Guest post by Elisa Räsänen.
Are Nordic people really happy? Yes, they are, at least according to the most recent World Happiness Report (2017), in which Norway was declared the happiest country in the world, with Denmark, Iceland and Finland making it into the top 5. We decided to explore this “happiness,” which is arguably a consequence of the successful Nordic welfare state model, but also the possible issues that might lie within those systems, in the film series Nordic Tales of Privilege and Anxiety.
The Finnish, Estonian and Norwegian Studies programs at IU have been working together on events and the collaboration with IU Cinema started with an idea of bringing the works of some top Nordic film directors to IU. We wanted to share something fundamentally Nordic with the IUB students and Bloomington community. Our film series discusses the themes of “Nordic-ness” and Nordic welfare from a critical perspective.
This coming Monday, February 26, IU Cinema will screen a Finnish film, The Other Side of Hope, as the first film in our series. I first saw this film by Aki Kaurismäki last summer in an open-air movie theater in Berlin, half a year after the director had won Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival. I was interested in seeing how Kaurismäki depicts the European refugee crisis, but most of all, what the Berlin audience’s response to the film would be. I am a great fan of Kaurismäki’s subtle humor (I find it absolutely hilarious!) and have been wondering whether it translates well to viewers outside of Finland (to my relief the audience was laughing). I also find Kaurismäki’s nostalgia, and especially his use of Finnish tango music, really amusing. When people talk about Kaurismäki’s films, I often hear the mention that Kaurismäki’s characters speak very little. In fact a visiting scholar I met at IU asked me why Kaurismäki’s films are so silent and dark and if Finns really are that way. I believe the minimal dialogue has a lot to do with Kaurismäki’s cinematic style, and not so much with how Helsinki (Finland’s capital) actually is as a place to live.
Andrew K. Nestingen, Professor of Finnish Studies in the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle, is an expert of the work of the Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki and the author of the book The Cinema of Aki Kaurismäki: Contrarian Stories. I did an email interview with Nestingen about how Kaurismäki’s films reflect the themes of our Nordic film series. In the interview Nestingen also reveals what interesting cultural artifacts can be seen in Kaurismäki’s films and whose old camera Kaurismäki used to film some of his most famous works.
Elisa Räsänen: How do Kaurismäki’s films reflect the theme “Nordic tales of privilege and anxiety?”
Andrew Nestingen: “Privilege and Anxiety” would be a great title for an essay about Kaurismäki. His films always show that amid the great wealth and privilege of the Finnish (or Nordic) welfare state exists tremendous vulnerability and anxiety. Drifting Clouds’s story of unemployment, and the traumatic emotional experience it creates, is a great example. Kaurismäki’s films continually seek to explore the relationship between economic privilege and anxiety. In his last two films, Le Havre and The Other Side of Hope, Kaurismäki has sought to bring questions of migration and racial discrimination into the films, although unwittingly the films seem to overlook some of the privilege and bias that are part of racial discrimination.
ER: How is Aki Kaurismäki’s style as a director?
AN: Kaurismäki’s films are spare and exaggeratedly minimalist. His characters say few words. The sets are often simple and have few objects in the mise-en-scene, made vivid mainly with their bold colors – aqua, mustard, and maroon. The actors’ performances are restrained; they show little emotion delivering their lines. The decoration and gloss of mainstream cinema is nowhere to be found. But certain curious objects, settings, and animals recurrently appear in the mise-en-scene: jukeboxes, old cars, harbors, dumps, and dogs, to name a few.
ER: What influences can be seen in Kaurismäki’s work?
AN: Aki Kaurismäki’s style combines cinephilia with exaggerated minimalism. Kaurismäki’s films express love of the cinema and its history. Kaurismäki seeks to make films within the tradition of art cinema, or auteur cinema, which began with the cinephilia of the French New Wave critics and directors of the 1950s-60s. Like them, Kaurismäki watched a huge variety of films as a young person, emulating the style of his heroes. They include many French filmmakers, including Jean Renoir, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Robert Bresson. He also loved earlier Hollywood filmmakers such as Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Erich von Stroheim, Frank Capra and Douglas Sirk, among others. Allusions to all of these filmmakers’ films can be found in Kaurismäki’s films.
ER: What were the themes of Kaurismäki’s early films?
AN: Kaurismäki began as a punk-rocker: an individualist and a member of a strong subculture. This combination was at the center of his films. He co-wrote his first film project The Liar in 1981 with his brother Mika, who also became an accomplished filmmaker. Mika directed The Liar. Mika and Aki hung out with the musicians who brought punk rock to Finland – and those musicians act in Aki’s early films, like Calamari Union (1983). The Liar, Calamari Union, and other films from the 1980s are disdainful of authority, and mock the pieties of Social-Democratic Finland. There’s a strong individualism in the characters. You have to fight to be yourself, and nobody is going to care about your fortunes. You have to bond together with your friends; when you do, you can count on them. You might have no future, but you can try to make it to the harbor, and head for somewhere else. The films are ironic, darkly humorous, and cool.
ER: How have Kaurismäki’s themes evolved over the years?
AN: Beginning in 1996, with the film Drifting Clouds, Kaurismäki becomes more interested in politics, and his films become more melodramatic, and less concerned with irony, dark humor and coolness. The earlier individualism gives way to a search for friends, community, and especially solidarity. As the global economy unleashes consequences that affect the everyday lives of Europeans, Kaurismäki’s films show flashes of the global economy. Shipping containers fill the harbors of The Man without a Past (2002), and the stevedores of Ariel (1988) are nowhere to be found. Global migrants people the more recent films. These films send a strong message that caring for others’ matters is a high moral responsibility.
ER: What characteristics of “Finnishness” can be seen in Kaurismäki’s films? American viewers, and especially students of Finnish language and culture, might be interested in finding out what we can learn about Finland through his films.
AN: Many people say that Kaurismäki’s characters’ silence is an expression of their Finnishness. They just don’t talk much. Perhaps. Finns are stereotypically quiet, according to Bertolt Brecht the only nation that could be silent in two languages (Finnish and Swedish). But I wonder if viewers outside of Finland are interested in Kaurismäki’s films because of what they say about Finnish stereotypes? One thing you can say about the films, though, is that they are full of images of postwar Finnish culture and design, some of it dating back much earlier: Ryijy rugs on the walls, Iittala beer mugs on the table, and Finnish postwar tango music playing at the dance hall. These things and sounds create nostalgia for the postwar past for many Finnish viewers – and even for some viewers who were born after that past was past.
ER: Is there something overall Nordic about Kaurismäki’s films?
AN: Kaurismäki purchased Ingmar Bergman’s camera in the 1980s. Films such as Ariel and The Man without a Past, both shot on Bergman’s camera, give a strong sense of Nordic light and darkness in their outdoor scenes.
This presentation of The Other Side of Hope belongs to the film series Nordic Tales of Privilege and Anxiety and it is sponsored by the departments of Germanic Studies and Central Eurasian Studies, Institute for European Studies, Russian and East European Institute, Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center, and IU Cinema. The upcoming films in the series are Püha Tõnu kiusamine (The Temptation of St. Tony) on March 5 and Den brysomme mannen (The Bothersome Man) on March 26.
Students can study Finnish language, culture and history in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies. You can find more information at the Finnish program’s Facebook page.
Andrew K. Nestingen is a professor and the Chair in the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. His most recent book is The Cinema of Aki Kaurismäki: Contrarian Stories (2013), published in the Wallflower imprint of Columbia University Press. He has written articles on Aki Kaurismäki, Stieg Larsson, Leena Lehtolainen, Henning Mankell, Finnish cinema, Nordic cinema, and film authorship, among other topics. He is associate editor of the Journal of Scandinavian Cinema and review editor of Scandinavian Studies.
Elisa Räsänen, Lecturer in Finnish language, teaches Finnish in three different levels in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies, and organizes Finland-related events on campus. In addition to Finnish language pedagogy, Räsänen is enthusiastic about Finnish literature, movies and music.