2024 Top Ten List #10 The Missile (Ohjus)

 

Director Miia Tervo

THE MISSILE (Ohjus)                      A-                                                                                    Finland  Estonia  (114 mi)  2024  ‘Scope  d: Miia Tervo

Matti Nevala stood in the snow, looking sorrowfully at his melancholy tractor.                            —Esko, The Lapland News editor, hilariously reads aloud to Niina the lame introduction to her first story

What starts out as a zany comedy quickly turns into something else entirely, plunging into a more complex, in-depth examination of dysfunctional relationships and the havoc they wreak, as the abuse of domestic violence is beautifully interwoven into a tale of Finland’s subordinate relationship with Russia, as in each case bullying is the significant factor, requiring a radical shift to overcome an inequitable power dynamic that is emotionally and psychologically damaging.  Led by a phenomenal performance by Oona Airola as Niina, a fragile and insecure woman who transforms herself from a meek, easy to push around single mother of two children whose opinion matters to no one, to a confident, well-informed journalist who suddenly becomes an expert on the dangers of nuclear proliferation, refusing to be pushed aside by authorities as she continues to probe into matters of a government cover-up of mammoth proportions.  Part of what works so well is that she is such a tender, warm-hearted person, so to see her violently brutalized in such grotesque fashion is extremely affecting to viewers, adding an underlying dimension to this historical saga of Cold War political posturing and maneuvering, asking whether it’s possible to fully comprehend the danger lurking under the surface.  In some ways, this potentially disastrous international missile crisis bears a resemblance to Kubrick’s theater-of-the-absurd characterization in DR. STRANGELOVE OR:  HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964), perhaps the ultimate in Cold War satires.  Born and raised in the Finnish Lapland, writer/director Miia Tervo studied film at the Turku Arts Academy before completing her degree in documentary filmmaking at the Helsinki University of Art and Design.  Tervo’s adept storytelling weaves a seamless connection between the past and present, finding ways of defusing decades of national anxiety with a mix of melancholy and deadpan humor, offering a profound exploration of how historical dynamics continue to influence contemporary politics, as this beautifully directed film offers an unglamorous depiction of Scandinavian banality, where alcohol and cigarettes are everywhere, balancing outrageous humor with the in-depth complexities of the characters, accentuating the eccentricities of local personalities with the seriousness in the overall turn of dramatic events, with Niina continually finding herself in ludicrous situations, as authorities blatantly refuse to acknowledge the dire predicament they face.  Plunging viewers into a world of everpresent ice and snow may remind viewers of that sarcastically irreverent tone of the Coen brother’s Fargo (1996).  What starts out as a pleasant family outing, with Niina chopping down a small tree with her two children in tow, frolicking in the wintry snow of an immense forest, quickly turns into a disaster, as the cart carrying the tree comes unhitched, careening down a hill and crashing through a storefront window of a local business establishment in town, The Lapland News.  Apologizing profusely to the proprietor, local newspaper publisher Esko (Hannu-Pekka Björkman), Niina has no money to pay for the extensive damage, so she offers her services, willing to work to pay off her debt.  Initially given minor assignments, staying out of everyone’s way, like searching through the archives for material, she’s surprised to discover a general lack of seriousness in their coverage, where gossip or offbeat human interest stories with a local flair dominate what they print, where their biggest story was about a sock falling into an ice fishing hole, as according to Esko, “Nothing ever happens here.” 

This absurdist dramatic comedy is based on the real-life incident in 1984 of a Soviet SS-N-3 Shaddock surface-to-air missile straying from the Barents Sea, violating both Norwegian and Finnish air space before crashing into Lake Inari, or Inarijärvi, the largest lake in Sápmi, a sparsely populated area located in the northern part of Finnish Lapland (speaking their own dialect), some 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle, (retrieval of soviet missile which landed in finnish waters 28 ...).  While driving to her sister’s wedding, a thunderous sound can be heard off in the distance echoing through the skies, disturbing the quiet of the forest, with radio reports quickly revealing that a missile was fired into Finland from the Soviet Union, which becomes the backdrop of the film.  While Niina wants to pursue this story, aware of potential ominous ramifications, as it might have been carrying a nuclear warhead, where the damage to the pristine environment could be disastrous, Esko has other ideas, as he doesn’t want to upset the locals with such depressing talk.  Despite her limited knowledge as a reporter, Niina throws herself into the story anyway, refusing to accept the military’s explanation that this is a matter of no consequence and nothing to worry about, mocking her interest as simply misguided, rudely dismissing her as a woman while subjecting her to sexist discrimination, where even her family has a hard time taking her seriously, too self-absorbed to give the matter any thought, routinely accepting the word of authorities, believing she’s out of her league.  With her abusive ex-husband Tapio (Tommi Eronen) in prison for assault, the frequently overwhelmed Niina has to take care of the children alone.  Making matters worse, she just lost her bakery job before Christmas and she’s facing personal challenges, not the least of which is her ex-husband is expected to be released soon from prison.  Despite having no training beyond writing “poems about ponies” in school, Niina launches a one-woman investigation into the slowly developing mystery, laboriously searching through the archives, interviewing every quirky character in town, becoming a fervently educated voice for a misinformed community.  The tension escalates when a contingent of serious-looking Finnish military brass descends on the local hotel, but refuse to offer any explanation to the press, with the film illustrating a stark contrast between a secretive and tight-lipped Finland and the more freely reported news in both Norway and Sweden, as Finland could simply not admit that it was a missile.  Looking for leads, Niina strikes up a relationship with a handsome Finnish Air Force pilot Kai Repola (Pyry Kähkönen) who witnessed the incident, hinting that an errant Soviet nuclear cruise missile may be involved.  Their rapport turns intimate, an unexpected romantic diversion, while at the same time Niina’s sister Kaisa (Emma Kilpimaa) has her own wedding that she does not wish to be spoiled, while Niina’s own dysfunctional relationship with her domineering mother Hanski (Milka Ahlroth) is quite striking, as her mother still views her as a child and apparently can’t help but undermine Niina at every turn, continually devaluing her sense of worth, exposing yet another layer of past trauma and abuse, so when her mother says that Finland is a country troubled by a sense of inferiority and unworthiness, Niina knows the feeling.

Sharing a one thousand mile border with Russia and a 1948 border agreement (Finno-Soviet Treaty of 1948 - Wikipedia), the Finnish government initially classified the incident as a UFO.  And while hotel owners were happy with the extra business, including an international press clamoring for information, this becomes the biggest international news event in the history of the Inari region, turning into a real media circus, where the government was simply not interested in making this a matter of consequence, and was certainly not interested in airing possible differences in public.  In an era of political uncertainty, on the eve of US-Soviet disarmament talks in Geneva, where United States Secretary of State George Shultz was about to meet with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, governments downplayed the incident, where at first the Soviet Union made no comment, while in Finland soldiers scoured the border area by helicopter and snowmobile in the bitter cold, with officials quietly checking with Moscow to see what had happened, as apparently a missile escaped from a military training exercise during a target test.  While the missile itself fell in Inarijärvi, Tervo’s film was actually filmed in Pelkosenniemi and Kemijärvi, where the Kemijärvi Cultural Centre is transformed into the fictional restaurant-hotel Tunturipeikko, with the director claiming “We wanted a film to have a milieu built on locals, not tourists.”  To that end, despite the grim implications, local eateries take advantage of the situation by creating rocket-themed fish dishes and missile-shaped donuts, which quickly sell out.  Making light of the incident is an all too human reaction, with the military continuing to downplay any significance, yet their very presence in such large numbers defies that position, with Niina continually pressing them on just exactly what happened, where her archivist position at the newspaper allows her to fully investigate other incidents and the devastatingly harmful impact on the environment, becoming one of the more persistent voices of the community, and an irritant to the military who grow tired of seeing her.  As Niina obsesses about the missile’s truth and the nation’s boundaries, she confronts the truth about her own personal boundaries, as her overcontrolling ex-husband is released from prison and wants to spend more time with the children, even hoping they could pick up the pieces of their marriage with promises of change, but it is only a matter of time before his true colors show themselves with a horrifically brutal beating, which is simply a shocking development, putting everything else in perspective, where unchecked power has a way of steamrolling its way through malicious, out of control behavior.  This humanized development is extremely effective, where the bully on the block shows its true stripes, as the film masterfully captures the essence of mistreatment and humiliation, reflecting the harsh reality that the citizens and the nation must learn to defend themselves against abuse.  Niina’s persistence in hounding the military for the truth finally pays off when they discover the missile is submerged under the lake, and she’s invited to watch the rather precarious retrieval, which is witnessed by the entire international media and world.  The period soundtrack is fabulous, with Bronski Beat’s No More War, No More War (Remastered) YouTube (4:01), Alphaville’s Forever Young (“…are you gonna drop the bomb or not?”), Alphaville - Forever Young (Official Video HD) YouTube (3:42), and Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark’s Enola Gay, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - Enola Gay (Official ... YouTube (3:34), fittingly playing while Niina and her family drink in excess and dance in slo-mo, where the irony is not lost that they could soon be obliterated.  The way this film deflects an enormous distortion of reality through absurdist humor and outlandish local character makes this a delight to experience, effortlessly evoking a myriad of emotions while crafting an amalgamation of contrasting genres and tones, becoming a moving essay on the importance of self-worth, accentuated by such an empowered, deeply humane performance by Oona Airola that makes this immensely appealing.

Road North (Tie pohjoiseen)

ROAD NORTH (Tie pohjoiseen)         B             
Finland  (110 mi)  2012  d:  Mika Kaurismäki         Official site [Japan]

Mika is the older but less known of the Kaurismäki brothers, both among the founders of modern Finnish cinema.  Unlike the internationally acclaimed Dardennes and the Coens, the two Finns rarely work together, where the better known Aki began as an assistant, screenwriter and actor in his brother Mika’s earliest works, whose first film THE LIAR (1980) was an overnight sensation.  Mika was inspired by Finnish film historian Peter von Bagh’s book History of Cinema, studying cinema in Munich at the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen before returning to make films in Finland.  In the 1980’s he and his brother, along with various colleagues and friends, co-founded the Villealfa Filmproductions, a no frills, low-budget film studio that by the end of the decade became the third biggest production company in Finnish film history, while Mika also co-founded the only film festival north of the Arctic Circle, the Midnight Sun Film Festival in 1986.  By the 90’s however, Mika and Aki started to produce their films separately through their own production companies, with Mika living in Rio de Janeiro since 1992 mostly making documentary films, where perhaps his most memorable is TIGERO:  A FILM THAT WAS NEVER MADE (1994) with Sam Fuller and Jim Jarmusch.  This script was written in the 80’s, where it was originally entitled Road South, traveling from the north of Italy south to Sicily, but the project fell through when the lead actor had scheduling difficulties, so it’s had a long gestation period.  In total, Mika has done seven road movies, culminating with this film, which is built around a lovable star, Vesa-Matti Loiri, Finland’s most popular actor, comedian, and singer, best known for his role portraying Uuno Turhapuro, a comedic character that originated in early 1970’s Finnish television, continuing his portrayal in a total of 20 movies between the years 1973 and 2004.

This darkly comic and touching road movie follows the unlikely scenario of a ne'er-do-well, outcast father Leo (Vesa-Matti Loiri) absent for 35 years finally paying a visit to his long-lost son Timo (Samuli Edelmann), where there’s obviously more than just a gap of time missing between these two polar opposites.  Timo is seen onstage playing classical piano for a Sibelius Piano Quintet, Jean Sibelius - Piano Quintet in G Minor, JS 159 ... - YouTu (5:26), while Leo, who has a ticket for the performance, is drunk and asleep on his doorstep by the time Timo arrives home, announcing he is his father while offering him a gesture of good will, an already half-open bottle of whiskey.  While Timo is something of a joyless workaholic concert pianist separated from his wife and daughter, largely due to his incessant need for practice when he is home and prolonged absences on tour away from home, Leo is more of a good-natured opportunist and scoundrel used to taking advantage of people and situations, traveling on a Paavo Nurmi Finnish passport, where he thrives on the moment.  While Leo is a consummate liar, often getting lost in his own fabrications, Timo reluctantly agrees to accompany him on what he thinks will be a brief afternoon jaunt out of Helsinki to visit a sister he never knew he had.  Instead this turns into a hilarious romp through the Finnish countryside as they head north to the Lapland driving a stolen Pontiac convertible.  While Timo is under the mistaken assumption that his father may fill in some missing details about his past, Leo is more interested in just having a good time, where spending time together with family is all that matters, which interestingly enough, is a similar theme in Alexander Payne’s Nebraska (2013), an exploration of America’s heartland that features another grizzled character in Bruce Dern.  Unlike Nebraska, which probably plays better in America, this film probably plays better outside Finland, as it exports a kind of broad-based Finnish humor rarely seen in the rest of the world, built upon fabricated storytelling and constant misdirection, as Leo is forever taking advantage of his son’s naïve gullibility.

Kaurismäki’s dark-edged humor has at its roots the absurdity of Eastern European rule, and while never occupied by the Soviets after World War II, Finland was forced to cede much of their land to the Soviets, returned a decade later. This placed them in a precarious position of being a nation caught between the East and the West, where few exploit that humor better than the Kaurismäki’s, who in films like Lights in the Dusk (Laitakaupungin Valot) (2006), or my absolute favorite Kaurismäki film ever made, Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana (Pidä huivista kiinni, Tatjana) (1994), often show remnants of an Eastern European mindset, adding stoic faces, rigid authoritarian rules, and a world filled with eternal gloom, often broken up by a wacky delight in Elvis, early rock ‘n’ roll music, and of course, drinking.  Unlike the wordlessness or typical deadpan in other Aki Kaurismäki films, Loiri couldn’t be more outlandishly appealing as an oversized oaf, who despite all his character flaws, means well.  The guy is a walking storyteller wherever he goes, where stories literally pour out of his mouth at the most inopportune times.  While Leo’s amusing practice of Finnish custom, visiting people unannounced and just walking right into their homes, has an endearing quality to it, as the film provides a nice observational feel where it’s continually feeding off of this forced intimacy of the two characters in a car, where they’re constantly at odds with their surroundings and the people they meet.  While the film is an odyssey into the family’s past, the scene of the film is an impromptu performance at a typically empty hotel bar where the father and son break into a superb rendition of “Autumn Leaves,” or “Dead Leaves” with Finnish lyrics, Tapio Heinonen - Kuolleet Lehdet ( Les feuilles mortes ) - You YouTube (4:12), followed by “Condemned to Walk,” Vesa-Matti Loiri & Samuli Edelmann - Tuomittuna kulkemaan  YouTube (3:56), where Loiri’s deep bass voice expressing heartbreak in the land of a thousand lakes works brilliantly, even as they pick up a couple of girls afterwards, adding a touch of romanticism to the absurdity of their adventure.  While the tone of wacky adventure is mostly fun, the film is wonderfully nuanced with small and intimate moments among the many roadside attractions that sensitively explores larger themes of family roots and redemption, magnifying the importance of shared moments, beautifully elevating the material with a touch of eloquence from the music of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in G Major, D 894 (Op. 78), opening movement, Molto moderato e cantabile, Franz Schubert.Sonata G-dur.1.Molto moderato e cantabile  YouTube (16:51).