Twin Peaks S2.E7 Lonely Souls

 

David Lynch: Twin Peaks S2.E7 Lonely Souls (US 1990). "A man is standing in front of a mirror, looking away from it. His reflection shows a completely different figure. Leland Palmer inhabited by Killer BOB. The scene is the beginning of one which reveals the answer to the long-running plot arc for the series." (Wikipedia). Producer and editor: Mary Sweeney.

Morning discussion with Mary Sweeney

Viewed after the discussion at The School, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 17 June 2023

WIKIPEDIA: EPISODE 14 (TWIN PEAKS)

Episode 14 (Twin Peaks)

Season 2 Episode 7

Directed by David Lynch

Written by Mark Frost
Produced by Mary Sweeney
Edited by Mary Sweeney

Original air date November 10, 1990

Running time 47 minutes

Guest appearances

Grace Zabriskie as Sarah Palmer

Wendy Robie as Nadine Hurley

Al Strobel as Phillip Michael Gerard / MIKE

David Lynch as Bureau Chief Gordon Cole

Fumio Yamaguchi as Mr. Tojamura

Gary Hershberger as Mike Nelson

Catherine E. Coulson as Margaret Lanterman / "The Log Lady"

Carel Struycken as The Giant

Hank Worden as The Elderly Room Service Waiter

Frank Silva as Killer BOB (uncredited)

"Episode 14", also known as "Lonely Souls", is the seventh episode of the second season of the American mystery television series Twin Peaks. The episode was written by series co-creator Mark Frost and directed by series co-creator David Lynch. It features series regulars Kyle MacLachlan, Michael Ontkean, Ray Wise and Richard Beymer; and guest stars Frank Silva (uncredited) as Killer BOB, Hank Worden as The Waiter, Julee Cruise as Singer, and David Lynch as Gordon Cole.

Twin Peaks centers on the investigation into the murder of schoolgirl Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) in the small rural town in Washington state after which the series is named. In this episode, during the ongoing investigation into Laura's death, FBI special agent Dale Cooper (MacLachlan) and Sheriff Truman (Ontkean) continue to search for her killer, the demonic BOB, who has possessed a human host. Aided by Mike (Al Strobel), Cooper and Truman arrest Benjamin Horne (Beymer), believing him to be inhabited by BOB. Later that night, The Giant (Carel Struycken) warns Cooper "it is happening again," while BOB's real host, Leland Palmer (Wise), murders Madeline Ferguson (Lee).

"Episode 14" was first broadcast on November 10, 1990, on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and was watched by an audience of 17.2 million households in the United States, about 20 percent of the available audience. The episode was well received, garnering positive reviews after its initial broadcast and in subsequent years. Academic readings of the entry have highlighted the theme of duality and the cinematography in the revelation scene.

Plot

Background

The small fictional town of Twin Peaks, Washington, has been shocked by the murder of schoolgirl Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) and the attempted murder of her friend Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine). FBI special agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) has been sent to the town to investigate, and has come to the realization that the killer was possessed by a demonic entity—Killer BOB (Frank Silva). MIKE (Al Strobel), a similar spirit, has spoken to Cooper and his FBI superior, Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole (David Lynch), explaining the nature of their existence.

Meanwhile, Madeline "Maddy" Ferguson (Lee), Laura's cousin, has arrived in Twin Peaks from Missoula, Montana, and helps Laura's friends Donna Hayward (Lara Flynn Boyle) and James Hurley (James Marshall) investigate the killing. Donna finds Harold Smith (Lenny Von Dohlen), one of Laura's friends to whom she had given a secret diary, and Donna and Maddy attempt to steal it from him.

Events

Cooper, Sheriff Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean), Deputy Andy Brennan (Harry Goaz), Doctor Hayward (Warren Frost) and Mike visit The Great Northern hotel in an attempt to find Bob's human host. Upon the approach of Benjamin Horne, Mike convulses and collapses onto the floor, indicating that Bob has inhabited someone nearby. Meanwhile, Deputy Hawk (Michael Horse) visits the residence of Harold Smith and finds that he has committed suicide. Hawk contacts Cooper and Truman, and they arrive at Smith's residence and discover Laura Palmer's secret diary among his belongings. Meanwhile, Maddy announces she is leaving Twin Peaks to return home.

Elsewhere, Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) and Shelly Johnson (Mädchen Amick) discuss their financial concerns regarding Shelly's catatonic husband Leo (Eric Da Re). Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) confronts her father Ben (Richard Beymer) over his ownership of One Eyed Jacks, a casino and brothel on the Canada–United States border. When Audrey asks him whether he killed Laura Palmer, he denies it but confesses that he and Laura had a sexual relationship and that he loved her. Later, Shelly arrives for work at the Double R Diner and announces to its owner Norma Jennings (Peggy Lipton) that she is resigning to care for Leo full-time. Ed Hurley (Everett McGill) and his wife Nadine, who is experiencing amnesia and adrenaline-induced strength, enter the diner. Nadine, believing she is eighteen years old, speaks to Norma, but the waitress, along with Ed, puts on a façade and conceals the truth. Meanwhile, Bobby and his friend Mike Nelson (Gary Hershberger) break open the sole of Leo Johnson's shoe, discovering a microcassette.

Cooper examines the remains of Laura's diary at the police station, finding repeated references to Bob's long-running molestation of her. Cooper also learns that Bob is a friend of Laura's father, Leland Palmer (Ray Wise), and finds an entry that seemingly implicates Ben Horne. Audrey then enters and tells Cooper about Ben and Laura's affair. After she leaves, Cooper tells Sheriff Truman about The Giant's message "without chemicals, he points". Cooper recalls when Mike—who becomes active when his human host, Philip Gerard, is not on drugs—spasmed in The Great Northern's lobby when Ben entered. Cooper concludes that Ben is Bob's human host and arrests him.

Later that night, Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) crawls across her living room floor and has a vision of a white horse. Cooper and Truman visit The Roadhouse at the behest of the Log Lady (Catherine E. Coulson). While a band perform, Cooper has a vision of The Giant, who tells him "it is happening again". The Giant sees Leland Palmer fixing his tie, while his reflection in the mirror shows Bob. Maddy comes downstairs and sees Bob standing over Sarah's unconscious body. Bob's visage shifts back and forth between Leland's and his own. He chases Maddy up the stairs, brings her to the living room and repeatedly strangles, punches, taunts and kisses her before ramming her head into a glass picture frame, killing her. Bob places a letter "O" under her fingernails, as he had done with other letters on past victims. Cooper's vision ends, and The Waiter (Hank Worden) tells Cooper he is sorry. Donna and James cry during the band's final song.

Production

"Episode 14" was written by series co-creator Mark Frost, who had written six previous episodes and directed the first-season finale, "Episode 7". Frost co-wrote three further installments—"Episode 16", "Episode 26" and Episode 29"—and all the episodes of the 2017 limited series. This episode was directed by Lynch, the fifth such episode of Twin Peaks; he later directed "Episode 29" and all the installments of the limited series. Lynch has later said he feels he was able to show more on screen in the episode than he expected the network's standards and practices office to allow. He credits this to the unusual imagery used, adding "if it's not quite standard it sneaks through, but it could be that the 'not quite standard' things make it even more terrifying and disturbing."

The cast of Twin Peaks did not know who would be revealed as Palmer's killer for some time. Wise had hoped his character Leland would not be the eventual murderer; as the parent of a young girl he was disturbed by the idea of portraying a man who had murdered his daughter. Wise was called to a meeting with Lynch, Frost, Sheryl Lee and Richard Beymer, during which Lynch told those assembled that Leland Palmer was the killer: while addressing Wise, Lynch said "Ray, it was you, it was always you." However, Wise felt the end result was "beautiful" and that it left him and his character "satisfied and redeemed". Before this meeting, the only people to know the killer's identity were Frost, Lynch, and Lynch's daughter Jennifer, who had been given the information so she could author the 1990 tie-in novel The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer.

Lynch has mentioned that he tried to avoid thinking about the morality of the narrative, or how it would be received by censors or critics, feeling that if he allowed that worry to affect him it would ultimately drive him to create something that made him uncomfortable, preferring instead to simply produce the episode he wanted to and be prepared to defend it if necessary. He has also compared the search for Laura's killer to the central narrative of the 1960s television series The Fugitive, which featured an ongoing search for a one-armed man. Contrasting the two, Lynch stated "each week, you know, they [the writers for The Fugitive] hardly ever dealt with that. And that's the beautiful thing. You keep wondering, 'When will he find this guy and set everything straight?' But then you knew it would be the end."

Cinematography

The climactic murder of Madeline Ferguson in the episode features extensive use of jump cuts to portray Leland Palmer's spirit possession, switching rapidly between actors Ray Wise and Frank Silva. The scene is unusually long for a murder on television, lasting over four minutes. Some of its elements, including the insertion of a paper letter under Ferguson's fingernail and the use of jump cuts to events in the Roadhouse bar, are intended to echo similar aspects of "Pilot".

Erica Sheen and Annette Davison, in their book The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions, have drawn attention to the use of mise en scène early in the episode. A scene featuring Ferguson, Leland and Sarah Palmer sitting in the Palmers' living room pans across the family's bric-a-brac. This technique draws attention to the painting with which Ferguson will be assaulted, and it highlights the similarity between Ferguson and Palmer by focusing on "the famous homecoming queen shot" of Palmer while Ferguson's face is visible. Sheen and Davison argued that the scene highlights the "emotional claustrophobia" felt by Ferguson, and that the set surrounding her was deliberately assembled to create this feeling.

Themes

The revelation scene, in which Bob is shown to have inhabited Leland Palmer, has been noted for its sense of duality, a common theme throughout Twin Peaks. In Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, David Lavery wrote that upon The Giant's appearance to Dale Cooper, "The Giant has transmuted the public place into something private". Lavery added that the murder scene is "in the living room, the public within the private". He summarized that the ambiguity between the public perception and the private perception—"the outer and the inner"—"reverberates" throughout the scene. In his view, Maddy Ferguson was Laura Palmer's "double" and Leland is "doubled" by Bob. However, Lavery referred to the duality of Leland and Bob as a "subjective formation" and added that the use of jump cuts "could be Maddy's view of Leland just as much as Leland's view of himself".

This scene has also been noted by critic Sue Lafky from the Journal of Film and Video as one of several in the series that suggest incest and necrophilia. She speculated that "Leland/Bob may have raped the dead or dying Maddie", comparing this to the "necrophilic fantasies" that Laura Palmer's corpse evokes, and Ben Horne's unwitting brush with incest when he encounters his daughter Audrey at a brothel.

Broadcast and reception

"It's a promise of sorts that we've still got a reason to be with the show, and it sets us up for the middle portion of this cycle. This good will is carried through episodes 15 and 16, as the killer is finally unmasked, and as the Log Lady tells us in her intro, shifts the queries from who to why."

—DVD Talk's Jamie S. Rich on the episode's place in the series

"Episode 14" first aired on the ABC network on November 10, 1990. The initial broadcast was viewed by 17.2 million households in the United States, making it the fifty-first most-viewed broadcast episode for the week. These viewing figures represented 20 percent of the available audience and 10.4 percent of all households in the country. This represented a significant rise in viewing figures compared to the preceding episode, "Episode 13", which was seen by 11.3 million households. However, the following episode, "Episode 15", suffered a drop in viewing figures, attracting 13.3 million households.

The episode was well received critically. Writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, Richard Roeper noted that fans and critics had begun to lose interest in the series by this point, but he felt that "even at its most strained and obtuse, [Twin Peaks] displays more imagination and effort than almost everything else in TV land." He added that viewers may have been put off by the series' frame of time, explaining that only two weeks of narrative time had elapsed since "Pilot", a slow pace contrasted with the "fast-forward, instant payoff philosophy of most television". AllRovi's Andrea LeVasseur described the installment as "pivotal", noting that it "answers some of the series' long-running questions".

Writing for The A.V. Club, Keith Phipps rated the episode an "A", adding "it's not like there's any shortage of action." He felt the effects used in the episode were effective and frightening while still seeming low-key. In his view, the episode's blending of surrealism and horror was similar to scenes from Lynch's 2001 film Mulholland Drive. Phipps described the climactic murder as "one of the most disturbing moments in the Lynch filmography", adding that it was a recurring Lynchian theme to represent the end of innocence as an actual death. IGN's Matt Fowler included the murder at number 16 in a list of the "Top 20 Creepiest Moments on TV", describing it as "nightmare fuel". Fowler felt the depiction of the killing was "savage" and unusually long for a television scene; however, he added that the rampant speculation as to the identity of the killer meant the revelation would be "somewhat expected".

Keith Uhlich, writing for Slant Magazine, described the episode as "quintessential Lynch, perhaps his finest work", noting that the climactic murder scene was more powerful because of its necessary use of implication and suggestion. However, Uhlich felt the installment was "a tough act to follow", arguing that the only subsequent installments that competed with it were the series' finale and the 1992 psychological thriller film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, which is based on Twin Peaks. DVD Talk's Jamie S. Rich described the installment as "a violent, disturbing revelation". Rich felt the entry's supernatural elements assured the audience there was "a grander scheme to the Laura Palmer story", elevating the series' long-running murder plot beyond "just a random night partying with drug dealers gone wrong".

AA: It was a spectactular experience for me to view a Twin Peaks episode on the screen for the first time. I have been a David Lynch convert since Blue Velvet, and I followed Twin Peaks during its first run. I have always held Twin Peaks as one of the greatest achievements in television, and I included Twin Peaks Special Pilot to my 1000 best films of all time in my MMM Film Guide. How well it has stood the test of time, now feeling stronger than ever. The abuse and incest themes of course today have special increased resonance. David Lynch was ahead of his time.

Already the legendary credit title montage... the score by Angelo Badalamenti (1937-2022)... the otherworldly Julee Cruise (1956-2022)... the first shot with the police lineup with their coffees and donuts, with Gordon Cole (played by David Lynch himself) leaving for secret business in Oregon...

This crucial episode was assigned to Mary Sweeney by David Lynch to produce and edit, leading to a collaboration in Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me, Lost Highway, The Straight Story and Mulholland Drive.

Morning discussion: Mary Sweeney (Sodankylä 2023)

Mary Sweeney in the morning discussion, hosted by Otto Kylmälä, The School, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 17 June 2023. Photo: Susanna Pesonen.

Mary Sweeney in the morning discussion, The School, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 17 June 2023. Photo: Hilma Toivonen.

In English, hosted by Otto Kylmälä

The School, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 17 June 2023

MARY SWEENEY

Otto Kylmälä (MSFF 2023): "Mary Sweeney’s versatile career in film has spanned over forty years. Her filmography is characterised by collaboration with film director David Lynch, whose surreal and mystical films, edited and produced by Sweeney, have become modern classics.

As they say, behind every successful man there is a woman, and Sweeney is that woman, whose significant contribution has so enhanced award-winning films and TV series that cruise down the dark roads of dream worlds. As a producer, she enables rare artistic freedom and, as an editor, she cuts abundant and ambiguous material into an emotive experience whilst ensuring that viewers stay on track.

Sweeney began her career as an assistant editor and sound editor on quality dramas such as Warren Beatty’s Reds (1981) and Bruce Beresford’s Tender Mercies (1983). She started working with David Lynch as an assistant editor on the films Blue Velvet (1986) and Wild at Heart (1990), after which she quickly progressed to become a key collaborator with Lynch as his producer and editor.

Their decades-long collaboration resulted in the biggest milestones in their respective careers, including one of the greatest TV series of all time Twin Peaks (1990–1991) and the murder mystery Lost Highway (1997), subconsciously inspired by the O. J. Simpson trial. Mulholland Drive (2001), the phoenix that rose from the ashes of an abandoned TV pilot, is considered one of the best films of the 2000s, earning Sweeney the 2002 BAFTA Award for best editing.

In the late 1990s, Sweeney drew inspiration from a true story to write the screenplay for The Straight Story (1999), a gentle film and arguably one of Lynch’s best. The warm and humane drama tells the story of Alvin Straight, a 70-year-old war veteran, who travels hundreds of kilometres on his lawnmower across the states to make amends with his dying brother.

Sweeney’s own directorial debut Baraboo (2009) reflects the compassionately humanitarian tone of The Straight Story, interweaving the lives of six individuals in different situations, set in the dingy motel district of a small town. Against the backdrop of picture-postcard landscapes, the film’s nucleus of warm-hearted reciprocal care conceals an altogether darker undertone and the scars borne by three generations affected by war.

Alongside her filmmaking, Sweeney teaches at the University of Southern California, exploring ‘Myths and Metaphors’ and encouraging students to think beyond rigid dramatic conventions. Her latest venture has brought her into the world of podcasts to collaborate with brain imaging professor Jonas Kaplan on the spellbinding podcast FLOAT, which explores the interconnections between art, creativity, and neuroscience." Otto Kylmälä

MSFF 2023 Resume: 17 June 2023 Aamukeskustelussa Mary Sweeney

" Lauantain aamukeskustelussa kuultiin yhdysvaltalaista leikkaaja-ohjaaja-tuottaja Mary Sweeneytä (s. 1953), joka tunnetaan parhaiten yhteistyöstään David Lynchin kanssa. Sweeneyn mukaan työ Lynchin elokuvien leikkaajana on toiminut, sillä Sweeney seuraa Lynchiltä saatua käsikirjoitusta ottamatta liikaa taiteellisia vapauksia. Sweeney kokee myös, ettei tarvitse eriteltyjä vastauksia siihen, mitä elokuvien mystiset asiat tarkoittivat: “David on runollinen kun miettii elokuvan kieltä, mutta runous kirjoitetaan lopulta leikkaushuoneessa.”

Sen sijaan hänen leikkausprosessinsa pohjautuu elokuvan emotionaaliseen maisemaan. Sweeneyn mukaan elokuvan pitää tuntua aidolta, ja vetää tunteiden kautta katsoja sisään: “Minusta empatia ja unelmointi ovat hyviä piirteitä leikkaajassa”, Sweeney totesi ja kertoi olleensa jo lapsesta saakka samankaltainen unelmoija. Sweeney toteaa myös osaavansa seurata Lynchin logiikkaa: “Leikkauksessa ei ole sääntöjä, mutta on noudatettava sisäistä logiikkaa. Tosin Davidin logiikka ei ole kovin loogista”, Sweeney naurahtaan ja jatkaa: “Mitä syvemmälle pääsin leikkaajan työssäni, sitä paremmin ymmärsin että logiikan tunnistamista ei voi opiskella.”

Sweeney rakastui huumaavasti leikkaamiseen opiskellessaan New Yorkin yliopistossa 80-luvun alussa. Siellä hän koki pystyvänsä hyödyntämään monia eri ongelmanratkaisutaitojaan samaan aikaan. Leikkaamisen taito vaati kuulemma harjaantumista ja useita toistoja ennen, kun hän alkoi olemaan tyytyväinen työhönsä. Hän toimi ensimmäisessä työssään legendaarisen Dede Allenin alaisena elokuvassa Punaiset (1981). Sweeneyn mukaan aikanaan leikkaamisen ajateltiin olevan kuin kodinhoitoa, siivoamista ja järjestelyä. Tämän vuoksi se jätettiin naisten hoidettavaksi. Kun Allen alkoi saada tunnustusta kyvyistään, miehetkin halusivat päästä alalle.  Sweeney mainitsee myös, ettei koskaan tavannut Allenia: “Työskentelin kaksi kerrosta hänen alapuolellaan.”

Lynchin kanssa yhteistyö alkoi apulaisena Twin Peaksin toisella kaudella. Lynchin aikaisempia elokuvia leikannut Duwayne Dunham ei ehtinyt editoida toisen kauden jaksoa, jossa Laura Palmerin murhaaja paljastuu, joten työ annettiin Sweeneylle. 

Sweeneyn tunnettavuus kasvoi myös elokuvan Lost Highway (1997) kautta, jonka tuottajana hän toimi. Tositapahtumiin perustuvan The Straight Storyn (1999) ideaa hän tarjosi itse Lynchille: “Halusin jonkin projektin, jossa David pääsisi näyttämään samaa puoltaan kuin Elefanttimiehessä (1980). Tunnistin itsepäiset, köyhyysrajan alapuolella olevat hahmot omasta lapsuudestani”, sanoo Wisconsinissa maitotilalla kasvanut Sweeney. Hän myös käsikirjoitti elokuvan itse. 

Nykyään Sweeney toimii käsikirjoittamisen opettajana ja haluaisi maalata ja ohjata enemmän lyhytelokuvia. " 

June 17: Morning Discussion with Mary Sweeney

MSFF 2023: " In Saturday’s morning discussion we heard editor, director, and producer Mary Sweeney (1953) best known for her collaborations with David Lynch. According to Sweeney, she has been a good editor for Lynch’s films because she adheres to the script and does not take liberties with it and does not ask questions about the meaning of the mythical elements in the films.

“David is poetic in his thinking of the cinematic language. Poetry is written in editing.” Instead, she relies on the film’s emotional landscape while editing. Sweeney says that the film needs to feel authentic and pull the viewer in through emotions. “Empathy and dreaminess are good traits for a film editor,” Sweeney said and continued that she had been a dreamer ever since her childhood. She received a Catholic education and would empathise deeply with for example the Stations of the Cross.

Sweeney fell in love with editing while studying at New York University in the beginning of the 80s because she felt she was able to use many of her problem-solving capabilities in it, although at first, she felt that her editing was “pretty bad”. In her first job she worked under the legendary Dede Allen on Reds (1981). “I worked two floors down, so I never saw her.”

Sweeney said that at the time editing was understood as housekeeping: cleaning and tidying up, and hence it was left to women. When Allen started to gain respect for her work men wanted to get into editing as well.

Sweeney’s collaboration with Lynch started as assistant on the second season of Twin Peaks. Duwayne Dunham who had edited Lynch’s earlier films did not have time to edit the episode in which Laura Palmer’s murderer is revealed, so Sweeney got the job.

“There are no rules in editing. I recognised the need for logic. David’s logic, so not very logical,” Sweeney explains laughing.

Finally, Sweeney became the producer of Lost Highway (1997) among other films. She offered the idea for The Straight Story (1999) based on a true story to Lynch. “I was looking for projects that would go back to Elephant man side of David. I recognised the stubborn character living in poverty from my own childhood,” says Sweeney who grew up on a milk farm in Wisconsin. She also wrote the script herself.

These days Sweeney teaches screen writing and would like to have more time for painting and directing short films. She was relieved that she was not asked to teach editing, as she finds that the trade is best learned hands on. “The deeper I went into editing the more I understood that the logic is not something you can study,” she said. " MSFF 2023

AA: I am a big aficionado of the Sodankylä morning discussions, and this one was among the best ever. 

Q: What was the first film you saw? 
A: PT-109 (US 1963, D: Leslie H. Martinson) with Cliff Robertson as John F. Kennedy.

Q: Which film would you take to the desert island?
A: Le Scaphandre et le papillon / The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (FR/US 2007, D: Julian Schnabel), starring Mathieu Amalric.

Universumin kaiut - Kaija Saariahon musiikki / Echoes of the Universe - The Music of Kaija Saariaho

Riitta Rask: Universumin kaiut - Kaija Saariahon musiikki / Echoes of the Universe - The Music of Kaija Saariaho (FI 2023).

ECHOES OF THE UNIVERSE – THE MUSIC OF KAIJA SAARIAHO

DIRECTOR: Riitta Rask

COUNTRY: Finland

YEAR: 2023

DURATION: 80 min

LANGUAGES: Finnish, English, French / subtitled in English

ORIGINAL NAME: Universumin kaiut – Kaija Saariahon musiikki

CATEGORY: Documentary Films, Finnish Films, Music Films, New Finnish Films, Special Screenings, Subtitles in English
Kitisen Kino, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 16 June 2023

Joonas Nykänen (MSFF 2023): "This documentary film, with an abundant wealth of composer Kaija Saariaho’s own comments and music, dissects the artist’s life. What was it like to go to a Steiner school as an extremely talented person and grow up to choose a path in music?"

"Due to her gender, Saariaho encounters prejudice along the way. The film examines how it was that this shy talent developed into a great composer. By making the focus Saariaho’s work, rather than her biography, it breaks the cliché of the suffering artist and instead creates a perception of a serene life filled with happiness."

"Saariaho meets young musicians and imparts pithy aphorisms about an artist’s career: talent alone is not enough. In Paris, the young Saariaho found solace away from the stifling atmosphere of her home country at that time. There she also met her partner Jean-Baptiste Barrière. The prolific Saariaho has given us music ranging from operas to chamber music. Echoes of the Universe offers us a new insight into the artist’s life." Joonas Nykänen

AA: I arrived late and Kitisen Kino was already filled to the max, but the compelling sound world of Riitta Rask's movie reached me in front of the tent, and I remained mesmerized on my bench until the end. The music and interview montage of this film is so wonderful that it is a complete artistic experience on the highest level even without images. I learned a lot about and with Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023) whose cinematic memorial this is. For instance she saw composition as an entire world, and welcomed structure. Saariaho was deeply influenced by the cinema, for instance Andrei Tarkovski. Her artistic parcours was about reaching ever higher tops, and she was at the peak of her creativity when we lost her to glioblastoma on 2 June 2023 in Paris at age 70.

Monica in the South Seas

Sami van Ingen, Mika Taanila: Monica in the South Seas (FI 2023) starring Monica Flaherty, here as a child in Samoa.

MONICA IN THE SOUTH SEAS

DIRECTOR: Sami van Ingen, Mika Taanila

COUNTRY: Finland

YEAR: 2023

DURATION: 72 min

LANGUAGES: English, Samoan / subtitled in Finnish

CATEGORY: Documentary Films, Finnish Films, New Finnish Films, Puhuttu tai tekstitetty suomeksi
In the presence of Mika Taanila, hosted by Otto Kylmälä.
Viewed at Kitisen Kino, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF) 16 June 2023

Ilpo Hirvonen (MSFF 2023): "After Nanook of the North (1922) had become the first documentary film to achieve wide success, Paramount gave director Robert J. Flaherty the freedom to make his next film anywhere. Known as the father of documentary cinema, Flaherty travelled with his family to Samoa where he shot Moana (1926). 50 years later, the director’s daughter Monica Flaherty returned to Samoa, where she had made her first memories as a 3- to 4-year-old. Monica’s goal was to record the sounds of the environment to create a sound version of her father’s silent film."

"Co-directed by Sami van Ingen and Mika Taanila, Monica in the South Seas tells the story behind the birth of this sound version Moana with Sound (1981/2014). At its heart, the film deals with the ambition to reach the past and its sounds, even though the past captured on film is tinted by fiction and western fantasies. The portrayal of the pursuit of lost sound also grows into a broader reflection on the sounds and silences of history, resonating in the film’s polyphonic audio-visual texture." Ilpo Hirvonen

AA: Sami van Ingen and Mika Taanila have created a lovely "making of" about Monica Flaherty's 1980s sonorized version of Moana, the pathbreaking work in the history of the documentary film. Sami van Ingen and Mika Taanila face the complexity of the documentary value of this movie head on. After all, the Flaherty family's mission was to document something that no longer existed, the ancient culture of the Samoan people that survived only in their memory.

Today, questions and issues from the angle of the new colonial history are necessary to discuss. Moana is a part of the Western culture's passion for South Seas exoticism. Personally, I don't find the Flaherty family offenders. The Samoan people welcomed their love for their traditional culture, and in this film we can see that they still welcomed them in the 1980s in a spirit of mutual reverence.

There were also cultural offenses. Embarrassment was caused for Samoan women of appearing topless. Samoans found the anthropological angles of the film-makers absurd. But the filmed records (including a photograph archive) were highly valued, and during Monica's visit they were meticulously identified. And finally, Samoans found Moana "a true film".

"My father never forgot Samoa".

"Searching for the lost paradise" was the Flaherty family's grand project, never more than here. In the South Seas cycle of Hollywood films, White Shadows in the South Seas showed that we found that paradise, only in order to destroy it. F. W. Murnau in Tabu created yet another poetic vision.

Ricky Leacock's footage of Monica Flaherty's return to Samoa provides the greatest treasure of this movie. Monica was able to revisit people she remembered from her early childhood, and we see their reunion here. The "then and now" montages are profoundly moving.

The greatest artistic rewards in the movie are in the Samoan music and the wonderful songs, sung in unforgettable choral performances. I would love to own a soundtrack album.

Monica Flaherty is the protagonist of this "making of". In our period of revisiting film history from the perspective of "women make movies" we must acknowledge the distinction of Frances Flaherty (co-author of Moana) and Monica Flaherty (who created an authentic sound world to Moana).

My earlier blog comments on Moana:

13 Oct 1985
23 Jan 2009 (Richard Leacock in Helsinki)
9 Feb 2009
9 Oct 2010
28 Oct 2010

Morning discussion: Emmanuel Mouret (Sodankylä 2023)

 Morning discussion with Emmanuel Mouret, hosted by Olaf Möller, translated by Kaisa Kukkola (invisible in the photo, The School, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival 16 June 2023. Foto Jukka Tarkiainen.

Midnight Sun Film Festival resume: June 16: Morning Discussion with Emmanuel Mouret

" This year The Midnight Sun Film Festival presents to the audience director Emmanuel Mouret who has been relatively unknown in Finland until now but has a robust film career in France. Friday’s morning discussion was a profound master class on the essentials of film making, the awkwardness of being human, and the value of putting in effort.

Mouret studied at the famous La Fémis film school in Paris but in the he learned the toughest but also the most defining lessons during a short film production he did  at the age of 19  in which everything went wrong. On the third day of filming, the young director locked himself in his home, because he felt that he did not know how to direct his actors. Pushed by this setback and to better understand the art of acting and the medium of cinema Mouret studied theatre and American screenwriting manuals. With age, studies, and experience he managed to free himself from the weight of film history and the myth of a director who knows everything and never makes mistakes. “I want to be honest: I am a director who does not know what he is doing and cannot hide the fact that he does not know.”

The awkwardness, complications, and contradictions of human life have become an endless treasure trove for Mouret who has depicted the intricacies of love life masterfully ever since his early summer love film Venus and Fleur (Vénus et Fleur, 2004) up until the study of attraction Diary of a Fleeting Affair (Chronique d’une liaison passagère, 2022) that premiered in Cannes last year. As a director Mouret wants to give space to the work of the actors interpreting their fickle characters as well as the viewer’s need to learn yet a bit more about the film’s story and to project their own thoughts and feelings onto it.

Mouret urges the young movie makers and cinephiles to put in effort. Technical effortlessness will not help structure thoughts and optimising does not make for interesting art: “At some point screenwriting manuals advised to give maximum amount of information in as few words as possible. I think that’s dumb! I want to give minimum amount of information in as many words as possible, then you can find something surprising in the midst of it all.”

For Mouret the beauty of cinema and literature is in making seemingly small and even intimate situations and stories passionate and important: “I have always found interesting what philosopher Stanley Cavell writes about how to be good with all that passes through us.” The characters in Mouret’s films may mean well, but contradictions arise when the will to stay faithful to one’s commitments pulls to one direction and the wish to stay true to one’s own needs to a different one. The director does not warm up to Olaf Möller’s suggestion that he might leave relationship studies and start making thrillers but admits that maybe these contradictions that question the conventional morals are in themselves some sort of tiny thrillers – although without guns and car chases.

Even though Mouret’s family did not have a strong culture of going to cinema when he was growing up in Marseille, he has been making up for it by watching films and reading about them ever since his teens. The earliest fragments he remembers are slapstick comedies based on awkwardness: Buster Keaton, Charles Chaplin, Jacques Tati, and Jerry Lewis. His choice for a film he would take to a deserted island is also a joyful one: Roberto Rossellini’s film on Francis of Assisi The Flowers of St. Francis (Francesco, giullare di Dio, 1950). " (MSFF 2023)

Kievski protses / The Kiev Trial (in the presence of Sergei Loznitsa)

Sergei Loznitsa: Київський процес / Киевский процесс / Kievski protses / The Kiev Trial (UA/NL 2022). The public hanging of the Nazi criminals on the Kalinin Square (today's Independence Square), Kiev, 29 Jan 1946.

Київський процес / Киевский процесс
DIRECTOR: Sergei Loznitsa

COUNTRY: Ukraina, Alankomaat

YEAR: 2022

DURATION: 106 min

LANGUAGES: venäjä, saksa, ukraina / tekstitetty englanniksi

CATEGORY: Documentary Films, Sergei Loznitsa, Special Guests' Films, Subtitles in English

In the presence of Sergei Loznitsa hosted by Juhana von Bagh.
Viewed at the School, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 15 June 2023

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2022 SYNOPSIS

The Kiev Trial, also known as the ‘Kiev Nuremberg’, took place in January of 1946 in the Soviet Union, and was one of the first post-war trials convicting German Nazis and their collaborators. 15 criminals, guilty of atrocities, which were later identified by the Nuremberg trials as “crimes against humanity”, faced justice in case No.1679 “On the atrocities committed by fascist invaders on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR.” Using unique, previously unseen, archive footage, Sergei Loznitsa reconstructs key moments of the proceedings, including statements of the defendants and testimonies of the witnesses, survivors of Auschwitz and Babi Yar among them. The film lays bare the ‘banality of evil’ and is devastatingly relevant today, as Ukrainian people are once again being subjected to the violence of barbarian invaders.

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2022 DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

I came across the forgotten footage of the Kiev Trial when I was working on archive research for Babi Yar. Context. Having gained access to this unique footage, just as powerful as the famous Eichmann tapes, I decided to make a film reconstructing the entire trial. As always, my aim is to immerse the spectators into the atmosphere of the courtroom: to make them feel as if they are witnessing the whole trial from a seat in a public gallery. When I started this project in spring 2021, I couldn’t imagine, even in my worst nightmare, that Ukraine will once again become a battlefield and that innocent civilians will once again be subjected to brutal violence. Only this time the barbarian invaders wear Russian uniforms. We have been thrown 80 years back and it seems that no lessons from our recent history have been learnt... I wish with all my heart that we shall not have to wait for too long before the perpetrators of the crimes against humanity, being committed in Ukraine today, are brought to justice.

Mia Öhman (MSFF 2023): "Babi Yar. Context (2021) depicted the circumstances leading up to the massacre of more than 33 000 Ukrainian Jews. Partly the same but mostly still unseen archive material now gives us front row seats at the ”Kiev Nuremberg,” a war crimes trial held in January 1946.

We are in the bombed-out capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, examining what happened during the German occupation. The Moscow Central Studio of Documentary Film filmed and archived the show trial -type event, and Loznitsa trusts in the power of the images and sound. The true gruesomeness of the events is gradually revealed by the behaviour of the defendants, witnesses and interpreters; the tones of their voices, muffled stammers, extended pauses, strained positions, helpless looks, and the electrified reactions of the onlookers.

At times, one wonders what substances these people were ingesting to keep playing their parts. The witnesses appear in all their candour, forged fearless by their ordeal. The Germans explain how they carried out the decimation of the Ukrainians to make space for their own people. One stresses how he was forced to carry out his duties, and had he not done so, someone else might have with even more deadly consequences. Another one condemns the Nazi regime. All Germans are hanged in the square. After all, no one wants the horror and destruction of war to happen again." Mia Öhman

AA: The Kiev Trial is Sergei Loznitsa's follow-up and companion piece to Babi Yar. Context (2021). The earlier film focused on the infamous "rehearsal for the Holocaust", the newer film on "the Kiev Nuremberg" (it took place nine months before the Nuremberg Trials).

The strength and the focus of The Kiev Trial is in its concentration on the extraordinary official filmed records of the trial itself. The testimonies, given when everything was still fresh in memory, have engrossing immediacy. There is the Claude Lanzmann effect: we see nothing of the crimes committed, but listening to the voices of the witnesses who were actually there, we also in our mind's presence go there, comprehending everything more vividly than an illustrated reconstruction of the unimaginable could achieve.

Some of the footage is repeated from the earlier film, but in this context it, too, gains new meaning and resonance. I am in principle against showing public executions, but displaying the epic footage of the hanging of the Nazi criminals is valid and essential to the fulfillment of justice and this remarkable trial.

Stshastje moje / My Joy (in the presence of Sergei Loznitsa)

Sergei Loznitsa: Счастье моё / Stshastje moje / My Joy (DE/UA/NL 2010).

MY JOY

DIRECTOR: Sergei Loznitsa

COUNTRY: Saksa, Ukraina, Alankomaat

YEAR: 2010

DURATION: 128 min

LANGUAGES: venäjä / tekstitetty englanniksi

ORIGINAL NAME: Счастье моё (Schastye moe)

CATEGORY: Sergei Loznitsa, Special Guests' Films, Subtitles in English
In the presence of Sergei Loznitsa, hosted by Kaisu Isto.
Viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 15 June 2023.

Mia Öhman (MSFF 2023): "A body is pushed in a ditch, a mixer-full of cement splashed on top. A bulldozer finishes the operation, rolling its tracks over the anonymous man’s anonymous grave, returning him to the ground, for unto dust we shall all return. After this, our protagonist, a truck driver called Georgy, drives along a scenic road while a schlager about war sacrifices plays on the radio, instantly bringing to mind Aleksei Balabanov (1959–2013), whose films featured nasty bursts of repressed violence. Loznitsa’s fiction debut advances with time jumps, yet intuitively smoothly intertwines into a cohesive whole, bearing a kinship to the oeuvre of Alain Resnais, who also started as a documentarian.

My Joy was filmed in Ukraine and features Russian dialogue. This road movie gradually picking up horror elements is a provocation, a journey into Russianness pieced together from real stories, its brutal Soviet past oozing cold sweat through decades to the present day. From the start, an ominous atmosphere fills the air at a police checkpoint – perhaps real, perhaps not.

Georgy’s journey continues, and the characters appearing from the roadside to hitch a ride lead him on a chilling tour into the visionless and timelessly stagnant mental landscape. The story is already metaphorically laid out in the introduction: the anonymous dead is a part of the common land, the common history – the common nightmare." Mia Öhman

AA: Sergei Loznitsa's fiction feature debut about the truck driver Georgi (Viktor Nemets) might evoke parallels with Vasili Shukshin's feature debut There Lives Such a Lad, but it soon turns out that they are diametrical opposites.

The title My Joy ("My Happiness") is an expression of irony of the blackest kind.

This road movie is an account of a descent in Hell, never far from horror. It is a history of brutalization, corruption and prostitution. A parallel work in Loznitsa's oeuvre is Krotkaya / A Gentle Creature (another title of extreme irony).

My Joy is a vision of society, a portrait of the destruction of civil society. The social contract is dead. The government is corrupt, the civil society is moribund. There is no hope for revival.

The only decent person is Georgi, but after a brutal assault and robbery, he becomes braindead, a walking dead, like a zombie. Along his odyssey there is a fleeting encounter that comes into the territory of Tolstoy's Resurrection, a Katyusha / Nekhlyudov exchange, but this underage Katyusha is as evil as everyone else.

Powerfully shot, with an epic map of human faces telling volumes about wasted lives, casual brutality, escapism into victories of the past and sentimental romances.

Ultimately, there is no Gegenbild.

Morning discussion: Sergei Loznitsa (Sodankylä 2023)

Morning discussion: Sergei Loznitsa hosted by Timo Malmi. The School, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival 15 June 2023. Photo: Linda Maria Saar.

In English, Sergei Loznitsa hosted by Timo Malmi.
The School, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 15 June 2023.

June 15: Morning Discussion with Sergei Loznitsa

MSFF 2023: " At the Thursday’s Morning Discussion we heard the award-winning Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa who started his career with short films and documentaries but is also known for his long fiction films. The director studied at one of the best film schools at the time and appreciates wide knowledge of art history and artistic expression. He also believes that the serious approach of the school, which moved on a conceptual level, helped him become the director and artist he is today.

In addition to cinema, the discussion dealt with political and social issues that Loznitsa largely focuses on especially in his later works. The director talked about his youth in Kyiv and his experiences with the humiliating Soviet system. He also commented on the current situation that he had acutely predicted already for example in his fiction film My Joy (2010), which screened at the festival on Thursday.

The “pseudo-documentary” My Joy is a collection of stories that Loznitsa heard while traveling around Russia after film school and making portrait-like short films and documentaries. Even though the stories depict a certain historical moment, they are timeless. “I showed this society where all the social institutions are completely destroyed, and connections between people are also destroyed”, Loznitsa explained.

The discussion also touched upon mathematics and music, two abstract fields which – according to Loznitsa – shed light on the order of the universe. Loznitsa did his first degree on the former one, and it has been in his life since childhood as he comes from a family of mathematicians. Music on the other hand plays an important role in Loznitsa’s films along with the rest of the soundscape.

For example, while talking about his early short films, Loznitsa describes the soundscape of The Halt (2000) in which the passive sounds of sleeping are occasionally drowned in the noise of a passing train. The audience also watched an excerpt from the documentary The Natural History of Destruction (2022) that will be screened at the festival again on Sunday. It is considered the most symphonic of Loznitsa’s works and almost all of the sounds have been created afterwards.

In the early bombing sequence of The Natural History of Destruction we mostly see only flashes of light and according to Loznitsa that puts the viewer’s imagination to work. “For me this is pure cinema”, he says. Like other Loznitsa’s films, The Natural History of Destruction does not have a voiceover as he finds that the viewer cannot focus on the story told by the images if they are being commented on. “What we can do in cinema is to tell a story with images, express everything with images, with the help of sound”, he explains.

On a deserted island the director would take Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) – one of the first films that defined for him what cinema is all about." (MSFF 2023)

Saint Omer

Alice Diop: Saint Omer (FR 2022).

SAINT OMER

DIRECTOR: Alice Diop

COUNTRY: Ranska

YEAR: 2022

DURATION: 122 min

LANGUAGES: ranska / tekstitetty englanniksi

CATEGORY: Gems of New Cinema, Subtitles in English
Festival premiere: 7 Sep 2022 Venice Film Festival
Sortie en France: 23 Nov 2022
Viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 14 June 2023

The end credit song: Nina Simone's interpretation of "Little Girl Blue" (Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, 1935, from the Broadway musical Jumbo). The track is from Nina Simone's debut studio album Little Girl Blue: Jazz as Played in an Exclusive Side Street Club (1957 / 1959).

Otto Kylmälä (MSFF 2023): "Young writer Rama travels to the small village of Saint Omer to observe the trial of a young mother who drowned her child. In her defense, the woman blames insanity and Senegalese witchcraft, which drove her to her decisive action in the throes of anxiety and hopelessness. During the trial proceedings, Rama is forced to explore her attitudes towards her mother as well as her own budding motherhood."

"The seasoned documentarist Alice Diop directs her debut fiction feature, based on true events, with style and a steady hand. The trial proceedings are filled with much talk and hard facts, but despite the resistance of the prosecutor, the intense courtroom scenes are thrust into the waves of emotions and melodrama. Familiar elements from Diop’s earlier works can be found in this film as well, such as mothers commuting via trains, prejudice against immigrants, and home videos acting as postcards and time capsules for the junctions of family history."

"From the point of view of Rama and Diop, there is a historical layer to this contemporary tragedy, and the core of the event mirrors Euripides’ tragedy of Medea. As a whole, however, the film, like Hiroshima mon amour, is a poetic interpretation of the painful points of recent history. Diop is clearly a masterful successor of directors like Agnès Varda and Chantal Akerman, who like her transitioned from documentary filmmaking to fiction."

"Of Senegalese descent, ALICE DIOP (b. 1979) studied the history of colonial Africa at the University of Sorbonne, where her journey towards film took her from visual sociology studies to the La Fémis film school in Paris. An admirer of Agnès Varda, Claire Denis and Chantal Akerman, Diop has directed many award-winning documentary films, of which Vers la tendresse (Towards Tenderness, 2016), is a brave and raw depiction of sexuality, masculinity and tenderness. Nous (We, 2021), which won an award in Berlinale, is a panorama-like depiction of life in the suburbs. Her fictional debut Saint Omer combines elements from Diop’s documentaries into an intensive courtroom drama, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival." Otto Kylmälä (MSFF 2023)

AA: Alice Diop's fiction feature debut is a powerful courtroom drama about infanticide, a theme that has had huge resonance in classic Nordic literature and cinema, in Finland most unforgettably voiced by the feminist champion Minna Canth in Anna-Liisa. Alice Diop's tale is completely different, because it is profoundly marked by structural racism. There is an overwhelming challenge in trying to make sense of an African legacy and sensibility in the still hidden colonialistic and racist atmosphere of France. The failure of communication is absolute. This was the third festival film I saw today that dealt with Black Lives Matter and also the compelling need to lie to survive in a system rigged against an oppressed minority.

The conclusion of this movie is the most devastating, and all men should see it, because it is about something we do not possess and cannot grasp. I confess that watching it I had for the first time a beginning of finally understanding something that I have in a certain way been aware of for a long time, having read Simone de Beauvoir's Le deuxième sexe and discovered her concepts "immanence" and "transcendence" (and now I also understand in a way why Beauvoir did not want children).

African magic in this movie introduces a new dimension in the primal bond of the mother and the child. In this film I learned for the first time about "chimeric cells" that bind the mother and the child on the deepest level and the neverending chain of generations created on this most atavistic level, beyond psychology, in the dimension of biology and cytology, something far beyond the unconscious. I recently helped my psychoanalyst friends edit a book about the bond of the mother and the child, Tunteiden syvät vedet [The Deep Waters of Emotion]. Now I'm on my way in understanding better what they were talking about.

Tori et Lokita / Tori and Lokita

Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne: Tori et Lokita (BE/FR 2022).

TORI AND LOKITA
DIRECTOR: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
COUNTRY: Belgium, France
YEAR: 2022
DURATION: 89 min
LANGUAGES: French / subtitled in English
ORIGINAL NAME: Tori et Lokita
CATEGORY: Gems of New Cinema, Subtitles in English
Festival premiere: 24 May 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
US festival premiere: 2 Sep 2022 Telluride Film Festival
Belgian premiere: 7 Sep 2022
Viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 14 June 2023

Theme song: the Italian nursery rhyme "Alla fiera dell'est" ["At the Eastern Fair"], an adaptation of the Hebrew Passover song "Chad Gadya" (["One Little Goat"], first printed in 1590). There is an affinity with the English nursery rhyme "The House That Jack Built" (first printed in 1797) (Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index type 2035). Angelo Branduardi's "Alla fiera dell'est" is from 1976.

Larry Gross (Telluride Film Festival 2022): "The refugees Tori (Pablo Schils) and Lokita (Joely Mbundu), a little boy and adolescent girl, have fled religious violence in Africa. After pretending to Belgian authorities they are brother and sister, in the hope of increasing their odds for legal working papers, their lie becomes the truth, as they fiercely protect each other while navigating a host of dangers. For 30 years, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, former Telluride tributees and eighttime prize winners at Cannes, have sustained and revitalized the cinematic tradition of humanistic, politically engaged neorealist filmmaking. Here, with rigor and without a trace of sentimentality, the Dardennes portray a society that ruthlessly exploits children while, simultaneously, inspiring us with the indisputable power of unconditional love. Through their careful direction, and the brilliant performances of Schils and Mbundu, we begin to believe that love can conquer all. " –LG (Belgium-France, 2022, 88m)  In person: Joely Mbundu" (Larry Gross, Telluride Film Festival 2022)

Timo Malmi (MSFF 2023): "The many films of the illustrious career of brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who captured Sodankylä in 2005 with their sympathetic natures, have already become so familiar to our festival audience that we know we can trust the Dardenne standard. Tori and Lokita does not disappoint: this is an even more ascetic film about immigration, children and youth – as experienced at the grass-roots level of the streets."

"We follow two paperless African refugees in Belgium; Tori, a young boy from Cameroon, and Lokita, a teenage girl from Benin. Their sibling-like bond of friendship helps them deal with everyday challenges in the midst of multi-front threats from petty crime and drug trade."

"It’s impressive how the Dardennes seem to know the multiple facets of their hometown Liège so thoroughly. One can’t help but admire the indomitable Tori and Lokita, as their stories wind up towards their shocking conclusions. There is no indulging in sentimentality, even though their kinship-affirming duets are endearing."

"Two-time winners of the Palme d’Or in Cannes, JEAN-PIERRE (b. 1951) and LUC (b. 1954) DARDENNE have always worked together, both as writers and directors, ”as one author with four eyes.” Without compromise, they have stayed true to their calling, starting in 1975 with social TV documentaries. In 1981, the Dardennes moved into fiction. Such accomplishments of their mature era as Le Promesse, Rosetta, The Son, The Child, The Silence of Lorna, The Kid with a Bike and Two Days, One Night have proved true Jonathan Rosenbaum’s characterization from years ago: “No one else in the world is at the moment making films as instinctively tuned into the life of the modern working class.” Timo Malmi (MSFF 2023)

AA: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne switch to the thriller mode and the chase format in Tori and Lokita, a formidable account of two paperless African immigrants caught in the multiple trap of immigrant smuggling, illegal gig economy, drug traffic and prostitution. A central location is a huge clandestine cannabis greenhouse. Everything is recorded with neorealist objectivity, including the clueless efforts of the society to intervene. Tori and Lokita lie to them because it is a matter of life and death, and the insurmountable chasm of communication is a major theme of this remarkable movie. The heart of the film is the deep love between the children. They are not officially a brother and a sister, yet this is a story of true brotherhood and sisterhood. A haunting film of engrossing warmth and tenderness.

Armageddon Time

James Gray: Armageddon Time (US/BR 2022). 

Midnight Sun Film Festival
ARMAGEDDON TIME
DIRECTOR: James Gray
COUNTRY: USA, Brazil
YEAR: 2022
DURATION: 114 min
LANGUAGES: English / no subtitles
CATEGORY: English dialogue, Gems of New Cinema
Festival premiere: 19 May 2022 Cannes Film Festival
US festival premiere: 2 Sep 2022 Telluride Film Festival
US premiere: 28 Oct 2022 (limited), 4 Nov 2022 (wide)
Viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), 14 June 2023

Theme song: the Jamaican reggae song "Armagideon Time" (Willie Williams, 1977 / 1979) covered by The Clash in 1979.

Larry Gross (Telluride Film Festival, 2022): "Paul (Banks Repeta), a dreamy middle-class kid, has an urge to be an artist. His loving but conventional and insecure parents (Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong) don’t understand. As he wrestles with self-expression, Paul finds inspiration from Johnny (Jaylin Webb), a rebellious schoolmate, and his Jewish immigrant grandfather (Anthony Hopkins), who, since escaping Ukraine during World War II, has lived the best and the worst of the American Dream. Working again with the talented cinematographer Darius Khondji, writer-director James Gray (THE IMMIGRANT, AD ASTRA) builds an intimate cinematic world of moral turmoil and difficult decisions, of the rise of Ronald Reagan, the challenges of race relations and the confusion of class differences fueling the damaged soul of a nation. Gray has created a work of fierce but delicate beauty, in which coming of age means awakening to the painful realities of an imperfect world. –LG (U.S., 2022, 114m) In person: James Gray, Jeremy Strong, Anne Hathaway" Larry Gross (Telluride Film Festival, 2022)

Timo Malmi (MSFF 2023): "It is a relief to see an acting giant like Anthony Hopkins once again in a bullseye by a top director – even though James Gray hasn’t gained enough status in Finland to warrant a regular cinema run for this last year’s Cannes selection. This despite the fact that Hopkins’ performance as a wise grandfather is one of his most charming ones."

"The coming-of-age story of Armageddon Time is loosely based on Gray’s own experiences as a schoolboy in 1980 in Queens, New York (the stomping ground of a certain Trump family). We are in the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s expertly characterised presidential term. Paul, the preteen son of the middle-class Graff family with Ukrainian roots, befriends at school a black kid, Johnny, who needs shelter from his poor, broken home – not that the Graffs’ lives are always so amicable."

"Gray doesn’t take the easy nostalgic approach with his intimate depiction of the everyday life in the family, neighbourhood, and school. The colours and shades of Dariush Khondji’s wide angle cinematography seem perfect to melancholically follow this heart-breaking play of injustice."

"Not many American directors with an accomplished thirty-year career have been as overlooked in Finland as JAMES GRAY (b. 1969). That said, this descendant of Russian Jewish grandparents was also side-tracked in the US after his sensational debut film, Little Odessa (1994), directed at the age of 24. But such later works as the cop thriller We Own the Night (2007), obsessive romance Two Lovers (2008), explorer adventure The Lost City of Z (2017), and the sci-fi epic Ad Astra (2019) are more than enough proof of his significant, versatile talent." Timo Malmi (MSFF 2023)

AA: I arrived at Sodankylä in the morning, immediately caught in the magic of the midnight sun festival blessed by a beautiful sunny weather. Twice during the car ride from Rovaniemi to Sodankylä we met small reindeer herds (porotokka) who walked blithely in the middle of the road, without budging. We were the ones who had to budge. It was deeply moving to meet my landlady and her spouse, and after morning coffee at the premises it was time for the first film. It turned out to be a formidable kick start to what proved to be a "Black Lives Matter" theme day.

I missed the beginning, the first half of the festival's sole screening of Armageddon Time, a film that I had already missed in Telluride, but this is a film I must soon see in full. I arrived during the opening speech of Maryanne Trump (Jessica Chastain), Donald Trump's sister, and managed to see the final scenes with the protagonist's grandfather, Aaron Rabinowitz (Anthony Hopkins) who is in the ultimate stages of cancer. Aaron is a survivor of antisemitic persecution in his native Ukraine, and his final message to his grandson Paul is to be bold and defend his Black friend Jaylin against racist discrimination. "Be a mensch".

The account of the friendship of Paul and Jaylin provides a complex, honest and electrifying insight in ordinary racism. This intimate film's unique epic power derives from the heartfelt, disturbing juxtaposition of European antisemitism and the American oppression of Black people.

FROM WIKIPEDIA: ARMAGEDDON TIME

Asteroid City

Wes Anderson: Asteroid City (US 2023).

Wes Anderson: Asteroid City (US 2023). Scarlett Johansson in Zelda Zonk mode. A Focus Features release. Courtesy of Pop. 87 Productions / Focus Features. Please do click on the photo to enlarge it.

Asteroid City / Asteroid City.
    US © 2023 Pop. 87 Productions LLC & Focus Features LLC. Focus Features and Indian Paintbrush present an American Empirical Picture. P: Wes Anderson, Steven Rales, Jeremy Dawson.
    D: Wes Anderson. SC: Wes Anderson – story by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola. DP:  Robert D. Yeoman – photographed on Kodak Film with the Arriflex Camera System, color by Company 3 – in black and white and colour  – in Academy and Scope. PD: Adam Stockhausen. AD: Stéphane Cressend. Set dec: Kris Moran. Cost: Milena Canonero. Make-up and hair design: Julie Dartnell. SFX: Pau Costa. VFX: Gorilla VFX, Vast, Jellyfish Pictures, Goodbye Kansas, Red Visual Effects, Misc Studios. M: Alexandre Desplat. S: Wayne Lemmer. ED: Barney Pilling. Casting: Douglas Aibel. CAST:

    Jason Schwartzman as Augie Steenbeck,
Scarlett Johansson as Midge Campbell,
Tom Hanks as Stanley Zak,
Jeffrey Wright as General Gibson,
Tilda Swinton as Dr. Hickenlooper,
Bryan Cranston as The Host,
Edward Norton as Conrad Earp,
Adrien Brody as Schubert Green,
Liev Schreiber as J. J. Kellogg,
Hope Davis as Sandy Borden,
Stephen Park as Roger Cho,
Rupert Friend as Montana,
Maya Hawke as June Douglas,
Steve Carell as the motel manager,
Matt Dillon as the mechanic,
Hong Chau as Polly,
Willem Dafoe as Saltzburg Keitel,
Margot Robbie as the actress / wife,
Tony Revolori as the aide-de-camp,
Jake Ryan as Woodrow,
Grace Edwards as Dinah,
Aristou Meehan as Clifford,
Sophia Lillis as Shelly,
Ethan Josh Lee as Ricky,
Jeff Goldblum as the Alien.
    Film shot in Chinchón, Colmenar de Oreja, Aranjuez y Valdelaguna (Comunidad de Madrid), Spain.
    104 min
    Festival premiere: 23 May 2023 Cannes Film Festival.
    US premiere: 13 June 2023 (limited).
    US premiere: 23 June 2023 (wide).
    Finnish premiere: 9 June 2023, released by Finnkino, Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Janne Mökkönen / Frej Grönholm.
    Viewed at Finnkino Strand 4, Iso Kristiina, Lappeenranta, 9 June 2023.

IMDb synopsis: " The itinerary of a Junior Stargazer convention is spectacularly disrupted by world-changing events. "

AA: INITIAL MUSINGS AROUND A MASTERPIECE.

Wes Anderson is at his best in Asteroid City. It is also one of the best films of the year and among the best of the decade.

André Bazin divided film-makers into those who believe in realíty and those who believe in the image. Wes Anderson is a master in the latter group, sharing the honour with contemporaries such as Roy Andersson (no relation). (Wes Anderson did not start this way, as can be seen in Bottle Rocket).

Wes Anderson has a carefully cultivated style, totally artificial in many ways, and sometimes close to what Susan Sontag called "camp", but with a different electric current, a complexity and sensibility of his own.

Set in the year 1955 in a tiny Southwest desert town, Asteroid City is a retro-futuristic adventure like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. The Jacques-Yves Cousteau parody took us beneath the sea. In Asteroid City we are looking at the sky in a Junior Stargazer convention.

Like Robert Altman and Woody Allen, Wes Anderson is a wizard of the all star cast, able to engage major stars even into bit parts. The ubiquitous Bill Murray has been replaced this time by Tom Hanks, playing the cantankerous grandfather.

Asteroid City is not a genre film, but besides science fiction, I mostly find it a comedy. In a very general sense this kind of comedy belongs to the Buster Keaton tradition. It deals with colossal issues including death, nuclear peril and alien invasion. A major source of comedy is a deadpan attitude, registering the overwhelming with understatement.

Another source of comedy is formality: symmetry, frontality, and multiple framing meta-levels that are smoothly accessible despite their complexity. I was smiling from the beginning, and I believe that the whole audience was having fun in a special, Wes Anderson kind of way. He won our sympathy instantly.

For a fleeting while I was thinking about Nope, which shares some of the premises of Asteroid City, yielding quite different results.

A sympathetic feature in Asteroid City is that the dramatis personae include several generations, including children and the young. One of the expressions that come to mind in Anderson's films is "naivism" which in his case is also a defiant, unpatronizing empathy with a childish perspective. Like in Moonrise Kingdom, Anderson pays respect to tender and awkward truths of young and sincere love.

A passion in animation belongs to Wes Anderson's distinctive features, in films such as Fantastic Mr. Fox. In Asteroid City, animated figures include the Alien (modelled after Jeff Goldblum) and a Roadrunner (in Finnish: juoksukäki), not to be mixed with the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes / Merrie Melodies character. 

Anderson belongs to the film-makers who prefer photochemical film, although we are deep in the digital era. In Moonrise Kingdom the reward was a warm and tender hue.

The colour world of Asteroid City is unique and hard to pin down. Ever since the release of the trailer, there has been wide debate and admiration for Wes Anderson's palette, which is also already being simulated.

The word "pastel" has been mentioned, and why not, but pastel painting is a wide tradition, and I have happened to pay special attention to it this year at Musée d'Orsay, its Manet / Degas exhibition and the Albert Edelfelt exhibition. Perhaps a certain kind of pastel has affinities, but I don't find the pastel description convincing in general.

"Low contrast" comes to mind, but it is not accurate, the imagery cannot be defined in the "low contrast" / "high contrast" register. It is something stranger, about the middle ground being more even and flat than usual. The imagery is at once bright and dull in a special combination. At once colourful and subtly blurred. A special event is the "full frontal" shot where we see everything and nothing, of a stunt double to boot. The imagery evokes old, slightly faded colour magazines or picture postcards. And obsolete colour film systems from the 1920s and the 1940s (Thomsoncolor? Rouxcolor?).

Perhaps this colour world will be called "Asteroid City Color".

ZELDA ZONK

There would be a lot to say. Personally, I was moved by one of the movie's subtexts (it is discussed in the film's press book, so this is not just my imagination): Marilyn Monroe.

Asteroid City is a dream play about the baby boom age, the space age, the early nuclear age and the sex bomb age. It was still the period of the cinema's greatest love goddesses and fertility symbols. Marilyn Monroe was one of the last female superstars of the classical Hollywood studio system. In The Misfits she managed to reach out towards the new space of the cinema of modern alienation.

Major stars have channelled their Marilyn Monroe passion, including Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino, not forgetting Michelle Williams, Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer. This time it's Scarlett Johansson conveying her inner Marilyn Monroe in a delicate yet frank fashion.

There are many affinities and references: the year 1955, the superstar's meticulous care with photographs, Actors Studio, the marriage with a major playwright, the aspiration to serious drama, Bus Stop, the desert (like in The Misfits), the nuclear tests (Robert Kennedy combined Marilyn Monroe and nuclear tests in his weekend agenda in California).

The family story and the new love affair in Asteroid City are Jewish. MM converted to Judaism when she married Arthur Miller, and although she was an atheist, her connection with the Jewish people and the Miller family was heartfelt and profound. Her films were banned in Egypt during her marriage with Miller.

The black hair on the blonde: all through the 1950s MM donned a black wig when incognito, registered as "Zelda Zonk", and also did a major photo session as a brunette. Most importantly, the joy of life, the absence of taboos, the life-affirming presence of children.

One of the popular books of the era was Norman O. Brown's Life Against Death. That is the question also in Wes Anderson's lovely movie.

Beethoven 250: the last piano bagatelles: 6 Bagatelles Op. 126 (Piotr Anderszewski, 2008)

From: Ludwig van Beethoven: 6 Bagatellen: 6. Bagatelle: Andante amabile e con moto. From Jan Caeyers: Beethoven: A Life (2020). Caeyers discovers the final dedication and love confession to Josephine in Beethoven's last composition for the piano. Maynard Solomon has a different theory of the immortal beloved, but all can agree with Solomon when he says that "even at the end, the piano remained Beethoven's most intimate means of communicating with his inner self". Please do click on the image to enlarge it.

Beethoven: The Complete Works (80 CD). Warner Classics / © 2019 Parlophone Records Limited. Also available on Spotify etc. I bought my box set from Fuga at Helsinki Music Centre.
Ludwig van Beethoven 1770–1827.
Beethoven 250 continued.
From: CD 26/80  Piano Bagatelles Opp. 33, 119, 126 + Other bagatelles. Tracks 1924: Piotr Anderszewski, 2008:

6 Bagatellen Op. 126 (1825)

1. Andante con moto in G, 3'07
2. Allegro in G minor, 2'44
3. Andante in E-flat, 3'15
4. Presto in B minor, 3'55
5. Quasi allegretto in G, 2'40

6. Presto, cut time then Andante amabile e con moto, E♭ major, 4'41

JAN CAEYERS: THE LAST PIANO BAGATELLES

" 'Bagatelles' can best be defined as 'musical aphorisms'. They are concise, pithy expressions of an original, highly personal, and often surprising character: profound wisdom in a nutshell. The concise format also puts more resources at the composer's disposal (remembering that a work's length should be inversely proportional to the quantity of musical material), allowing for the deployment of rhetorical devices such as antithesis, paradox, understatement, ambiguity, and irony. Beethoven was in his element and after his work on the colossal Ninth Symphony most likely glad of the opportunity for some lighthearted diversion on a smaller scale."

"Yet despite his bagatelles' whimsical nature, and however experimental and unconventional their technique and frameworks, these dissociations belie an underlying logic. In this sense, the opus 126 bagatelles differ markedly from their opus 119 predecessors, which seem rather disjointed by comparison. The latter bear the stamp of their haphazard origin and create the impression that they are interchangeable or that their ordering is arbitrary. The opposite is true of the six bagatelles composed in 1824. Beethoven himself described them as a 'cycle,' with a rhetorical structure, a robust tonal progression, and a latent, "subthematic" cohesion that, while not perceived directly or audibly, is experienced subconsciously. "

" The circle was now fully complete. Almost half a century after receiving his first childhood spanking for daring to improvise at the keyboard, and decades since he had electrified audiences with his wild fantasies as a pianistic demigod, Beethoven could now finally surrender to the tantalizing pleasures of scintillating ideas and vivid imagination. Trusting in his highly developed intuition for structure and proportion and free from any desire for excess or vanity, Beethoven could finally give free rein to his musical ideas; a luxury that had cost him over one hundred opus numbers and a musician's lifetime. "

" To complete the cycle well and truly, one final remark. The sixth bagatelle, Beethoven's very last piano work, bears the telling tempo and character indication 'Andante amabile e con moto' and is based on the all too familiar motif from both the Andante favori and the song cycle An die ferne Geliebte. "

" Skeptics may dismiss this similarity as pure coincidence. But even so: what a beautiful one it is! "

From: Jan Caeyers : Beethoven : A Life (Beethoven : Een Biografie 2009, revised in 2020). Translated  in English by Brent Annable. University of California Press / Beethoven-Haus Bonn, 2020. pp. 466–467.

WoO 36  Klavierquartette 1 in Es-Dur (1785) published posthumously in 1828

WoO 57  Andante favori (1804) composed for the Waldstein sonata, published separately

Op. 98  An die ferne Geliebte (1816)

Op. 126  6 Bagatellen (1825)

NB. AA: Each Beethoven biographer has a theory about the "Immortal Beloved", and Caeyers might come closest to the truth, examining all alternatives before proposing Josephine von Brunsvik in Chapter 45 "From the 'Immortal Beloved' to a 'Distant Beloved'". Caeyers also discusses Minona von Stackelberg (1813–1897), perhaps the daughter of Ludwig and Josephine. A tragic story anyway for everyone involved.

P.S. 8 July 2025. I am listening to Beethoven's piano quartets, WoO 36, composed in 1785 in Bonn when he was aged 14, and published posthumously in 1828 in Vienna. 

Piano quartet in E flat major, WoO 36, No. 1, the first movement, adagio assai, starts with what sounds like the Josephine motif.

Klavírní kvarteto Bohuslava Martinů ℗ 1977 SUPRAPHON a.s.

1. Adagio assai

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmIf89jLbb8&list=RDHmIf89jLbb8&start_radio=1

2. Allegro con spirito

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luDKodfatnc&list=RDluDKodfatnc&start_radio=1

3. Theme and variations: Cantabile

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAF59PPX_W0&list=RDAAF59PPX_W0&start_radio=1

Der Passfälscher / The Forger

Maggie Peren: Der Passfälscher / The Forger (DE/LU 2022) starring Louis Hofmann as Cioma Schönhaus.

Väärentäjä / Förfalskaren.
    DE/LU © 2022 Dreifilm GmbH, Amour Fou Luxembourg sàrl mit Network Movie Film- und Fernsehproduktion GmbH & Co. KG, Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) (Mainz) und Arte Deutschland TV GmbH (Ettelbrück). P: Alexander Fritzemeyer, Martin Kosok mit Alexander Dumreicher-Ivanceanu, Bady Minck, Dietrich Kluge, Jutta Lieck-Klenke.
    D+SC: Maggie Peren – based on the memoir by Cioma Schönhaus: Der Passfälscher. Die unglaubliche Geschichte eines jungen Grafikers, der im Untergrund gegen die Nazis kämpfte. Hrsg. von Marion Neiss. Scherz Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-502-15688-3. DP: Christian Stangassinger – colour – 2.39:1 – shooting format: Digital AlexaMiniLF ProRes S35 16:9 3.2K – Verleih digital. Szenenbild: Eva-Maria Stiebler. Costume designer: Diana Dietrich. Make-up: Katja Alexis-Reinert. M: Mario Grigorov. M supervision: Superstrings, Carolin Heiss. S: André Bendocchi-Alves. Mixeur: Loïc Collignon. ED: Robert Sterna. Casting: An Dorthe Braker, Karimah El-Giamal, Bady Minck. C:
    Louis Hofmann – Cioma
    Jonathan Berlin – Det Kassriel
    Luna Wedler – Gerda
    Nina Gummich – Frau Peters
    André Jung – Herr Dietrich
    Marc Limpach – Franz Kaufmann
Dreharbeiten: 18 Jan–2 March 2021 Bayern und Luxemburg.
    Loc: Bavaria Filmstadt – Villa Höppner, Haus Kreitmeier (Munich/DE), Parktheater im Kurhaus Göggingen (Augsburg/DE), Arcelor Mittal Schifflange (LU), Epicerie (LU), Café du Viaduc (LU), Casemates (LU), By Jaco (LU) Centre de la Croix Rouge (LU), Fond de Gras/Minettpark (LU).
    Language: German
    116 min
    Erstverleih: Z Verleih AG (Berlin).
    US distributor: Kino Lorber.
    Uraufführung: 13 Feb 2022 Berlin International Film Festival Special.
    Luxembourg festival premiere: 4 March 2022 Luxembourg City Film Festival.
    Kinostart Deutschland: 13 Oct 2022.
    Finnish premiere: 2 June 2023 – released by Future Film, with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Samuli Kauppila / Michaela Palmberg.
    Viewed at Finnkino Strand 4, Iso Kristiina, Lappeenranta, 2 June 2023.

New edition to the 2004 book: Cioma Schönhaus: Der Passfälscher : die unglaubliche Geschichte eines jungen Grafikers, der im Untergrund gegen die Nazis kämpfte : mit Zeichnungen des Autors, bearbeitet, mit einem Nachwort versehen und herausgegeben von Marion Neiss, Frankfurt am Main : Fischer Taschenbuch, Februar 2022, ISBN 978-3-596-16446-2

NB. The Finnish title Väärentäjä was also used for another recent Holocaust movie, Die Fälscher (AT/DE 2007, D: Stefan Ruzowitzky), about Operation Bernhard, the most massive money counterfeiting operation in history.

AA: Among films about the Holocaust, The Forger is exceptional. It is based on a true story, published by the protagonist Cioma Schönhaus himself (1922–2015) in 2004. To the festival premiere in 2022 it was republished in a new edition.

It is a story of chutzpah (audacity): in wartime Berlin, during the Holocaust, Cioma survives in his parents' apartment, works in the arms industry, and acts normally, ignoring the yellow star, riding the bus and eating in the best restaurant.

Cioma has studied arts and crafts, he is a skilled graphic artist, and so he starts to get assignments to forge documents, including passports, thus saving the lives of 300 persecuted Jews, even finally himself.

But the theme of forgery expands to a much wider field of behaviour. Cioma and his friends themselves speak of mimicry – the capability of a creature of nature of assuming the appearance of its predator. Cioma's best friend Det Kassriel is a tailor, and they create Kriegsmarine uniforms for themselves. The success is complete as long as they keep their sang-froid.

Even without uniforms Cioma learns to master the situation. The most astounding scene is at the Fundbüro when people lined up to pawn their belongings land into a razzia of the police wanting to check their Personalausweise. Cioma is carrying no document, and so he assumes the attitude of a higher police officer and asks the policemen to show their papers, instead. An ingenious variation of the story of the Hauptmann von Köpenick, famous from the play by Carl Zuckmayer and others.

The theme of mimicry and playing the part of the enemy reminds me also of Charles Chaplin in The Great Dictator and Ernst Lubitsch in To Be Or Not To Be.

It is a miraculous survival story but not a story of heroes and villains. It is also a merciless story about abuse, egoism, opportunism and cynicism. I am also thinking about Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair and Stalag 17. Maggie Peren, the writer-director, moves on the same levels of complexity and audacity, but reaches a higher sense of maturity.

The situation is rigged to turn people into each other's enemies, but Maggie Peren and her actors see more in them. Human relationships are mercenary but also something beyond. Tenderness is genuine. Tradeoffs can lead to something else. There is a shortage of young male attention. Maggie Peren knows how to portray female desire subtly. Attractions can be surprising.

I was not looking forward to this film, fearing it to be yet another entry in the Shoah business. There have been many films on the topic in recent years that seem partly exploitative. With The Forger, I was happily surprised. It is among the best.

...

CINEMA AND THE HOLOCAUST. Claude Lanzmann's Shoah is for me the supreme achievement in the "mission impossible" of expressing the inexpressible. Nothing is shown, yet everything becomes vivid and unforgettable.
    The original footage by George Stevens and Samuel Fuller, the material in Todesmühlen and Memory of the Camps, and in Alain Resnais's Nuit et brouillard, are of primary value.
    The NBC series Holocaust (Gerald Green / Marvin J. Chomsky, 1978) and Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List belong to the films that have most changed awareness of history.
    Mark Donskoi's The Unvanquished, Wanda Jakubowska's The Last Stage, Andrzej Munk's Pasazerka, Vittorio De Sica's I giardino dei Finzi Contini, Louis Malle's Au revoir les enfants, István Szabó's Bizalom and Sunshine, Taru Mäkelä's David, Roman Polanski's The Pianist and Lajos Koltai's Fateless reach high levels.
    Some of the best films about the Holocaust are of recent vintage: Sergei Loznitsa's Babi Yar Context and Ken Burns's devastating U.S. and the Holocaust, both from last year (2022).
    For me, Maggie Peren's Der Passfälscher belongs to this league of the finest.

P.S. Viewers may find Cioma's chutzpah unbelievable, but I find the account of the young man's sang-froid and derring-do credible.

I recently read the memoirs of Boris Grünstein (1917–1992): Jude i Finland : galghumoristiska berättelser [A Jew in Finland : Gallows Humoristic Tales] (Söderström 1988).

In the 1930s, Finland's extreme right wing was vocally antisemitic. Even highly cultured, traditionally Germanophilic circles were often prone to Hitler admiration.

During Operation Barbarossa, Grünstein served in the Finnish Defence Forces, which was allied with the Wehrmacht. While stationed in the port town Hanko, Grünstein got to experience the threatening presence of Finnish SS men returning from the Ukraine bloodlands.

The young Grünstein was fearless. Only in his mature years he let the dread sink in.

I believe that Cioma Schönhaus and Boris Grünstein were soulmates, also in their sense of humour and appetite for love.

Boris Grünstein (1917–1992): Jude i Finland : galghumoristiska berättelser [A Jew in Finland : Gallows Humoristic Tales] (Söderström 1988). A tale of chutzpah in Finland during Drittes Reich.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: KINO LORBER EPK: