Soft Targets

Play for Today: Soft Targets (GB 1982, SC: Stephen Poliakoff, D: Charles Sturridge) with Helen Mirren (Celia Watson) and Ian Holm (Alexei Varyov).

Play for Today: Soft Targets (GB 1982, SC: Stephen Poliakoff, D: Charles Sturridge) with Helen Mirren (Celia Watson).

Play for Today: Soft Targets.
    GB 1982. PC: BBC. P: Kenith Trodd.
    D: Charles Sturridge. SC: Stephen Poliakoff. Cin: Nat Crosby – colour – 1,33:1. PD: Derek Dodd. M: Geoffrey Burgon. S recordist: Peter Edwards. S boom operator: Patrick Quirke. Mono.
    C: Ian Holm (Alexei Varyov), Helen Mirren (Celia Watson), Nigel Havers (Harman), Celia Gregory (Frances), Thorley Walters (Old Wedding Guest), Margery Mason (Celia's Mother), Hugh Thomas (Castle), Tony Doyle (Kirby), Chris Langham (Drinkwater), Yuri Borienko (Porter), Karen Craig (Aeroflot Lady), Rupert Everett (Boy at Party). Julian Sands (Groom), Michael Lees (Man from Wimbledon), Desmond Llewelyn (Official in Dream), Kay Adshead (Hotel Waitress), Sarah Martin (Girl at Party), Kate Percival (Bride), Diana Malin (Waitress in Café).
    Soundtrack selections in the ambient background: Bananarama: "Shy Boy" (Steve Jolley, Tony Swain, summer 1982). Duke Ellington: "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" (1940). Elvis Costello: "Watching the Detectives" (1977).
    Film posters on display: Dead Reckoning (1947), Circle of Deceit (Die Fälschung, 1981).
    95 min
    Telepremiere: 19 Oct 1982.
    Recommended by Tom Luddy, a YouTube link viewed on a 4K tv set at home in Lappeenranta, 22 Jan 2021.

In memoriam Sir Ian Holm (1931–2020).

AA: My Ian Holm memorial double bill tonight started with Moonlight on a Highway, an early telefilm written by Dennis Potter, and continued with an early telefilm by another great British dramatist, Stephen Poliakoff, sometimes called the inheritor of Potter's crown.

The year is 1982, the year of the death of Leonid Brezhnev. In London, the Russian journalist Alexei Varyov (Ian Holm) writes banal pieces about the city. Home video recorders are a recent invention, and Alexei's apparently most important task is to tape light entertainment shows from the British television and bring them to the Aeroflot counter at the airport for instant delivery.

The story can be seen as a vision of the Brezhnevian stagnation era. A shadowy ambience of intelligence and espionage surrounds Alexei's life, but everything turns out to be meaningless or insignificant. Soft Targets makes John Le Carré's books look like action thrillers.

We never get to know whether Alexei is a spy. Perhaps he belongs to a web of red herrings and decoys, meant to distract the British intelligence from true agents. Bored with his London existence, Alexei tries to commit a small but conspicuous blunder in order to be able to return to Russia.

Things get complicated when he meets Celia Watson (Helen Mirren), and a real attraction and friendship emerges. For reasons unrelated to Alexei, Celia tries to commit suicide. A shared feeling of alienation and exile has brought them together.

To my ears, Ian Holm's Russian accent sounds believable. Besides Poliakoff, also Helen Mirren (Mironoff, of Russian nobility) has Russian family roots. Ian Holm brings a Gogolian presence to the tale of absurd bureaucracy. Helen Mirren's is a dignified interpretation of tragic anomie in the big city.

Soft Targets is already a display of Poliakoff's fascination with concealed histories, secret aspects, retrieved documents and juxtapositions of sound and image (pop songs in the background seem to carry odd implications to the story).

Soft Targets is an understated vision of existential ambiguity during the last decade of the Cold War. In his dream, Alexei even meets Desmond Llewellyn, who played Q in the James Bond film series.

Watching the film, I was thinking about Catherine Belton's Putin's People : How KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West (2020), for me the book of the year. It is a scary account of the quiet and patient infiltration of the Russian espionage networks into the West, and London in particular. Russia's shadow budget of dark money may be as big as the official state budget, and its purpose is to undermine the West via corruption. With Trump and Brexit, Putin scored huge victories, and the role of FSB (as KGB now is called) may prove vital. Even decoys like Alexei may have had a role, even if unwittingly.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK

Moonlight on the Highway

Moonlight on the Highway (SC: Dennis Potter, D: James MacTaggart, GB 1969). Ian Holm as David Peters, the Al Bowlly fan, lip-syncing to "Lover Come Back To Me". My screenshot from YouTube.

ITV Saturday Night Theatre : Moonlight on the Highway
    GB 1969. A Kestrel Production. From London Weekend Television. PC: Kestrel Productions / London Weekend Television (LWT). Original network: ITV. P: Kenith Trodd.
    D: James MacTaggart. SC: Dennis Potter. Cin: b&w – 1,33:1. PD: John Clements. Musical advisor: Kenith Trodd. Sound: mono.
    C: Ian Holm (David Peters), Anthony Bate (Dr. Chilton), Deborah Grant (Marie Holdsworth), Robin Wentworth (Al Bowlly Appreciation Society President), Derek Woodward (first medical student), John Flanagan (second medical student), Frederick Peisley (Gerald), Wally Patch (Old Londoner), Arthur Lovegrove (Landlord), Michael Burrell (Barman),
    Soundtrack listing from Wikipedia (all songs recorded by Al Bowlly and the Lew Stone Orchestra):
"Moonlight on the Highway" (21 March 1938)
"Lover, Come Back to Me" (13 November 1933)
"Just Let Me Look at You" (12 August 1938)
"Easy Come, Easy Go" (15 June 1934)
"Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" (12 December 1933)
"Oh! Mr Moon" (12 April 1933)
"My Melancholy Baby" (Pathé News film extract)
    Songs quoted in dialogue but do not feature on the soundtrack include: "You Couldn't Be Cuter", "Marie", "Isn't It Heavenly?", "I Love You Truly", "Love Is the Sweetest Thing".
    52 min
    Telepremiere: 12 April 1969 ITV – Independent Television.
    Recommended by Tom Luddy, a YouTube link viewed on a 4K tv set at home in Lappeenranta, 22 Jan 2021.

In memoriam Sir Ian Holm (1931–2020).

Bhob Stewart synopsis from IMDb: "Writing for ITV Saturday Night Theatre (1969), Dennis Potter introduced the notion that popular music expresses the yearning of the human spirit for a better world. A troubled young man, David Peters (Ian Holm), claims, "Once dreams were possible, that's what the popular songs told us." Rejecting rock music of the day, Peters is immersed in the tunes of Thirties crooner Al Bowlly (killed during the London blitz). He collects Bowlly memorabilia, publishes the Bowlly fan-club newsletter, and finds pleasure in lip-synching Bowlly records but his obsession with Bowlly masks certain darker events in his past." —Bhob Stewart <bhob@genie.com> IMDb

AA: Moonlight on the Highway is a Dennis Potter revelation from the year 1969, made long before the trend-setting Pennies from Heaven (1978), in which actors mimed to vintage popular songs in scenes integrated into the narrative.

In Moonlight on the Highway there is only one scene with direct miming, but it explores old popular music as the soundtrack of our emotions in ways that are already as moving and illuminating as in Pennies from Heaven.

In a National Health Service waiting room the camera tracks from one face to another, and while the title song "Moonlight on the Highway" is played, sung by Al Bowlly, we hear intimate thoughts of patients in a series of interior monologues, all starting with: "I remember, when... ". It is an engaging atlas of faces, caught in expressive close-ups.

The only one who starts with "I don't remember" is David Peters (Ian Holm), who has an appointment with a psychiatrist. When the camera moves to his extreme close-up we see superimposed images that we will learn are from his mother's funeral six weeks ago. All his grown-up life, David has been his mother's caregiver. In another superimposition we see memory flashes from his other major trauma, being sexually assaulted at age 10.

Many familiar Dennis Potter hallmarks are already in place: the presence of the disruptive outsider, the direct camera address, the nonlinear narrative, and the fluid use of flashbacks.

In Pennies from Heaven, a liberal amount of Al Bowlly records was consumed, and reportedly Potter himself was at his most productive at night, with old Bowlly records playing in the background.

Moonlight on the Highway is wholly devoted to Bowlly. Peters is the editor-in-chief of the Al Bowlly fanzine, and the movie ends in an annual meeting of the Al Bowlly Appreciation Society. For Peters, Bowlly records have become superior replacements for his own feelings, for example in the "Just Let Me Look At You" scene with Marie Holdsworth, the researcher working for a television documentary.

Dennis Potter explores the power of vintage songs as a time machine, leading us "down memory lane". These often schmalzy and corny songs can be vehicles of escapism and nostalgia. But perhaps they can also offer a Gegenbild, a counter-image to an oppressive reality, a utopia, helping us survive overwhelming ordeals.

Sir Ian Holm (1931–2020) is at his best in the leading role. One of England's most highly regarded Shakespearean actors, he had made his television debut in 1965 as Richard III in The War of the Roses series edited from Shakespeare's plays.

Holm's interpretation of David Peters is complex and deeply moving, conveying multiple traumata, also wartime shocks from the Blitz years, but also genuine passion, his capacity of love channelled into an Al Bowlly obsession. Ian Holm's performance is a subtle study in psychopathology, covering some of the same ground with Anthony Perkins's Norman Bates and the twisted contortions of Jerry Lewis.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM WIKIPEDIA:

Sound of Metal

Darius Marder: Sound of Metal (US 2020) with Olivia Cooke (Louise) and Riz Ahmed (Ruben).

Sound of Metal / Sound of Metal.
    US © 2020 Sound of Metal, Inc. PC: Caviar and Flat 7 Productions present in association with Ward Four. Produced by: Bert Hamelinck, Sacha Ben Harroche. Producers: Kathy Benz, Billy Benz.
    D: Darius Marder. SC: Darius Marder, Abraham Marder – story by Darius Marder, Derek Cianfrance.  DP: Daniël Bouquet – negative: 35 mm – colour – 2.39:1 – digital intermediate 4K – released on D-Cinema. PD: Jeremy Woodward. Cost: Megan Stark Evans. M: Abraham Marder, Nicolas Becker. S: Nicolas Becker. ED: Mikkel E. G. Neilsen. Casting: Susan Shopmaker. Line P: Chris Stinson.
    C: Riz Ahmed (Ruben), Olivia Cooke (Lou, Louise, Lulu), Paul Raci (Joe), Lauren Ridloff (Diane), Mathieu Amalric (Richard), Domenico Toledo (Michael), Chelsea Lee (Jenn), Shaheem Sanchez (Shaheem), Chris Perfetti (Harlan), Bill Thorpe (The Man), Michael Tow (Pharmacist), William Xifaras (Michael's Father), Rena Maliszewski (Audiologist), Tom Kemp (Dr. Paysinger), Elan Sicroff (Pianist), Jeremy Stone (ASL Teacher), Ezra Marder (ASL Student), Hartmut Teuber (Karl), Hillary Baack (Toldeo), Adam Preston (Jake), Jonathon Lejeune (Frank), Sean Powell, Dani Miller, Alex Kilgore (Surfbort members), Margaret Chardiet (Pharmakon member).
    Loc: Massachusetts, US.
    For Dorothy Marder.
    Languages: English, French, ASL (American Sign Language).
    121 min, [132 min in TIFF and according to the press notes].
    Festival premiere: 6 Sep 2019 Toronto International Film Festival.
    The original release date was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
    US premiere (limited): 20 Nov 2020.
    Streaming premiere: 4 Dec 2020 Prime Video (Amazon Studios).
    Helsinki premiere forecast: 5 Feb 2021 – released by Cinema Mondo with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Topi Oksanen / Sophia Beckman.
    Helsinki corona emergency security: max 10 capacity, face masks, distancing, hand hygiene.
    Press screening at Kino Engel 1, Helsinki, 20 Jan 2021.

OFFICIAL LOGLINE

After losing his hearing, a musician must find stability now that his life has been upended. Riz Ahmed and Olivia Cooke star in this ground-breaking drama from the producers of The Rider, and directed by Darius Marder, writer of The Place Beyond the Pines.

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS

Ruben (Riz Ahmed) and Lou (Olivia Cooke) live together, two nomads traveling gig to gig on an endless American tour. Their music is loud, frenzied and passionate, until one day Ruben is overwhelmed by a severe ringing in his ears, which quickly gives way to deafness. Ruben is suddenly overcome by anxiety, depression, and soon enough his past addictions begin to surface. Ruben checks himself into a home for deaf addicts run by an eccentric deaf veteran, Joe. In this world of silence and under Joe’s tough, observant care, Ruben must confront himself more honestly than ever before. But the love and sound of his old life echoes in Ruben’s mind, calling for him to return…

AA: Sound of Metal is an outstanding fiction feature debut by Darius Marder, whom I know as the screenwriter of The Place Beyond the Pines. Its director Derek Cianfrance, in turn, is credited with the story of Sound of Metal.

At first sight, Sound of Metal seems to belong to familiar contexts, but on each count it surprises by turning out to be something else.

It starts as a powerful music drama featuring a touring duo called Blackgammon, consisting of the vocalist-guitarist Lou (Olivia Cooke) and the percussionist Ruben (Riz Ahmed), playing loud music belonging to the heavy metal / punk / grunge spectrum. The fury of their act brings to mind movies about performing arts as an extreme sport such as Whiplash and Black Swan. But it is not a saga of a brutalization of the spirit nor a perversion of art, on the contrary.

The main theme is Ruben's coming to terms with his deafness, and in this respect Sound of Metal is at its most original, breaking new ground in a distinguished lineage of movies about handicaps. The greatest insight is offered by Joe (Paul Raci) who simply states than in their community, deafness is not a handicap. It is an overwhelming challenge for Ruben to accept this, but we anticipate him orientating himself towards a new life in this open-ended movie.

At its most profound level, Sound of Metal is a philosophical study about perception. Our consciousness and our identity are based on our faculties of perception, and when they change, we change. "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world", said Wittgenstein, and in this movie we observe even a switch to a completely different category of language: American Sign Language (ASL).

This is fascinating also from the viewpoint of the genesis of the cinema as silent cinema. There are passages of silence in Sound of Metal, but mostly an ingenious soundscape has been created by Nicolas Becker to convey the world of the hard-of-hearing. 

This feature evokes a special subcategory of the cinema, namely Beethoven movies. They all of course dramatize the composer's incredible struggle to come to terms with deafness. A special favourite of mine is Mauricio Kagel's dadaistic Ludwig van (1970). Most recently I have seen Klaus Wyborny's Hommage an Ludwig van Beethoven (2006) focusing on the composer's late style partly along similar lines.

In Darius Marder's sequence of deaf children following a piano recital by feeling its vibrations with their hands on the instrument I was thinking about Beethoven's mid-period and late piano sonatas and how he ordered the most formidable pianos from Nannette Streicher, Erard, Broadwood and Conrad Graf to create unheard-of sonorities that he himself could not hear except in his mind – yet he physically needed the piano as a sounding board.

Even Beethoven's habit of conversation books has a counterpart in Sound of Metal.

Sound of Metal is also a love story between Louise and Ruben. Their romance is a shared Bildungsroman and a healing process from traumas of childhood, family and addictions. Without saying a word, they know it's over. Together, they have grown. Growth cannot be stopped, and now they have grown apart. What was, was the best life can be. Ruben: "You saved my life, made it beautiful." Louise: "You saved my life, too".

There is even a wider love story in the rural rehabilitation community run by Joe in an atmosphere of love and dignity. Paul Raci's performance as Joe is novel, unique and unforgettable, and it changes our perspectives of the possibilities of dialogue in a condition of deafness. This is the first time I see dialogues conveyed with real time computer transcription.

The most electrifying of the soundtrack selections is heard in Lou and Ruben's RV tour bus: a vinyl record on which Bessie Smith sings "Careless Love Blues" (credited to W. C. Handy) with the trio of Louis Armstrong (cornet), Charlie Green (trombone) and Fred Longshaw (piano). It burns like fire.

Daniël Bouquet has shot Sound of Metal on 35 mm photochemical film, great for capturing the subtle vivid detail of the nature surrounding the rural rehabilitation community premises. It has been conveyed very well in the 4K digital transfer.

A parallel Finnish film occurred to me while watching Sound of Metal: Tuukka Temonen's wonderful Aika jonka sain (with an unfortunate English title: One Half of Me), the true story of the para-equestrian Jaana Kivimäki, who despite permanent invalidization in the finale realizes that "I have now a better life than before the accident".

PS. This film resonates with the presence of the poet Amanda Gorman in the inauguration of U.S. President Joe Biden today. Gorman has an auditory processing disorder, and she is hypersensitive to sound, but she sees her speech impediment as a strength.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK:

Karalahti

Juuso Syrjä: Karalahti (FI 2021).

FI 2021 © Solar Films. P: Jukka Helle, Ida Kallio, Rimbo Salomaa, Markus Selin.
    D: Juuso Syrjä. Cin: Matti Eerikäinen. SC: Mika Karttunen, Joona Louhivuori. S: Kyösti Väntänen.
    A portrait documentary about Jere Karalahti.
    Non-fiction footage has been edited together with staged enactments.
    Featuring: Jere Karalahti, his family and friends, and Pentti Lindegren, Jonna Levola, Jari Aarnio, Kalervo Kummola, Markus Selin, Mikael Granlund, Erkka Westerlund, Pentti Matikainen, Harri Hakkarainen, Doug Shedden, Veijo Hietala, Rita Tainola, Jeff Mocher, Juuso Pulliainen, Eetu Pöysti, Semir Ben-Amir, Andy Murray, Jukka-Pekka Vuorinen, Petteri Sihvonen, Petri Matikainen, Arto Nyberg.
    117 min
    Premiere: 5 Feb 2021 – released by Nordisk Film.
    Corona emergency security: max 20 capacity, face masks, distancing, hand hygiene.
    Viewed at Finnkino Strand 2 without Swedish subtitles, Lappeenranta, 16 Jan 2021

AA: Jere Karalahti (born 1975) is a controversial Finnish ice hockey defenceman who during his professional career in 1993–2016 played for teams in Finland, United States, Germany, Belarus and Sweden – for HIFK, Los Angeles Kings, Nashville Predators, Oulun Kärpät, Hamburg Freezers, Blues, HC Dinamo Minsk, Jokerit and HV71.

Karalahti proved to be a world class player, but simultaneously the hero transformed into a monster. Karalahti developed multiple dangerous addictions: to alcohol, hard drugs and gambling, and got involved with organized crime and drug smuggling. Refusing withdrawal treatment and getting in trouble with the law he failed a golden chance with the NHL. Karalahti has a loving mother and his father is a policeman, both always supportive. He has a stable circle of friends since his childhood in the Tapulikaupunki district of Helsinki. The mystery of his dangerous addictions remains.

Karalahti's life follows a multiple rise-and-fall-and-rise scenario. Having lost everything, Karalahti starts anew, and even having had to change to another team or another country, he soon again displays exceptional talent as a team builder. He exercises indefatigably, reads the game, has the right attitude, transforms the team with his presence and leads it to victory. He also has a magic touch with fans and the audience.

The nadir in his story is a trip with "Tapulivesi", "Tapuli water", referring to his childhood neighbourhood Tapulikaupunki: 80% vodka drunk from a flower pot. After months of Tapulivesi, and a couple of weeks of pure spiritus fortis, Karalahti no longer has a hangover but a near death condition. He is treated in the emergency room in coma, put into a respirator, his pancreas permanently damaged. It is exceptional to survive this, but a medical miracle takes place. Karalahti has to learn to walk again, run again, go to the gym again, and play hockey again. He still makes it to the top.

"People say you're a good guy. I don't see it". Karalahti betrays his fellow players repeatedly and can be viciously brutal in the rink. He is no role model, but a horrific warning example. Doctor's orders are not to drink except a couple of glasses of wine every second weekend. After his ice hockey career, Karalahti starts a new life with a new family and now runs a day care center. He says he has no regrets, but admits that there are things in the past that won't stand the light of the day.

In terms of recent Finnish portrait documentaries of sport legends, Karalahti is the opposite of the clean-cut heroes of Kuningas Litmanen and Selänne (about Teemu Selänne). He is the outlaw, the anti-hero, and in this sense at home in the Solar Films studio profile that includes Häjyt, Pahat pojat and Matti (about Matti Nykänen).

Like Nykänen, Karalahti provided tabloid fodder for decades with his rampages. To what extent did scandal media fuel Karalahti's addictions, excesses and misfortunes? This is an aspect the movie does not discuss.

Juuso Syrjä directs the movie with a brisk, dynamic touch. He is an experienced director of commercials (also in California), music videos (Bomfunk MC's, Darude), the Cook It Raw television show and the Nordic Noir series Sorjonen / Border Town (released in 180 countries). He has also directed the witty children's animation Ella & Aleksi – Surprise Birthday Party, one of my favourite Finnish films of the 2010s.

Karalahti is not a straight documentary. Karalahti is an unreliable narrator, and during his blackouts he has suffered memory loss. The end credits state that dramatizations have been staged, but we don't know what is fiction and what is not. The account of the long inferno trip to addiction has affinities with Joonas Neuvonen and Sadri Cetinkaya's death voyage movie Lost Boys.

The magic of Karalahti's playing is the raison d'être of the tale, but the film does not really convey the epic grandeur of Karalahti's legendary ice-hockey matches.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK:

The Rain People (2019 American Zoetrope restoration in 4K)

Francis Ford Coppola: The Rain People (US 1969). Wyatt Road at Wetherill Road, Garden City, New York.

Francis Ford Coppola: The Rain People (US 1969), with James Caan (Jimmy "Killer" Kilgannon) and Shirley Knight (Natalie Ravenna).

Sadeihmisiä / Älska aldrig en främling.
    US © 1969 Warner Bros.–Seven Arts, Inc. PC: American Zoetrope. Distributor: Warner Bros. / Seven Arts. P: Ronald Colby, Bart Patton. P assoc: George Lucas, Mona Skager.
    D+SC: Francis Ford Coppola. Cin: Bill Butler – 35 mm – colour – 1,85:1. AD: Leon Ericksen. M: Ronald Stein. M assoc: Carmine Coppola. S: Nathan Boxer. S montage: Walter Murch. Mono. ED: Barry Malkin. Ass ED: Marcia Lucas. P ass: John Milius.
    C: Shirley Knight (Natalie Ravenna), James Caan (Jimmy "Killer" Kilgannon), Robert Duvall (Gordon), Marya Zimmet (Rosalie, Gordon's daughter), Tom Aldredge (Mr. Alfred, reptile zoo keeper, justice of peace), Laura Crews (Ellen), Andrew Duncan (Artie), Margaret Fairchild (Marion), Sally Gracie (Beth), Alan Manson (Lou), Robert Modica (Vinny Ravenna), Eleanor Coppola (Gordon's wife, n.c.).
    Loc: Wyatt Road at Wetherill Road, Garden City, New York. – Hofstra University, Hempstead, Long Island, New York. – Lincoln Tunnel, New York City. – Pennsylvania Turnpike. – Harrisonburg, Virginia. – Skyline Drive-In, Clarksburg, West Virginia. – Weston, West Virginia. – Armed Forces Parade in Chattanooga, Tennessee. – Ogallala, Nebraska. – Brule, Nebraska. – Colorado. – 2 April–August 1968.
    2795 m / 101 min
    Festival premiere: 24 June 1969 San Sebastián Film Festival.
    US premiere: 27 Aug 1969.
    Finnish premiere: 16 Jan 1970 – released by Warner Bros.–Seven Arts.
    Restored version premiere: 13 Oct 2019 Grand Lyon Film Festival.
    Vimeo screener of the 2019 restoration viewed on a 4K tv set at home, Lappeenranta, 15 Jan 2021.

In memoriam Shirley Knight (1936–2020).

AA: Revisited The Rain People, Francis Ford Coppola's first completely personal film and the first production of American Zoetrope, an existential road movie of subtle lyricism, character-driven, with strong performances by the central trio Shirley Knight, James Caan and Robert Duvall. The Rain People is structured as a travel journal interspersed with memory flashes.

It's a road movie with a psychological focus. The evocative views captured by the cinematographer Bill Butler during the trip from Long Island to Nebraska are also visions of an inner journey. Such an approach to a meandering quest has affinities with the great Italians Roberto Rossellini (Voyage in Italy) and Michelangelo Antonioni (Il grido).

The Rain People belongs to the lasting achievements of the American New Wave of the 1960s and the 1970s. Easy Rider had just had its premiere during the same summer; the macho road movie has often been compared with The Rain People – as representatives of contrasting approaches to the genre.

Inspired by a childhood memory of Francis Coppola's – when his mother left her family for a while – The Rain People was ahead of its time in its feminism. Natalie (Shirley Knight) leaves home and husband: the dramatic idea evokes the Ur-drama of women's liberation, A Doll's House, but unlike Henrik Ibsen, Coppola puts the wife's departure in the beginning.

Natalie is pregnant, and she wants to make sense of what it means to become a mother, and she also wants to make sense of her marriage. She is alone in her crisis, surrounded by patriarchy. Her husband, her father and the society at large want her to stay in her traditional place. Status quo. But Natalie cannot live like that any longer.

Key 1960s directors saw the ideal reflection of modern consciousness in a woman: Michelangelo Antonioni / Monica Vitti, Ingmar Bergman / Liv Ullmann, Luis Buñuel and Roman Polanski / Catherine Deneuve, François Truffaut / Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Luc Godard / Anna Karina... even Alfred Hitchcock in that cycle of films with a female character whose name starts with the letter M. The Finnish New Wave cinema also focused on female protagonists (1, 2, 3).

In American cinema, a novel approach in feminine perspectives also emerged in collaborations of the husband-wife teams of John Cassavetes / Gena Rowlands and Paul Newman / Joanne Woodward (Rachel, Rachel). There was "a revaluation of values"; the new wave was about seeing things anew. In this context The Rain People belongs. It might also be relevant to remember that Coppola's teacher at the UCLA Film School was Dorothy Arzner, the only major woman director in Hollywood in the 1930s and the 1940s.

During her road adventure Natalie gives a lift to a hitch-hiker, Jimmy "Killer" Kilgannon (James Caan), a football star who has suffered a brain damage in a head injury and become a man-child, a gentle giant who needs a woman like a baby needs a mother. Further up on the road, Natalie meets the highway patrolman Gordon (Robert Duvall), who gives her a speeding ticket and then asks her for a date.

In the character of Kilgannon, Coppola plays with expectations linked to the character of Lennie in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. However, it is not the outcast Kilgannon who proves dangerous, but the policeman Gordon. Disturbingly, before Natalie fully understands Kilgannon's condition, she plays a Domina game with him to the tune of "Simon says".

As manifestations of dysfunctional masculinity, Kilgannon and Gordon are extreme cases, yet also representative of more general phenomena. Men expect women to remain nurturers. Men revert to sexual violence in a spirit of patriarchal authority.

As a feminist road movie, The Rain People was a predecessor to Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and even Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise. The Rain People is also ahead of its time regarding animal rights in startling scenes at a roadside zoo. In Jack (1996), starring Robin Williams, Coppola returned to the concept of the man-child, but in reverse: a ten-year-old boy transforms physically into a middle-aged man.

The 2019 restoration in 4K conveys beautifully the refined warmth of the colours and the lighting effects in landscapes and their reflections. It starts in rainswept visions in early spring. The title stems from a strange remark of Jimmy's: "The rain people are – people made of rain. They only cry. They disappear all together, because, they cry themselves away."

Senses of Cinema: World Poll 2020: my favourites

Hiroshi Inagaki: Muhomatsu no issho / The Rickshaw Man (JP 1943), world premiere in Bologna of the 2020 restoration by Kadokawa Corporation and The Film Foundation / Venice Classics at Il Cinema Ritrovato

ANTTI ALANEN: THE BEST OF THE YEAR 2020
 
  I
Silmästä silmään (Eye to Eye, John Webster, 2020)
Andjust (Mox Mäkelä, 2020)
Eden (Ulla Heikkilä, 2020)
Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)
Aalto (Virpi Suutari, 2020)
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin, 2020)
On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola, 2020)
Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

II A
A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick, 2019)
Bombshell (Jay Roach, 2019)
Dylda (Beanpole, Kantemir Balagov, 2019)
Women Make Film (Mark Cousins, 2019)
Filmfarsi (Ehsan Khoshbakht, 2019)
Peterloo (Mike Leigh, 2018)
L’extraordinaire voyage de Marona (Marona’s Fantastic Tale, Anca Damian, 2019)
Sorkhpoost (The Warden, Nima Javidi, 2019)
Meeting Gorbachev (Werner Herzog & André Singer, 2018)
Family Romance, LLC (Werner Herzog, 2019)
J’accuse (An Officer and a Spy, Roman Polanski, 2019)
Jenseits des Sichtbaren – Hilma af Klint (Beyond the Visible – Hilma af Klint, Halina Dyrschka, 2019)
Om det oändliga (About Endlessness, Roy Andersson, 2019)
Saint Maud (Rose Glass, 2019)

II B
Whistle and I’ll Come To You (Jonathan Miller, 1968) Jonathan Miller 1934–2019
Alice in Wonderland (Jonathan Miller, 1966) Jonathan Miller 1934–2019
Le Tableau (The Painting, Jean-François Laguionie, 2011) Jennifer Barker / Midnight Sun Film Festival
Der Student von Prag (The Student of Prague, Henrik Galeen, 1926) 2020 restoration Filmmuseum München
Kvinnors väntan (Waiting Women, Ingmar Bergman, 1952) Ingmar Bergman Centenary restoration
This Gun For Hire (Frank Tuttle, 1942) NBC Universal DCP at Il Cinema Ritrovato
Das Wachsfigurenkabinett (Waxworks, Paul Leni, 1924) a much anticipated 2020 restoration by Deutsche Kinemathek
Shatranj-e baad (Chess of the Wind, Mohammad Reza Aslani, 1976) a true resurrection of a major film believed lost, by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, 2020
Sedotta e abbandonata (Seduced and Abandoned, Pietro Germi, 1964) 2020 restoration by Cineteca di Bologna and Cristaldifilm, Venice Classics at Il Cinema Ritrovato
Storm Warning (Stuart Heisler, 1951) 35 mm print from Warner Bros. at Il Cinema Ritrovato
Sylvester (New Year’s Eve, Lupu Pick, 1924) world premiere of a 2020 restoration by Deutsche Kinemathek with the original score by Klaus Pringsheim played by the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale at Bologna’s Piazza Maggiore
Gaumont Chrono de Poche (Giancarlo Stucky, 1900) home movies restored in 2020 by Cineteca di Bologna
Muhomatsu no issho (The Rickshaw Man, Hiroshi Inagaki, 1943) world premiere of the 2020 restoration by Kadokawa Corporation and The Film Foundation / Venice Classics at Il Cinema Ritrovato
Born in Flames (Lizzie Borden, 1983) 2016 restoration by Anthology Film Archives

III
My first and only online festival was the Midnight Sun Film Festival 2020. It was very well organized, and I'm glad that I participated. But I don't think the concept of an online festival is exciting in the long run.

Madeo / Mother (2019 digital restoration)

Bong Joon-ho: 마더 / Madeo / Mother (KR 2009) starring Kim Hye-ja (Mother).

마더 / Mother / Mother.
    KR 2009. PC: CJ Entertainment / Barunson. P: Choi Jae-won, Seo Woo-sik.
    D: Bong Joon-ho. SC: Park Eun-kyo, Bong Joon-ho – based on a story by Bong Joon-ho. Cin: Hong Kyung-pyo – negative: 35 mm – colour – 2,35:1. PD: Ryu Seong-hie. Cost: Choi Se-yeon. Makeup and hair: Hwang Hyun-kyu. Special makeup effects: Lee Hee Eun. VFX: Lee Jeon-hyeong. M: Lee Byung-woo. S: Choi Tae-young. ED: Moon Sae-kyung.
    CAST as edited in Wikipedia:
    Kim Hye-ja as Mother, an unnamed widow who is extremely protective of her son and attempts to free him from a murder charge.
    Won Bin as Yoon Do-joon, the teenage son of Mother, who has an intellectual disability and is accused of the murder of a local girl.
    Jin Goo as Jin-tae, a local ne'er do well and one of Do-joon's friends. He bosses Do-joon around but agrees to help Mother free her son.
    Moon Hee-ra as Moon Ah-jung, a young girl who is murdered, leading the police to arrest Do-joon.
    Yoon Je-moon as Je-moon, the detective in charge of Ah-jung's murder case.
    Jeon Mi-seon as Mi-seon, a photo worker who met with Ah-jung before she died.
    Song Sae-byeok as Detective
    Chun Woo-hee as Mi-na, Jin-tae's girlfriend and Do-joon's best friend.
    Kwak Do-won as Charcoal fire man
    Kim Jin-goo as Ah-jung's grandma
    Lee Young-suk as Elder at junk shop
Loc: Busan, Jeolla Province.
    128 min
    Festival premiere: 16 May 2009 Cannes Film Festival.
    Korean premiere: 28 May 2009.
    Finnish festival premiere: 18 Sep 2010 Helsinki International Film Festival.
    Finnish premiere: 5 Feb 2021 – released by Future Film with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Heli Kristiina Kasem / Janne Kauppila.
    Finnish preview start: 18 Dec 2020.
    Viewed at Finnkino Strand 3, Lappeenranta, 27 Dec 2020.

IMDb synopsis: "A mother desperately searches for the killer who framed her son for a girl's horrific murder."

AA: Bong Joon-ho's fifth feature film, Mother, screened in Finland previously only at festivals, has its Finnish theatrical premiere in the wake of the international breakthrough of Parasite. On display is a new digital restoration.

In terms of suspense, storytelling and mise-en-scène, Mother is worthy of Hitchcock, also in terms of focusing on the meaningful detail. It is possible to imagine that Mother might have been inspired by Psycho, one of Bong's favourite films.

"A boy's best friend is his mother" is a comment by Norman Bates that comes to mind from the relationship between Do-joon and his mother. They sleep together, but in the way a baby sleeps with his mother. Do-joon is mentally handicapped, always protected by tiger mama. "You and I are one", says mother.

But then Ah-jung, a schoolgirl, is killed at night, and a golf ball signed with Do-joon's name is found at the scene of the crime. Everybody accuses Do-joon who is convicted into a prison sentence.

Only mother knows that Do-joon is incapable of murder. She is absolutely fearless defending her son against a furious mob. When she goes to Ah-jung's funeral, she is brutally evicted. The mother then becomes a detective, and the sujet is the story of her investigation. The fabula, the mystery of the crime, involves devastating surprises.

At the bottom of the revelations is Do-joon's repressed childhood memory. When he was five years old, his mother, in circumstances of extreme deprivation, tried to poison him with pesticide in an attempt of extended suicide. We don't know if Do-joon's retardation was a cause or a consequence.

Bong's movie earns a place among cinema's unforgettable accounts of dysfunctional motherhood, next to White Heat, Psycho, The Manchurian Candidate, Woody Allen's Oedipus Wrecks and John Ford's Pilgrimage.

I'm still on my way to come to terms with what Bong's cinema is about. While I find much of it admirable, I struggle to make sense of the fascination with the sordid. In circumstances of extreme deprivation, we simultaneously abhor and empathise. But what is the point exactly.

The digital restoration conveys the subtle visual quality of Hong Kyung-pyo's cinematography with flair.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK:

Palm Springs (2020)

Max Barbakow: Palm Springs (US 2020), starring Cristin Milioti (Sarah) and Andy Samberg (Nyles).

Palm Springs / Palm Springs.
    US 2020 © PS Film Production. Hulu presents a Hulu original. PC: Limelight Productions and Sun Entertainment present – A Party Over Here production – a Limelight Production. P: Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, Becky Sloviter, Jorma Taccone. P: Dylan Sellers, Chris Parker. EX: Alex Dong, Gabriel Revilla Lugo.
    D: Max Barbakow. SC: Andy Siara. DP: Quyen "Q" Tran – camera: Arri Alexa Mini – source format: CFast 2.0 ProRes 4:4:4 (3.2K) – colour – 2.39:1 – release format: D-Cinema. PD: Jason Kisvarday. AD: Tim Ford. Set dec: Kelsi Ephraim. Cost: Colin Wilkes. Makeup: Galaxy San Juan. Hair: Kimberly Spiteri. SFX: Tom Ceglia. VFX: Crafty Apes. M: Matthew Compton. Music supervisor: Robin Urdang. Soundtrack listing: see beyond the jump break. S: Jon Wakeham, Sean McCormack. ED: Matthew Friedman, Andrew Dickler. Casting: Allison Jones.
    C: Andy Samberg (Nyles), Cristin Milioti (Sarah), J. K. Simmons (Roy), Peter Gallagher (Howard), Meredith Hagner (Misty), Camila Mendes (Tala), Tyler Hoechlin (Abe), Chris Pang (Trevor), Jacqueline Obradors (Pia), Tongayi Chirisa (Jerry), Dale Dickey (Darla), Conner O'Malley (Randy), Jena Friedman (Daisy the Bartender).
    Loc: California (Santa Clarita, Palmdale).
    87 min
    Festival premiere: 26 Jan 2020 Sundance Film Festival
    Hulu online premiere: 10 July 2020
    Finnish premiere: 27 Nov 2020 – released by Cinema Mondo with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Iira Tuominen / Sophia Beckman.
    NB. After the premiere weekend, Helsinki cinemas closed on 30 Nov due to the corona emergency, but screenings continued in selected cities.
    Corona emergency security: max 20 capacity, face masks, distancing, hand hygiene.
    Viewed at Finnkino Strand 2, Lappeenranta, 27 Dec 2020.

AA: With Tenet, Palm Springs belongs to the high profile "time plays" of the year 2020. The film-makers, director Max Barbakow and screenwriter Andy Siara, are aware of their concept's affinity with Groundhog Day, but distance from it in significant ways.

"Live Like There's No Tomorrow" is the advertizing tagline, and it sums up saga's duality. The eternal wedding in Palm Springs is a vision of paradise, marred by endless repetition and ever-changing deceptions and disappointments during the celebration weekend.

Unlike Groundhog Day, this is not a tale of a comeuppance of a cynical and obnoxious protagonist. It's about being stuck into an endless present from which even death offers no escape. It may evoke reflections about an age where the ideal is to live an eternal youth, and where mankind is, indeed, living like there is no tomorrow.

Palm Springs has been studied as belonging to the category of time loop movies, but it resonates also with philosophical or surrealist tales of "no escape". In Jean-Paul Sartre's Huis clos (No Exit) the place in which we find ourselves is not Paradise but Hell. In Luis Buñuel's El ángel exterminador there is no end to a lavish dinner party.

Cinema itself is an art of the time play, where a real-time event can be endlessly repeated, where different time periods can be mixed in parallel montage, and where time can be manipulated via slow motion, time lapse, or blitz cutting.

The evolution of the cinema coincided with the revelations of the theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics. In art, writers like Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time) and James Joyce displayed parallel insight. Affinities were obvious to Henri Bergson's concepts of durée and the clock time, Bergson himself reacting to Zeno, and inspiring Deleuze.

Einstein also inspired J. W. Dunne's influential work An Experiment with Time, a work more valid as poetry than science. Dunne in turn inspired J. B. Priestley's time plays, but also H. G. Wells, Jorge Luis Borges, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and James Hilton, whose Random Harvest is also relevant to the WWI shell shock experience. "The end of an era" experience was a key reason to the newly topical Shakespearean feeling of "a time out of joint" (Hamlet's original utterance can be understood as a definition of Renaissance).

The time loop theme also connects to the ancient tradition of the eternal return, the cyclical vision of existence, familiar from Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Pythagoreanism, Stoicism and the philosophy of Nietzsche. The infinite loop, the wheel of time, the endless knot and the mandala are expressions of this. Of 20th century writers, Hesse and Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus) were fascinated by the theme.

I seem to have evaded discussing Max Barbakow and Andy Siara's movie, but perhaps it has succeeded in tempting me to an infinite loop in a wheel of time, discussing an eternal return. The protagonists are unusual. As interpreted by Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti, they are irritating and hard to relate to. Perhaps this is an act of Entfremdung. We are not meant to identify with them, but we are welcomed to witty dialogue and chains of associations that are both topical and eternal.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK:

Tunturin tarina / Tale of a Sleeping Giant

Marko Röhr: Tunturin tarina / Tale of a Sleeping Giant (FI 2021).

The cinemas were closed in Helsinki almost four weeks ago, on Monday 30 November, because of the corona restrictions, but in Lappeenranta they remain open to a capacity of max 20 viewers. At Finnkino Strand several films are playing that have not been screened in Helsinki yet.

Sagan om fjället.
    FI 2021 © 2020. PC: MRP Matila Röhr Productions Oy. P: Hanna Kauppi, Marko Röhr.
    D: Marko Röhr. SC: Antti Tuuri, Marko Röhr. Narration written by: Antti Tuuri. Cin: Teemu Liakka. M: Panu Aaltio. S: Juha Hakanen. ED: Ben Mercer.
    Narrator: Peter Franzén.
    Starring: the snowy owl, the reindeer, the willow ptarmigan, the least weasel, the lemming, the elk, the wolverine, the humpback whale, the muskox, the raven, the fox, the eagle, the salmon, the capercaillie, the Atlantic puffin, the mosquitoes, the bear, the white wagtail, the woodpecker, the Siberian jay, the crane, the ants, the great gray owl.
    77 min
    Premiere: 19 Feb 2021, distributed by Nordisk Film, English subtitles by Saga Vera, Swedish subtitles by Sophia Beckman De La Riva. The original 2020 general premiere date was postponed due to the corona lockdown. Preview screenings in selected cities. The first movie in Finnish cinemas with a Northern Sami subtitling option.
    Corona emergency security: max 20 capacity, face masks, distancing, hand hygiene.
    Viewed at Finnkino Strand 1, Lappeenranta (preview screenings), 27 Dec 2020.

AA: Tunturin tarina [The Tale of the Fell] is the third film in the wonderful trilogy of nature films produced by Marko Röhr, following The Tale of the Forest (2012) and The Tale of the Lake (2016). Boasting magnificent cinematography, often of the "mission impossible" kind, they have become box office hits, the most popular non-fiction films of all times in our land.

During the recent decades, we have experienced a golden age of nature films and television series, thanks to masters such as David Attenborough. He has not exhausted the interest, on the contrary, his inspiration may have contributed also to the popularity of our domestic film-makers.

Lapland is a beloved tourist destination, but on display in this film is "the secret life" of Lapland's nature that even experts and specialists seldom get to see. An owl hunting for prey. An elk giving birth to a fawn. Capercaillies fighting at mating time. An eagle feeding its chicks with lemmings. Salmons swimming upstream in a waterfall. Salmons spawning.

But the film is more than a string of attractions. There is a sense of the sublime in its coverage of the four seasons and the elements, including visions of Northern Lights. Drone cinematography has enabled rare coverage of epic reindeer migrations and the life of an elk family in the forest. Underwater cinematography, a specialty of Marko Röhr's, is fascinating in recording the life of salmons.

It is eerie to watch this film during the corona pandemic, when travel bans are hurting Lapland tourism like never before. Even the premiere of this film has been postponed, and it can only be screened in selected cities.

Tunturin tarina is a celebration of the wonders of nature. There are few remarks about the endangered status of some of the species on display, nor on the dangers to the ecosystem. Maybe it is being assumed that we know this already, and watching this film is an alert about what we may soon be missing.

Antti Tuuri is one of my favourite Finnish writers thanks to his historical novels such as Ikitie with a sense of the epic and an affinity with the great tradition of Thucydides and Icelandic Sagas: conveying formidable experiences via a laconic and matter-of-fact approach. But in this movie's narration Tuuri's text is too florid to my taste. The images are majestic enough. There is no need for narrative embellishment.

The film-makers have taken advantage of the possibilities of digital cinematography in many ways, and to watch Tunturin tarina on a big cinema screen is a breathtaking experience.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK:

Heiskuja – Outi Heiskanen Lallukan taiteilijakodissa

Georg Grotenfelt: Heiskuja – Outi Heiskanen Lallukan taiteilijakodissa (2021).

Georg Grotenfelt: Heiskuja – Outi Heiskanen Lallukan taiteilijakodissa (2021).

Georg Grotenfelt: Heiskuja – Outi Heiskanen Lallukan taiteilijakodissa (2021).

Heiskuja – Outi Heiskanen Lallukan taiteilijakodissa
    FI 2021 © 2020 Nostalgia Film Ky. P: Georg Grotenfelt.
    D+SC: Georg Grotenfelt. Cin: Jani Ahlstedt, Georg Grotenfelt. S recording: Georg Grotenfelt, Jani Ahlstedt. S design: Sergei Moshlov. ED ass: Jani Ahlstedt. P consultant: Mina Laamo.
    Shot at the artist's residence of Outi Heiskanen at Lallukan taiteilijakoti, Helsinki, 2012–2015.
    Art by Outi Heiskanen, sources:
– Oheistaidekoti / photography: Metti Nordin
– Rauno Träskelin archive / photography: Rauno Träskelin
– EMMA – Espoon modernin taiteen museo / Saastamoisen säätiö / photography: Matti Ruotsalainen, Ari Karttunen / EMMA
– Kansallisgalleria / Nykytaiteen museo Kiasma / SKOP:n taidekokoelma / photography: Pirjo Mykkänen, Petri Virtanen, Jouko Könönen
– Kansallisgalleria / Arkistokokoelmat / Bellinin Akatemian tutkimusretki Par-Kisin ja Par-Iskmenyyn hikoiluluolille (1974)
– HAM – Helsingin taidemuseo / Raimo ja Maarit Huttusen taidekokoelma / photography: Anna Taival, Maija Toivonen, Taru Tuulia Tittonen
    44 min
    Vimeo preview screener viewed on a 4K tv set at home, Lappeenranta, 26 Dec 2020.

AA: Outi Heiskanen (born in 1937), is one of Finland's most highly regarded artists. Her focus is on graphics as a fine art: printmaking, aquatint, etching and drypoint. Her works often convey a mystic atmosphere of a fairy-tale world, frequently presenting animals or animal-human hybrids. Her father was a veterinarian, and childhood memories of domestic animals became an inspiration in her art. She may use a combination technique in which an etching is augmented by aquatint or drypoint. Her exhibitions include collages, installations, sculptures and puppets. She has also created films, photographs, performances and environment art. She is a member of the artist groups Bellini Academy and Record Singers. Heiskanen has created mythologies and legends of her own. She is also an illustrator and has been active as a professor and rector of Uniarts Helsinki's Academy of Fine Arts. She is an Arts Academician since 2004.

Georg Grotenfelt documents four years of Outi Heiskanen's creativity at her residence at the Lallukka Artists's House, with flashbacks to her earlier explorations, starting with a shamanistic movie of the forays of the Bellini Academy artist group in 1974. Heiskanen herself narrates the journey into her artistic world, while creating new works and selling them from home. Her associations run from the Russian yurodivy ("Fool for Christ") to ancient rhymes learn from her itinerant vetarinarian father, still inspiring her works. Horses, cows, dogs, bears and foxes are recurrent figures. An auxiliary army of a thousand spirits can be summoned at will. Heiskanen spices her narrative with Sami joiku (yoik), jokes and wordplay, introduces a nude model and games of patience, cards and chess. We experience the bustle at a vernissage, and the emptiness approaching when the time is up to move out of Lallukka. Grotenfelt ends his movie in visions of eternity, the birth of the stars, gas clouds, a long tunnel, a little baby and the atavistic sound of the black-throated loon.

A candid and memorable portrait documentary.

Donner – privat / Donner in Private

Jörn Donner's last interview in December 2019. Photo: Hannu-Pekka Vitikainen © Bufo. Publicity photo for: John Webster: Donner – privat (2021).

Harriet Andersson and Ingmar Bergman visited Helsinki in 1954 to promote Summer with Monika. Jörn Donner (in the middle, at the age of 21) interviewed them. From: John Webster: Donner – privat (2021) with commentary by Harriet Andersson ("Ingmar Bergman was very jealous"). My screenshot.

 

Donner the fisherman with a good catch. Jörn Donner home movies. From: John Webster: Donner – privat (2021) with commentary by his son Rafael Donner. My screenshot.

FI 2021. P: Misha Jaari, Mark Lwoff, Ari Tolppanen.
    D: John Webster. Cin: Hannu-Pekka Vitikainen. Lighting: Jani Lehtinen. AD: Otso Linnalaakso. VFX: Eki Haikka. M: Pedro Hietanen. S design: Karri Niinivaara. S recording: Karri Niinivaara - Jan Alvermark (Stockholm / Johan Donner) - Tuomas Kantelinen (Helsinki / Harriet Andersson). ED: Tuuli Kuittinen. Colour definition: Hannu-Pekka Vitikainen.
    Based on Jörn Donner's last interview in December 2019.
    Based on Jörn Donner's private archive of home movies and 30.000 photos.
    Manuscript and plan for Jörn Donner's last inteview: Pirjo Honkasalo.
    Featuring: Anders Carpelan, Rafael Donner, Johan Donner, Harriet Andersson, Tuula Söderberg, Bitte Westerlund.
    Language: Swedish.
    80 min
    Festival premiere: 29 Jan 2021 DocPoint online.
    Telepremiere: 6 Feb 2021 Yle Teema Fem.
    Vimeo preview copy with English subtitles viewed on a 4K tv screen at home in Lappeenranta, 25 Dec 2020.

AA: Jörn Donner was a public figure whose field of activities in culture, media and politics was so vast that writing his biography would be a daunting project.

John Webster's focus, as stated in the title of his film, is on the private Jörn Donner. His public life is presented only as a framework.

This is an authorized project – authorized by Jörn Donner himself during the last months of his life to a make it "warts and all".

Webster was given access to the private family archives, including home movies and a vast collection of photographs covering Donner's entire life: 30.000 photos mostly taken by Donner himself, "a treasure chest" introduced by Jörn's trusted book designer Anders Carpelan. Most of the photos have never been seen in public before. The discovery of the photos was a surprise even to Jörn's own family.

We hear the remarks of his oldest son Johan Donner, condemning Jörn as a bad father, always neglecting his children. We also hear the testimony of his youngest son Rafael Donner, telling that Jörn was a good father, taking good care of his children.

We meet the "arrogant, self-centered motherfucker" (Johan Donner) and the young explorer avid to explore the post-war world on extended travels, visiting Cinecittà and the Cannes Film Festival for the first time at age 21, learning to know Luchino Visconti and Michelangelo Antonioni in Rome, and photographing Vittorio De Sica, Olivia De Havilland, Kirk Douglas, Walt Disney, Jean Cocteau and Howard Hawks in Cannes. In the following year in Helsinki he meets Ingmar Bergman and Harriet Andersson for the first time.

Speaking about his world view Donner quotes Bertolt Brecht's poem "An die Nachgeborenen" (1939). The dark times of the Nazi expansion, during which Brecht wrote his poem, are over, and new challenges are faced in the age of post-war liberation, reconstruction and the Cold War. Donner spends time in the divided Berlin before the building of the wall and embarks on one of his careers as a journalist with a wide international perspective.

"Chasing after the wind" is Donner's resume of his public career, quoting the Bible.*

For his mass media presence Donner became a "media whore" who created an outlandish public persona that had little in common with his private behaviour. Outside the spotlight of media attention Donner was in a more felicitious way a zoon politikon, a social animal, good company, with an appealing presence.

A big part of Donner's publications fell in the domain of autofiction, and he was famous as an author who started everything with the word "I". But that "I" was also to a great extent fictional.

There was a more secret Jörn Donner of which this film gives some clues. I would guess that there were three key secrets.

The first one was the family romance of his childhood. Jörn never got to know his father Kai Donner (1888–1935) who died when Jörn was two years old. But also his mother, Baroness Margareta von Bonsdorff (1890–1955), remained distant. Jörn was warmly taken care of as a child, but not by his parents.

The second one was political. In contrast to his father Kai Donner, who was an activist of the extreme Right, Jörn as a teenager became a Marxist, to the left from Social Democrats, but he hated dogmatism and condemned Soviet imperialism. He was active in politics, switching membership between the Swedish People's Party and the Social Democratic Party in the later decades, but essentially he was a free thinker. To the end he shared the motto of Karl Marx: "Doubt everything".

The third one was sexual. We live in an age when we are learning better than ever that differences in sexuality between people are enormous, and this can cause huge misunderstandings. Jörn Donner's sexuality was exceptionally high. He did not repress it, but he was able to channel it into his creativity. There is an interesting remark by Donner about Urho Kekkonen in Esa Saarinen's book (and also in Donner's novels Father and Son and The President) that I think is a confession.

Jörn's final words in the movie are about the private self beyond the private self.

"Nu skall man komma ihåg, att det finns ett privat jag, som är bortom det privata jaget. Det är så att säga onämnbart. Det är inte mitt äktenskap, mina barn, min familj, min släkt, det är inte Europa, det är inte världen, det är inte Finland. Det är något privat som jag behåller för mig själv. Med vad som är innerst inne, det kommer ingen utomstående åt någonsin. Det här behåller jag för mig själv."

"We must now remember that there is a private self beyond the private self. It is in a way inexpressible. It's not my marriage, my children, my family, it's not Europe, it's not the world, it's not Finland. It is something private that I keep for myself. What is innermost, no outsider can ever reach. I keep it for myself."

...
"Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun." (The Bible : Ecclesiastes : 2)

Jörn Donner in memoriam (obituary in Journal of Film Preservation by FIAF / Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film)

Jörn Donner (1933–2020). Photo from: Elonet / National Audiovisual Institute (KAVI).

Harriet Andersson and Jörn Donner in Stockholm, 1964. Photo: Gösta Glase.

De omnibus dubitandum est (Doubt everything)
– the motto of Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Marx, and Jörn Donner*

Jörn Donner (1933–2020) was a Swedish-speaking Finnish author, director, producer, journalist, critic, politician, and diplomat, a man of the world, a man of letters, and a man of the cinema. He was a co-founder of the Finnish Film Archive, and, at various times, CEO of the Swedish Film Institute, chairman of the board of the Finnish Film Foundation, a Member of Parliament, a Member of the European Parliament, chairman of the culture committee of Helsinki, and Consul General of Finland in Los Angeles. Donner was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and co-founder of the European Film Academy. He served as a jury member and chairman at several film festivals, wrote more than 60 books and 4,000 articles, financed or produced over 60 films, and directed 35 films, television series, and documentaries.

With Aito Mäkinen, Donner founded the Finnish Film Archive in 1957 and brought it into the FIAF community. He became a friend of Henri Langlois and his team; Langlois mounted the first Donner retrospective at the Cinémathèque française. He was close to Marion Michelle, the FIAF secretary, in part through their mutual friend Joris Ivens. He knew FIAF president Jerzy Toeplitz well: in Warsaw on All Souls’ Day 1957 they jointly lit a candle in memory of the dead, and Donner also contributed to Toeplitz’s journal Kwartalnik Filmowy.

At the 1958 FIAF Congress in Prague, Donner not only applied for membership for the Helsinki archive, but became popular as the owner of the sole international plug at the Hotel Alcron where wall sockets dated from the Habsburg era. Donner represented Finland at the meeting of the Nordic film archives in Oslo in May 1959, and during that year’s FIAF crisis involving Langlois and Michelle, Finland’s role was conciliatory.

Donner returned to the FIAF community as the head of the cultural sector at the Swedish Film Institute from 1972 to 1974. It was a ghostly experience for him at the Ottawa Congress to see mostly faces familiar from Prague. When the status of  the Swedish archive changed in 1964 (the collections held by the Filmhistoriska samlingarna – the Film Historic Collections – were handed over to the newly-established Svenska Filminstitutet), Donner renegotiated its FIAF membership; he did not interfere with Anna-Lena Wibom’s visionary work at the cinémathèque, instead focusing on cultural exchange.

Donner also launched the exemplary Swedish national filmography, Svensk filmografi, later repeating the trick in his homeland with Suomen kansallisfilmografia, the Finnish filmography, both of which are now incorporated into their digital descendants, Svensk filmdatabas and Elonet. Between 1978 and 1982 Donner was the CEO of the Swedish Film Institute and the producer of Ingmar Bergman’s farewell film Fanny and Alexander (1982). He admitted in an article he wrote for Svenska Dagbladet that he had “obviously exceeded [his] authority as CEO of the Swedish Film Institute”  in financing the most expensive Swedish film ever, but the risk paid off.  Of its four Academy Awards, Donner, as producer, received the one for Best Foreign Film.

The Donner family, originating from Lübeck, has been prominent in Finnish business and culture for over 250 years. Like a Thomas Mann hero, the young Jörn Donner went against the grain, active in circles of radical authors and modernist poets, including his 1949 schoolmates in Stockholm, Sven Lindqvist and Tomas Tranströmer. At the age of 18, he published his first work of fiction (in Swedish) Välsignade liv (Blessed Lives, a collection of short stories) and founded the cultural magazine Arena.

By 1951, he was on his way into the inner circle of Swedish culture, befriending Olof Lagercrantz, future editor-in-chief of Dagens Nyheter (DN), and Åke Runnquist, editor of Bonniers litterära magasin (BLM) and future Bonnier manager. Later Donner became the main film critic for both BLM and DN; it was his colleague critic and close friend Harry Schein who founded the Swedish Film Institute in 1963.
 
Seeing Ingmar Bergman’s Prison in Stockholm in 1949, was, for Donner, the revelation of cinema as modern art.  In 1953, he met both Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni, his two greatest cinematic inspirations, in 1962 writing the first book-length study of Bergman’s films, Djävulens ansikte – Ingmar Bergmans filmer, translated as The Personal Vision of Ingmar Bergman. Donner’s five documentaries on the Swedish director (1975–2018) offer privileged insights into the great spirit of Nordic culture.

Donner directed his first (short) films in 1954, and soon became a key figure in Finnish film modernism and new waves as producer, financer, or advisor to Mikko Niskanen, Rauni Mollberg, Peter von Bagh, and the Kaurismäki brothers. He was also an early champion of women directors such as Pirjo Honkasalo.

Known as “the Antonioni of the North” for his cycle of five films starring Harriet Andersson, Donner won the Opera Prima prize for best directorial debut at the Venice Film Festival with the first of these, A Sunday in September (1963). Antonioni and Bergman told him that his films needed work, but Donner ignored their advice and changed tack instead. Starting with Black on White (1967), he broke the sex wall in four loose and irreverent films. A nonchalant satire of an alienated way of life secured them a cult status.

Back on a serious note, Men Can’t Be Raped (1978), based on the novel by feminist author Märta Tikkanen, was ahead of its time. In Donner's late period, two powerful historical dramas, both starring Minna Haapkylä, stand out: The Border 1918 (2007), produced by Donner and detailing some of his father’s post-war experiences, and The Interrogation (2009). Donner also directed the Brechtian biopic Armi Lives! (2015) about his good friend Armi Ratia, the formidable co-founder of the Marimekko textile company, again starring Haapkylä.

Donner was also an award-winning documentary filmmaker. With his two Perkele!** films he captured Finland in periods of crisis: Perkele! Images from Finland (1971) on the so-called “big move” of migration from the countryside to the cities, and Perkele! 2 Images from Finland (2017), about the European refugee crisis, while Nine Ways to Approach Helsinki (1982) is one of the finest filmed accounts of Finland’s capital.

As a man of letters, “it always pays to read” and “nulla dies sine linea” (“not a day without a line”) were among Donner’s mottos. He wrote a series of 14 novels on a Swedish-Finnish industrialist family (1955–2001), and started a distinguished line of reportage books with Report from Berlin (1958) (English translation 1961) and Report from the Danube (1962), his sources including Bertolt Brecht, Willy Brandt, Georg Lukács, and Marlene Dietrich.

Donner was a public intellectual who thrived on debate. Besides, around 1968 he launched a shocking public persona in talk shows and tabloids. Though in private he was polite, even shy, he deliberately constructed a Mr Hyde side as a “media whore” to garner publicity for non-commercial projects such as the 1100-page Dadaist anti-memoir Mammoth (2013), a display of his late style.

Donner made public his struggle with cancer, and had his cardiac surgery filmed for Perkele! II. At the 2019 Helsinki Book Fair, there was standing room only when the wheelchair-bound Donner met his audience in a mood of cheerful irony.  He took a line from poet Edith Södergran, “Here is the coast of eternity”, as the motto of his last film The Memory of Ingmar Bergman (2018).

Like Langlois and Toeplitz, Donner believed that cinema is an essential part of history, society and culture, and without film archives it is impossible to make full sense of them. He accumulated one of the most remarkable private libraries in Finland, the bulk of which has been divided between four institutions. His voluminous correspondence is archived at Åbo Akademi.

Antti Alanen
Journal of Film Preservation 103 (October 2020)
Published by the kind permission of FIAF (Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film)

------
* All inspired, of course, by the doctrine of methodical doubt by René Descartes.
** "Perkele" is a powerful Finnish curse. It is the name of an ancient thunder god. "Donner" means "thunder" in German.

Bertolt Brecht: "An die Nachgeborenen" / "To Those Born After" (poem, 1939)

Bertolt Brecht (L) and Walter Benjamin (R) play chess in 1934 in Denmark. (Photo: PD). Bertolt-Brecht-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

Jörn Donner in memoriam: a favourite poem of his, quoted in John Webster's film Donner – privat (2021). This poem is the only work by Bertolt Brecht of which a recording by the poet himself exists.

Bertolt Brecht
An die Nachgeborenen

1

Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten!

Das arglose Wort ist töricht. Eine glatte Stirn
Deutet auf Unempfindlichkeit hin. Der Lachende
Hat die furchtbare Nachricht
Nur noch nicht empfangen.

Was sind das für Zeiten, wo
Ein Gespräch über Bäume fast ein Verbrechen ist
Weil es ein Schweigen über so viele Untaten einschließt!
Der dort ruhig über die Straße geht
Ist wohl nicht mehr erreichbar für seine Freunde
Die in Not sind?

Es ist wahr: ich verdiene noch meinen Unterhalt
Aber glaubt mir: das ist nur ein Zufall. Nichts
Von dem, was ich tue, berechtigt mich dazu, mich satt zu essen.
Zufällig bin ich verschont. (Wenn mein Glück aussetzt
Bin ich verloren.)

Man sagt mir: iß und trink du! Sei froh, daß du hast!
Aber wie kann ich essen und trinken, wenn
Ich es dem Hungernden entreiße, was ich esse, und
Mein Glas Wasser einem Verdurstenden fehlt?
Und doch esse und trinke ich.

Ich wäre gerne auch weise
In den alten Büchern steht, was weise ist:
Sich aus dem Streit der Welt halten und die kurze Zeit
Ohne Furcht verbringen
Auch ohne Gewalt auskommen
Böses mit Gutem vergelten
Seine Wünsche nicht erfüllen, sondern vergessen
Gilt für weise.
Alles das kann ich nicht:
Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten!


                                   2

In die Städte kam ich zu der Zeit der Unordnung
Als da Hunger herrschte.
Unter die Menschen kam ich zu der Zeit des Aufruhrs
Und ich empörte mich mit ihnen.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.

Mein Essen aß ich zwischen den Schlachten
Schlafen legt ich mich unter die Mörder
Der Liebe pflegte ich achtlos
Und die Natur sah ich ohne Geduld.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.

Die Straßen führten in den Sumpf zu meiner Zeit
Die Sprache verriet mich dem Schlächter
Ich vermochte nur wenig. Aber die Herrschenden
Saßen ohne mich sicherer, das hoffte ich.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.

Die Kräfte waren gering. Das Ziel
Lag in großer Ferne
Es war deutlich sichtbar, wenn auch für mich
Kaum zu erreichen.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.


                             3

Ihr, die ihr auftauchen werdet aus der Flut
In der wir untergegangen sind
Gedenkt
Wenn ihr von unseren Schwächen sprecht
Auch der finsteren Zeit
Der ihr entronnen seid.

Gingen wir doch, öfter als die Schuhe die Länder wechselnd
Durch die Kriege der Klassen, verzweifelt
Wenn da nur Unrecht war und keine Empörung.

Dabei wissen wir ja:
Auch der Haß gegen die Niedrigkeit
Verzerrt die Züge.
Auch der Zorn über das Unrecht
Macht die Stimme heiser. Ach, wir
Die wir den Boden bereiten wollten für Freundlichkeit
Konnten selber nicht freundlich sein.

Ihr aber, wenn es soweit sein wird
Daß der Mensch dem Menschen ein Helfer ist
Gedenkt unsrer
Mit Nachsicht.

Bertolt Brecht (Svendborger Gedichte, 1939).

...

Bertolt Brecht
To Those Born Later

Truly I live in dark times!
Frank speech is naïve. A smooth forehead
Suggests insensitivity.  The man who laughs
Has simply not yet heard
The terrible news.

What kind of times are these, when
To talk about trees is almost a crime
Because it implies silence about so many horrors?
When the man over there calmly crossing the street
Is already perhaps beyond the reach of his friends
Who are in need?

It’s true that I still earn my daily bread
But, believe me, that’s only an accident.  Nothing
I do gives me the right to eat my fill.
By chance I've been spared.  (If my luck breaks, I'm lost.)

They say to me: Eat and drink! Be glad you have it!
But how can I eat and drink if I snatch what I eat
From the starving
And my glass of water belongs to someone dying of thirst?
And yet I eat and drink.

I would also like to be wise.
In the old books it says what wisdom is:
To shun the strife of the world and to live out
Your brief time without fear
Also to get along without violence
To return good for evil
Not to fulfill your desires but to forget them
Is accounted wise.
All this I cannot do.
Truly, I live in dark times.

II
I came to the cities in a time of disorder
When hunger reigned.
I came among men in a time of revolt
And I rebelled with them.
So passed my time
Given me to on earth.

I ate my food between battles
I lay down to sleep among murderers
I practiced love carelessly
And I had little patience for nature’s beauty.
So passed my time
Given to me on earth.

All roads led into the mire in my time.
My tongue betrayed me to the butchers.
There was little I could do.  But those is power
Sat safer without me: that was my hope.
So passed my time
Given to me on earth.

Our forces were slight.  Our goal
Lay far in the distance
Clearly visible, though I myself
Was unlikely to reach it.
So passed my time
Given to me on earth.

III
You who will emerge from the flood
In which we have gone under
Bring to mind
When you speak of our failings
Bring to mind also the dark times
That you have escaped.

Changing countries more often than our shoes,
We went through the class wars, despairing
When there was only injustice, no outrage.

And yet we realized:
Hatred, even of meanness
Contorts the features.
Anger, even against injustice
Makes the voice hoarse. O,
We who wanted to prepare the ground for friendship
Could not ourselves be friendly.

But you, when the time comes at last
When man is helper to man
Think of us
With forbearance.

...


Bertolt Brecht
Niille, jotka tulevat meidän jälkeemme

Totisesti minä elän synkkää aikaa.
Avomielinen puhe on hulluutta,
sileä otsa osoittaa tunteettomuutta.
Se, joka nauraa, ei vain vielä ole kuullut hirvittävää uutista.

Mikä aika on tämä, jolloin puhe puista on melkein rikos,
koska siinä vaietaan niin monista rikoksista?
Se, joka levollisena ylittää kadun, tuskin enää tuntee ystäviään,
jotka ovat hädässä.

On totta, minä ansaitsen vielä leipäni,
mutta, uskokaa minua, se on vain sattuma,
ei mikään siitä, mitä teen, oikeuta minua syömään itseäni kylläiseksi,
olen säästynyt sattumalta. Kun onni pettää, minä olen hukassa.

Minulle sanotaan: "Syö ja juo, ole iloinen, että sinulla on!"
Mutta kuinka minä voin syödä ja juoda, kun riistän ruokani nälkäiseltä?
Ja janoinen on vailla vettä, jonka minä juon,
ja kuitenkin minä syön ja juon.

Minä olisin kernaasti viisas. Vanhoissa kirjoissa kerrotaan, mitä on viisaus:
"Vetäydy maailman taisteluista, ja vietä lyhyt aikasi vailla pelkoa,
tule toimeen ilman väkivaltaa, maksa paha hyvällä,
luovu toiveistasi, unohda ne."

Tätä sanotaan viisaudeksi.
Tätä kaikkea minä en osaa.
Totisesti minä elän synkkää aikaa.

Finnish translation : Brita Polttila in : Bertolt Brecht : Runoja 1914–1956 (Helsinki: Tammi, 1964).

Part I of Bertolt Brecht's poem was composed by Kaj Chydenius in 1969 for the play Saaren vangit (directed by Kalle Holmberg). It was sung as "Minä elän synkkää aikaa" by Kristiina Halkola on her album Täytyy uskaltaa (Love Records, 1969).

For Kalevi Haikara this poem is "one of the most magnificent of all times" and "Brecht's last will". He calls it "Tuleville sukupolville" in the IV chapter of his Brecht biography (pp. 181–253).
    Kalevi Haikara : Bertolt Brechtin aika, elämä ja tuotanto. Helsinki : Art House, 1992. ISBN 9518840636. 625 sivua, [6] kuvasivua : kuvitettu ; 24 cm.