Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 10/08/17

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sunday, October 8, 2017

Ariel (Aki Kaurismäki, 1988)

Turo Pajala in Ariel

Taisto Kasurinen: Turo Pajala
Irmeli Pihlaja: Susanna Haavisto
Mikkonen: Matti Pellonpää
Riku: Eetu Rikamo
Miner: Erkki Pajala
Mugger: Matti Jaaranen

Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Screenplay: Aki Kaurismäki
Cinematography: Timo Salminen

As in Shadows in Paradise (1986), another of Aki Kaurismäki's impassive, expressionless couples sets sail at the end of Ariel, this time on the ship that gives the film its title. (If you know Kaurismäki's films, you surely weren't expecting any airy Shakespearean sprites from him?) When the mine at which Taisto and his father work shuts down, the father hands to keys to his Cadillac convertible to Taisto, then goes into the men's room and shoots himself. Taisto stoically gets in the car and drives to Helsinki to look for work, despite the fact that it's winter in Finland and he can't get the top to go up. (This problem persists throughout the film, leading Irmeli's small son to comment, "Nice wind," as they're speeding along the highway. It's resolved only toward the end of the film when Mikkonen asks, at a particularly inappropriate moment, "What's this button for?" and presto!) It's odd to use the word "charming" about a movie so grim in its setting and the plight of its characters, and that involves suicide, murder, various beatings, and prison time, but that's the nature of Kaurismäki's filmmaking: There are moments of dark delight scattered throughout, such as the fact that the fob on which the keys to the Cadillac are hung is the inner workings of a music box, and the tune it plays is the socialist anthem "The Internationale." Music is used wittily throughout the film, including various pop songs, and as the Ariel sails away to Mexico at the end, we hear "Over the Rainbow," sung in Finnish. There is something Faulknerian about Kaurismäki's determination to inject humor into even the grimmest of situations.