LIGHTS IN THE DUSK (Laitakaupungin Valot) B+
Finland Germany France (78 mi)
2006 d: Aki Kaurismäki
You couldn't get out.
All the doors were locked. —Koistinen
(Janne Hyytiäinen), describing what it was like in prison
A perfect example of Kaurismäki’s minimalist miserablism,
which is so wretchedly miserable, especially the way this director loves to
pile it on, perhaps a template for the Coens in A SERIOUS MAN (2009), that it
ends up being absurdly rich in comedy. Helsinki
never looked so bleak and depressingly gloomy as this, the final chapter of his
Helsinki Trilogy where love and hope eternal blooms among the homeless in THE
MAN WITHOUT A PAST (1992), followed by a down-on-their-luck couple in DRIFTING
CLOUDS (1996), taking a look at life on unemployment, making the best of a
depressing situation, living “the Finnish reality,” leaving this final
installment, perhaps the most painterly of the series, to be Kaurismäki’s sour
comment on the brutally harsh system the Soviets left behind, where each man
exists in a no man’s land of solitude and eternal gloom. Never have you seen a grayer city set in an
industrial wasteland where the future looks so grim, where Kaurismäki
accentuates the featureless concrete high rise structures of a former socialist
state, remnants of an Eastern European mindset, adding stoic faces, rigid
authoritarian rules, and rampant conformity, where anyone who’s different is
looked upon the same as a foreigner, with utter contempt. Inside one of those nameless and faceless
buildings lives Koistinen (Janne Hyytiäinen), a decent, good looking guy who
goes about his business as a shopping mall security guard, carrying keys and
entering security codes for each of the retail shops that he checks, returning
the keys each night when he checks out.
For whatever reason, and Kaurismäki never explains, the other guards all
hang out together and go out drinking afterwards, but they shun and despise
Koistinen, who by the way he speaks may have little education. There may be little hints, like a slightly
different foreign accent that would not be perceived by an international
audience relying on subtitles, but more likely Kaurismäki simply wrote it this
way. In every group, there’s always one
bad apple, but here the apple is decent, it’s the group that’s rotten.
Drenched in an atmosphere of delicious evil and uninterrupted
cigarette smoking, Ilkka Koivula plays the most despicable character in the
film, a Russian, or perhaps even worse, a Finn acting like a Russian, which in
itself is a hilarious caricature because Kaurismäki relishes every touch of Russian
malice, where here there’s plenty to go around, as he surrounds himself with
other Russian gangsters, all wearing black shirts under their dark suits and
ties, riding in black stretch limos, smoking relentlessly. These guys are completely amoral, yet with
all the connections they have, they pull the strings. For whatever reason, probably because he’s
friendless, isolated and alone, they target Koistinen as a chump, an easy set
up, so they send him a gorgeous girl, Mirja (Maria Järvenhelmi), a shapely blond
ice goddess who emotes nothing, asking at a café if he wants company because
he’s all alone. Koistinen figures out in
split seconds that God has answered his prayers and asks “And now what? We're getting married?” He takes her to a rock ‘n’ roll club, where
in typical Kaurismäki fashion the first song is played in its entirety by a
band called Melrose, where Koistinen just aimlessly stands in one spot and
looks around, but Mirja whispers in his ear “It's easy to see you've got rock
‘n’ roll in your blood,” a viciously funny remark, and a comment on how he sees
himself as opposed to who he really is.
Little does he know what’s in store for him, as after walking the rounds
with him and memorizing the security code, they drug him, take his keys and rob
a high priced jewelry store on his route, the first of a series of Job-like
setbacks that challenges him to the very core, where he is sent to jail and
humiliated from one instance to the next, where even the building where he
lived gets demolished and where the girl expresses reservations about him
talking to the police. But the Russian
insists not to worry, “Koistinen will never betray you. He's as loyal as a dog,
the sentimental fool. It's my genius to understand that.”
And there you have it, Kaurismäki’s comment on the Finnish
state of mind, a society of lap dogs just waiting for hand outs that never come,
believing their troubles are just “temporary.”
Through Koistinen's Christ-like suffering, continually turning the other
cheek, the audience is continually dismayed that it’s not playing out like “in
the movies,” like the machine guns and surging violins heard when Koistinen
actually goes to the movies, where some unanticipated heroic answer arrives in
the form of a cavalry or a bigger villain than the Russian who will cut him
down to size. But it’s not that kind of
movie. Instead it’s mercilessly accurate
in terms of how helpless and lonely each individual stands against the
heartless bureaucracy and the impervious scorn of the State. Kaurismäki’s picture of Helsinki is to expect
to get kicked around a lot, where rampant homelessness and unemployment
complete the picture of the urban Trilogy.
In all three films there’s a depiction of romance, from an established
marriage, to a most unorthodox attraction, to a completely bogus affair, where
Koistinen shuns his real girl friend, Aila (Maria Heiskanen), a simple yet
loyal woman who steadfastly remains at his side, exactly like his coworkers
treat him, barely noticing that she’s even there. With ravishing shots of construction cranes
strewn about the city and a fog-like emptiness surrounding the gloom of the
harbor, cinematographer Timo Salminen shows Helsinki to be a work in progress, where
there are also luminous views of high rise modernization and a thriving
seaport. Set to an operatic soundtrack
featuring plenty of Jussi Björling, a “Swedish” tenor, told in his trademark
deadpan style with fadeouts to black, Kaurismäki wittily shows how easily one
can fall from grace and end up in the gutter, with no protection from the fall
and where all hope feels lost, where easily the sequence of the movie is a Buñuel-like
scathingly dark commentary with gallows humor where just like the end of Simon
of the Desert (Simón del Desierto) (1965), the Russians sell their souls to
the devil and discover their love of rotgut rock ‘n’ roll, where they sit
around drinking and playing cards all day while Mirja sweeps up after them,
waiting on them hand and foot.
