what really gets destroyed is the family spirit, supposedly the main value in celebrating Christmas.

It is impossible to tell how intentional Outi's action is when she invites, without telling her husband, all her ex-husbands with their families to celebrate Christmas together – and when she in her Christmas speech makes the surprise announcement that she is pregnant. It is a very special surprise for the husband, because everybody except Outi knows that he has sterilized himself.

This is an externally bright and internally horrific story: there is no love in the relationships. Remarkably, the children see this, and they condemn their parents and everything they stand for.

The Perfect Christmas provides fresh evidence for a deep trend in Finnish culture: matriarchy. Ostensibly Finland is a patriarchy, in reality, often a matriarchy. There are two families living as neighbours. In both the husband is evicted by Queen Bee.

The movie also provides contributions to the theme of the harridan in Finnish cinema. The cinematic harridan has been with us since the early days (e.g. in Aleksis Kivi and Juha adaptations) but there has been a special revival in the new millennium. The revival may be unintentional and even unconscious, but probably not in this movie.

Diva of Finland

FI 2019. PC: Silva Mysterium Oy / Evil Doghouse Productions AS. P: Mika Ritalahti, Niko Ritalahti. Co-P: Egil Ødegård.
    D+SC: Maria Veijalainen. DP: Joonas Pulkkanen. AD: Juha-Matti Toppinen. Cost: Venla Korvenmaa. M: Risto Ylihärsilä. S: Toni Teivaala. ED: Katja Pällijeff.
    C: Suvi-Tuuli Teerinkoski (Henna), Linda Manelius (Silja), Jutta Myllykoski (Iris), Sonja Sippala (Ii), Mikko Neuvonen (Sami), Miko Kontturi (Ilipo), Janica Keränen (Janna), Merja Pietilä (Henna's mother), Aki Pelkonen (Henna's father), Aatu Kärkkäinen (Henkka), Meri Nenonen (Silja's mother), Lauri Tilkanen (Herman Blade).
    Loc: Pudasjärvi, Oulu, Kempele, Haukipudas.
    Premiere: 4 Oct 2019 in Oulu - distributor: SF Studios.
    Vimeo link viewed for Jussi Awards, on a 4K tv screen at home, 11 March 2020.

Official presentation: "Diva of Finland is a drama comedy about friendship and the pursuit of popularity."

"Henna (Suvi-Tuuli Teerinkoski), who is generally agreed to have talent, expects to move from her little community soon after the matriculation examination. On Henna's birthday she acquires a new neighbour, Silja (Linda Manelius), who charms everybody with her beauty and talent. Henna begins to follow Silja both in social media and real life, and envy blinds her for a moment. The movie is a tale about friendship, competition and overcoming it. The director-screenwriter is Maria Veijalainen (formerly Mononen) well known for her award winning short films". (Official presentation, my translation)

AA: Diva of Finland, the debut feature film by Maria Veijalainen, tells about young women from Pudasjärvi, next to Oulu, to the south from Lapland.

It's about ambition and overcoming the poison of envy. It's about fun and partying during the last school year before the student degree.

The film is also a satire of television's song contests. Henna and her best friend Silja at turns take it seriously and spoof it. Making rap music videos for YouTube is a major form of self-expression.

It's a backwoods community in where Henna used to be the star. Along comes Silja from Vantaa, Metropolitan Helsinki area, and now everybody is interested only in this bright and popular new girl.

On a school observation trek Henna slips, hurts her eyes and has to wear an eyemask and shades. Nevertheless she manages to spike Silja's drink with an overdose of vodka and manipulate a boy who is dating someone else to land in bed with her. At once Silja's reputation is destroyed and she is hated and bullied by everybody. It goes too far, and it's time for a volte-face.

There is final turning-point when the Diva of Finland auditions come to Oulu, the nearest city.

A fresh look into contemporary life and eternal themes of growing up by the director Maija Veijalainen and the stars Suvi-Tuuli Teerinkoski and Silja Manelius.

Veeran maaginen elämä / The Magic Life of V

FI/DK/BG 2019. PC: Making Movies Oy / Kirstine Barfod Film / Soul Food. P: Kaarle Aho, Kai Nordberg.
    Documentary.
    D: Tonislav Hristov. SC: Tonislav Hristov, Kaarle Aho. Cin: Alexander Stanishev. M: Petar Dundakov. S: Jacques Pedersen. ED: Anne Jünemann, Tonislav Hristov. Larp expert: Mike Pohjola.
    Featuring: Veera Lapinkoski, Ville Oksanen, Asta Tikkanen, Slava Doycheva, Heikki Oksanen, Mike Pohjola, Mikael Saarinen.
    Loc: Poland, Bulgaria, Finland.
    87 min
    Premiere: 23 Aug 2019 - distribution: Pirkanmaan Elokuvakeskus r.y.
    Vimeo link viewed for Jussi Awards, on a 4K tv screen at home, 11 March 2020.

Official introduction: "Veera, 25, tries to cope with her childhood traumas. She visits therapy. It helps but not enough. She participates in LARP events. In LARP events (live action role-playing games) the participants acquire new personae, strive to assume the story and the values of their fictional characters, perform tasks in fictional locations in constant interaction with other characters."

"While larping Veera becomes V. V can perform tasks that Veera is unable to achieve. And among larpers Veera (and V) finds friends and soulmates such as all young people long for".

"Veera has not met her father in 14 years. Father drank and abused his children until mother threw him out".

"Veera has a brother, Ville, 29, who is mentally handicapped. Ville meets father every now and then, and they have started to drink together. Ville is also a victim of bullying. Usually the bullies are people who do not realize that Ville is handicapped."

"Veera tries to help her brother also by guiding him to larp. Most of all she tries to steer the magic of larping to beat her fears and the ghosts of her past. She wants to confront her father".

"The battle to overcome childhood trauma is a physical effort and an arduous mental challenge for a young person whose childhood has been broken by a parent's alcoholism and violence. Incredibly numerous young people live alone trying to cope with the exhaustion caused by traumata without channels to face or tools to cope with childhood fears and experiences of threat."

"The Magic Life of V offers a means to access young people for whose a complete turn in life is the best solution. Veera's strong willpower to survive and skill to find means to deal with traumata can be an empowering experience. The movie is an authentic testimony on overcoming trauma and how you don't have to do it alone. Rebuilding faith in other people is possible."

A word from the director:

"I have always been interested in the border between fact and fiction. To which extent are the persons of documentary films real? To which extent do they play roles which they experience as real? When I met Veera I saw at once the cinematic and philosophic potential of the subject. For once I was able to move freely between fact and fiction without ethical problems because it is the very subject of the movie: the characters do so themselves to survive." - Tonislav Hristov

AA: The Magic Life of V, Tonislav Hristov's most ambitious film to date, is an enterprising, creative and daring experiment bringing together various disparate elements which do make sense when they are put together.

We have a live action role play (LARP) community in which Veera belongs and which has events in an ancient castle in Poland and battlegrounds in Bulgaria.

We have a history of family violence: Veera's father is an alcoholist who has neglected and abused his family.

Veera has experienced what we in Finland call "lasinen lapsuus", "a childhood of glass". In a child's eyes alcoholic parents turn into monsters.

Veera has also a brother with disability: at age one the brother had high fever and received permanent brain damage. Veera takes care of him and tries to protect him from the father whom the brother visits from time to time.

In the LARP community Veera's best friend gives her a confession of coming out as a Lesbian, having lived all her life in a lie.

The Magic Life of V is a tale of the therapeutic possibilities of role playing. Role playing can be a way to face even the hardest of truths.

To add to the Pirandellian complexity: this is officially a documentary film, but the characters act their roles as themselves. These situations could not have been recorded via a candid camera. There is even a father - daughter encounter.

I am reminded of classic titles of social psychology such as Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and Eric Berne's Games People Play.

Äiti / A Mother (2019)

Samppa Batal: Äiti / A Mother, starring Jaana Saarinen.

FI 2019. PC: Cinemanifest / Character House Oy. P: Krista Hannula, Maarit Laaksoharju, Miikka Pakarinen.
    D: Samppa Batal. SC: Samppa Batal, Krista Hannula. DP: Miikka Pakarinen. AD: Matias Muoniovaara. Cost: Timjami Varamäki. Makeup: Elisa Sakki. M: Antti L. S. Ikonen. S: Lari Rissanen. ED: Tuomas Kohtamäki.
    C: Jaana Saarinen (Eeva), Matti Pajulahti (Kalle), Jonathan Hutchings (Hasse), Matti Onnismaa ("the best detective in Finland"), Helmi-Leena Nummela (Maria), Liina Valtonen (young Maria), Kaisla Kaltiokallio (toddler Maria), Eeva Kilpi (baby Maria), Pekka Lehtosaari (hotel janitor), Satu Silvo (desk clerk).
    91 min
    Premiere: 10 May 2019 - distribution: Black Lion Pictures Oy.
    Vimeo link viewed for Jussi Awards, on a 4K tv screen at home, 11 March 2020.

Official presentation: "Having been released to freedom after a long prison sentence Eeva (Jaana Saarinen) returns to her old home grounds carrying just a shoulder bag, a mobile phone and the clothes she wears. She would like to find her grown-up daughter, but the stagnated village sends a clear message that she is not welcome back. There is an unexpected turn in the desperate quest when a helping hand emerges from a yellow van". Official presentation (my translation).

AA: An independent film made on a largely pro bono basis, with a "do it yourself" approach.

It's based on a classic movie concept: the protagonist returns home after a long prison sentence and does not find herself welcome. Why does she even return? Because of her daughter whom she has not seen during all these years.

It's a story full of mysteries but little by little we can piece together a hypothesis of what has probably happened. Eeva has married up, to one of the best families. But her husband has turned out to be an alcoholist / capable of domestic violence / and even child abuse. Eeva has killed her husband and been sentenced to imprisonment. The elite family has rejected all arguments favourable to Eeva and engaged Big Law to twist a sentence that best suits them and leaves the facade intact.

Jaana Saarinen, a popular actress who has been active since her childhood in the early 1960s, at last gets a big, demanding and ambitious leading role. In the beginning there is a bit of a one note approach to the traumatized Eeva, but she grows with the more versatile dimensions of the role towards a shocking turning-point and a game-changing finale.

The film has been shot in a small community in Southern Finland, among Swedish speaking families. It might be Lohja.

Thanks to the austere production resources the film has not had to go through the dispiriting mangle of gatekeeper funding organizations. The premises are familiar, but the approach is fresh and unexpected in the second feature film directed by Samppa Batal.

Vedenneito / Maiden of the Lake

FI 2019. PC: Citizen Jane Productions Oy. P: Elina Pohjola, Leila Lyytikäinen.
    A nature documentary.
    D+SC: Petteri Saario. Cinematography and underwater cinematography: Petteri Saario. Aerial cinematography and gimbal: Antti Saario. M: Markku Kanerva. S: Joonatan Hietanen. ED: Matti Näränen.
    Featuring: Emika Saario, Antti Saario.
    Loc: Lake Saimaa.
    72 min
    Premiere: 5 April 2019 – distributed by Citizen Jane Productions Oy.
    Vimeo link viewed for Jussi Awards, on a 4K tv screen at home, 10 March 2020.

Official presentation: "Maiden of the Lake tells about the fun moments 13-year-old Emika and her cousin Antti have at a lake during all four seasons, surrounded by fascinating nature. Together the cousins roam in an untouched forest, swim, fish and pick bilberries. In the winter they sleep on the frozen lake, under the northern lights. In the spring they encounter the world’s rarest seal, the Saimaa ringed seal. Maiden of the Lake is a breathtakingly beautiful nature story for the whole family."
    Director's word: "Maiden of the Lake offers the viewers characters they can identify themselves with and a chance to feel nature. When Emika and Antti do all kinds of exciting things in nature, I want the viewers to feel that they can also go to nature and experience something memorable. I want to inspire and encourage children and parents to go out and have an adventure in nature!" Official presentation

AA: Straight Finnish nature documentaries like The Tale of the Forest and The Tale of the Lake are blockbusters in our country, despite a constant access on television to world-class nature documentaries such as the ones by David Attenborough.

We are living in an age of an imminent catastrophe of the nature and a golden age of nature films. This is a key paradox of the remarkable phenomenon. But we can hope that the great popular success of these beloved films translates into action to save the world. Until then we are photographing what we are destroying.

Vedenneito / Maiden of the Lake capitalizes on the popularity of the nature films, and it has been photographed in a way that certainly looks best on the cinema screen.

Aerial photography is ubiquitous in contemporary cinema, and as a fan of the Olympian master shots of Lang and Mizoguchi I cannot get enough of it. Vedenneito / Maiden of the Lake uses all field sizes in an expressive way, from extreme long shots (see the second image above) to extreme close-ups.

There is no plot, or perhaps just an excuse for a plot: the two young protagonists would like for once in their lives to spot the ultra-rare Saimaa ringed seal in its natural habitat. They barely manage that, but the quest is worth the effort.

The film is simple and lovely.

Baby Jane

Katja Gauriloff: Baby Jane. Roosa Söderholm as Jonna aka Baby Jane.

FI 2019. PC: Oktober Oy. P: Satu Majava, Joonas Berghäll. EX: Sofi Oksanen, Tor Jonasson.
    D: Katja Gauriloff. SC: Veera Tyhtilä, Katja Gauriloff – based on the novel by Sofi Oksanen (2005). DP: Heikki Färm. AD: Sattva-Hanna Toiviainen. Cost: Tiina Wilén. Makeup: Marjut Samulin. M: Salla Luhtala. ED: Hanna Kuirinlahti. S: Olli Huhtanen.
    C: Roosa Söderholm (Jonna), Maria Ylipää (Piki), Nelly Kärkkäinen (Bossa), Lauri Tilkanen (Joonatan), Niko Saarela (Eero), Peter Pihlström (Kari), Niina Hosiasluoma (Stuba).
    Loc: Helsinki (around the Sörnäisten Kurvi area).
    90 min.
    Premiere: 8 March 2019 – distributed by Future Film Oy.
    Vimeo link viewed for Jussi Awards, on a 4K tv screen at home, 10 March 2020.

Official synopsis: "Jonna (Roosa Söderholm), a small town girl enters Helsinki for study and excitement. With innocent glee Jonna engages in the throb of the city until one dangerous night she finds herself in a threatening situation. Emerges a saviour: Piki (Maria Ylipää), a wonderful woman whose self-assured manner bewitches Jonna. Jonna worships her saviour, Piki ties her rope around her, and a passionate love affair starts".

AA: Baby Jane, based on a novel by Sofi Oksanen, is the first fiction film of Katja Gauriloff. However, Gauriloff's masterpiece, Kaisa's Enchanted Forest, already forayed deep beyond documentary reality. Its documentary aspects were stranger than fiction, but it also grew into a shaman experience of ancient Sami pantheism, the visionary (the truest) dimension of the tale conveyed via animation.

Baby Jane is a variation of the classical "bright lights, big city / went to my baby's head" tale. A small town girl (Roosa Söderholm) gets drawn into the vortex of Helsinki partying and a maelstrom of sexual identity. She has been following the heterosexual trail, but a fascinating queen of the night, Piki (Maria Ylipää) awakens her passion to love between women.

Piki seems the quintessence of cool, but gradually it turns out that in many ways she is the more vulnerable of the two, her despair covered under an almost impenetrable mask.

Baby Jane could have become a superficial story about a certain scene in Helsinki, but its approach to mental health issues and self-destructive behaviour is sincere, illuminating and deeply felt.

It's a stark story, eloquently photographed by Heikki Färm and powerfully interpreted by the leading actresses. The two contrasting worlds of Piki and Baby Jane are given totally different visual expressions.

Aurora (2019)

Mimosa Willamo in the title role: the life of the party in the arctic ghetto.

FI 2019. PC: Dionysos Films Oy. P: Max Malka. EX: Riina Hyytiä.
    D+SC: Miia Tervo. DP: Arsen Sarkisiants. AD: Kari Kankaanpää. Cost: Jouni Mervas. Makeup: Salla Yli-Luopa. M: Lau Nau. S: Micke Nyström. ED: Antti Reikko.
    C: Mimosa Willamo (Aurora), Amir Escandari (Darian), Elà Yildirim (Azar), Oona Airola (Kinky), Miitta Sorvali (Liisa), Ria Kataja (Tiina), Chike Ohanwe (Juha), Hannu-Pekka Björkman (Juha), Pamela Tola (Ulla).
    Loc: Rovaniemi (Lapland, Finland).
    104 min
    Premiere: 25 Jan 2019 - distributor: Oy Nordisk Film Ab.
    Festival premiere: 25 Jan 2019 Göteborg Film Festival, opening gala.
    Vimeo link viewed for Jussi Awards, on a 4K tv screen at home, 10 March 2020.

Official presentation: "One night at a hot-dog stand in Finnish Lapland, a commitment-phobic party animal, Aurora, meets Iranian Darian. Darian suddenly asks her to marry him. Darian needs to marry a Finnish woman to get an asylum for himself and his daughter. Aurora turns him down, as she is busy working as a nail technician and plans to move to Norway, away from her shit life. However, after meeting his sweet daughter, Aurora agrees to help him. As Aurora introduces numerous women to Darian, the two of them grow close. When the perfect wife candidate comes along, Darian and Aurora are faced with a difficult choice: pretend to be happy or to finally stop running."

"Aurora has won several prizes at festivals since its release in early 2019. It was Finland´s entry for the prestigious Nordic Council Film Prize."

HB in Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF): "The fresh new voice of Finnish cinema, Miia Tervo, is a genuine filmmaker who writes her own scripts. Aurora is more than the sum of its story and characters. It’s a fluffy romantic comedy with a message that bounces around but trusts the viewer. It is irritating, tickling and abrupt. Aurora gains speed with obscenities but evolves into a poetry of images. Scenes are filmed at funny angles. The viewers are kept on their toes. The movie develops from impressionistic glimpses into a solid portrait of a woman finding her path."

"Amir Escandari is an immigrant who must find a Finnish partner to marry so that his daughter can stay in Finland. Beautician Aurora dives deep into her regular party lifestyle before red flags start flying. Mimosa Willamo as Aurora oozes glamour against a backdrop of snow, smoke and fumes, almost like the super blonde Gena Rowlands, and even their survival stories bear resemblance. Miia Tervo skilfully carries the storylines that randomly encounter, rub together and smooth each other out." (HB, MSFF)

AA: The name Aurora may lead us to associations about Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). Finland is a distant land, but even in Finland Lapland has connotations of Ultima Thule, a faraway place.

...

Here's another film that I should absolutely have seen a year ago already, but only every 35 years we move to a new cinema. It was not only that there was little time for anything else. I could have seen Aurora, but I could not have given it the attention it deserves. For many it was the film of the year and even the film of the decade. I am happy to sign up as a Miia Tervo fan, too, but I have liked Lumikko and Santra and the Talking Trees even more, and The Trial / It's All Right was for me the film of the year in world cinema in 2019.

Aurora is an engaging entry into the newly popular subgenre of Lapland films, the range of which goes from the Napapiirin sankarit [Heroes of the Polar Circle] comedy trilogy to the films by the Sami filmmaker Katja Gauriloff (Kaisa's Enchanted Forest). Miia Tervo is a born Laplander, and she brings a new and original voice also to this Bildungsroman of a young woman.

In Lapland forces of nature are extreme and people are spontaneous and unaffected. In the circumstances of kaamos (the 24-hour darkness in midwinter) hard partying is a natural reflex, and Aurora is the "life of the party" in the Arctic ghetto. More than that, she is compared with a typhoon, a hurricane, and other chaotic phenomena. Her father is an alcoholist, and during the film they are evicted.

During yet another night of hard partying Aurora meets an Iranian refugee, Darian, on the hot dog stand. He needs a green card, and only by marriage can that be achieved. Aurora has firm plans about moving to Norway (even further north, but because of the Gulf Stream the sea there is open all year). Having met Darian's 8-year old daughter she changes her mind. "I wanted to sublimate my own experiences of lacking prospects, shame and worthlessness into warm humour", writes Miia Tervo.

Among other things, Aurora is a film about racism, and the surprise twist of the movie is that the most terrible racist is the black Juha, a native Finn. It is also about ageism and how the human tornado Aurora revitalizes the ageing Liisa. Having become evicted Aurora gets a job as a live-in nurse to Liisa. The shocking solution turns out perfectly.