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| Finnish President Urho Kekkonen smokes a peace pipe |
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| Director Arthur Franck |
THE HELSINKI EFFECT B Finland (88 mi) 2025 d: Arthur Franck
The Helsinki Effect is an archival dream of the Cold War, which is more about historiography than history itself. Basically, the film is an atmospheric mood that is fueled by the windmills of history. —Director Arthur Franck
In 1975, thirty-five world leaders gathered in Helsinki’s massive Finlandia Hall, the last major work of Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto, for an unprecedented three-day Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), otherwise known as The Helsinki Accord, a study of diplomacy in setting out principles to guide their relations in respect to sovereignty and borders, rejection of force, protection of human rights and freedoms, and the right to self-determination, where the aim of the negotiations was to adopt a framework for “security and cooperation in Europe,” gathering 27 capitalist and 8 socialist states, producing literally hundreds of hours of archival footage. It should be noted, as a point of perspective, that this was the same year American troops finally withdrew from Saigon, effectively ending the Vietnam War after a long and protracted war, while the CSCE led to the formation of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which continues to hold influence today. The director on hand at the screening, who is chairman of the Finnish Documentary Guild, acknowledged that his initial priority in making the film was shooting no new footage, like adding historical experts weighing in, offering their views, instead relying entirely upon archival footage from State television, declassified documents, recently released transcripts including years of prior negotiations and side conversations, and then diving in headfirst in a scholarly manner in order to decipher what at the time didn’t seem like much of an accomplishment, often viewed as a pointless exhibition of futility. Finland’s role in all this is major, closely aligned with the Soviet Union at the time, sharing a lengthy 830-mile border with Russia, and have always had to maintain a role of neutrality so as not to upset them. In what could never have been anticipated then, Finland, after more than half a century as a neutral state, quickly joined the EU and NATO after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, becoming a model in economic development and education, finally catching up with the economic standard of the rest of Western Europe. As human rights and fundamental freedoms are facing new challenges in Europe, this agreement turned out to be the blueprint by which all the dissident factions held the Soviet Union to stand by the agreement they signed, allowing more freedoms to rise from within Eastern Europe, including Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and the Solidarity movement in Poland, leading to Helsinki-86 in Latvia, the first openly anti-Communist organization, as well as the establishment of the Helsinki Human Rights Watch Groups, like Helsinki Watch, a precursor to Human Rights Watch, designed to monitor the Soviet Union’s compliance with the 1975 agreement, all helping to pave the way for the fall of the Berlin Wall and bring about an end of the Cold War, with the declaration becoming a cornerstone of European cooperation. Deconstructing this misunderstood diplomatic milestone, using rare footage, it explores how a grand political performance turned into a turning point in world history, unpacking Cold War myths with sharp insight and a healthy dose of dark humor, using AI-generated audio voices of Brezhnev and Kissinger in order to allow the filmmaker an absurdly hilarious opportunity to simulate calling them on the phone, while also revealing an amusing side of world leaders behind closed doors. Part of the problem is AI’s role in the translation of documents and the recreation of voices for some of the diplomats, notably Kissinger and Brezhnev, who spoke English for the first time, a language he never spoke during his lifetime.
This was a mammoth session, the largest since the Second World War in Europe, with all the heads of state and foreign ministers of Europe, with the exception of Andorra and Albania, in addition to Canada and the USA. Marking the 50th anniversary, the signing of the CSCE Final Act on August 1, 1975 was preceded by 672 days of preliminary work, which also shows Franck’s film in detail, as again and again he jumps around between decades to illustrate the “larger context.” The leaders of the superpowers 50 years ago were bitterly opposed, but they still met and diplomatically negotiated with each other to achieve peace. Told in twelve chapters, seemingly made by Erol Morris, as the screen simply zips by, this event achieves what would be considered impossible today, astonishingly bringing together world leaders after years of tense and exhausting negotiations, like American President Gerald Ford, Soviet Secretary General Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and East German General Secretary Erich Honecker (both sitting next to each other at the signing), Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme (who would be assassinated a decade later), Yugoslavian President Josip Tito, all hosted by Finland’s President Urho Kekkonen. No one was more skeptical than American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who mockingly acknowledged, “The conference can never end with a meaningful document. From me, they can write it in Swahili,” yet he would later change his mind in the third and final volume of his memoirs published fifteen years later. Just a year earlier, Soviet author and dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, was stripped of his Soviet citizenship and flown to West Germany, yet he denounced the summit, calling it “the funeral of Eastern Europe,” as did The New York Times, claiming it was “misguided and empty,” suggesting it was much ado about nothing. Echoing Kissinger’s frustration, the accord was poorly received by the American media, which declared it, wrongly, as a victory for the authoritarian governments of the communist world. History books even perpetuated this warped view. Marred by controversy and contradictions from the beginning, the multitude of different voices in the room produced an arduously slow going process, seemingly an endless diplomatic struggle without producing tangible results. Accordingly, Finnish film director Arthur Franck, who also narrates the film in an irreverent, often self-deprecating tone, ironically states at the beginning that the subject of the film is boring, combing through massive amounts of archival materials, yet somehow he transforms this into something coherent, relevant, and even fun, as we watch highly skilled diplomats botch their opening speeches, politicians sleeping in the conference halls, or Brezhnev in swimwear, repeatedly seen combing his hair and bushy eyebrows in front of a mirror, interspersed with comically clumsy moments from TV studios around Europe and the U.S. You can see waiting, smoking, and yawning television correspondents of all countries, almost entirely men. What this suggests is that slow diplomacy may be boring, but it’s worth taking the time, as it’s also highly effective, a platform where words and understandings matter, considering the alternative that exists today, when bloviating world leaders blatantly disregard these agreements by undermining traditional multilateral alliances, with an all but useless and dysfunctional United Nations that refuses to intervene, and war resuming across all fronts.
More than just the sum of its parts, this documentary demonstrates the subtle art of material selection and narration, breathing life into history with insightful connections, new and enlightening interpretations, and humor, brought together with a playful and experimental approach, with the filmmaker acknowledging “I only know what I was looking for when I find it.” The central characters are Henry Kissinger, the U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, whose main achievements are not trivial, but he will be remembered for cozying up to dictators, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, as the idea to hold the conference was actually his, literally fixated on obtaining an agreement, and Finland’s longest serving President, Urho Kekkonen, who was instrumental in getting the two sides to the table. Derided by the American media as a Soviet ally, Kekkonen knew what he was doing in securing peace for his nation, perhaps uniquely situated with its history between East and West, between two postwar superpowers, both heavily armed with nuclear weapons. In Moscow, this agreement was touted as a great success, since it meant that the West finally accepted the new borders that had been drawn in Europe after the end of World War II, including the division of Germany, basically legitimizing Soviet rule in Eastern Europe. While no one really questioned the borders, established at the Yalta Conference in 1945, followed by the Paris Peace Treaty in 1947, Brezhnev was afraid of losing ground, recognizing the inviolability of existing state boundaries and what that could mean to his legacy, so he insisted on opening a new diplomatic front. Broken down into three sections, borders, economics, and human rights, each side had their own self-serving interests, with the Soviets craving the first two, while the Americans and Europeans held out extensively for the third, yet all sides made concessions, at times painful ones. Brezhnev wanted nothing to do with the third section, complaining that it threatened domestic affairs, but the Europeans, under the guidance of Kekkonen who agreed to host the final piece of the puzzle, insisted and eventually prevailed. Just as Brezhnev gets out his pen to sign, the image freezes as the unseen narrator sarcastically tells us that this man is about to make a great mistake. Brezhnev, however, could barely contain his glee following the signing, while Kissinger dismissed it as boring and irrelevant. For him, diplomacy is power politics, a game that you have to play to assert your interests. While images from diplomatic conferences are essentially dry and boring, with endless hours of speeches that many would prefer not to watch, the filmmaker has condensed them into a blend of serious and lighthearted moments, continually altering the mood, keeping viewers on their heels. The strength of the film lies in its surprising topicality, which is not expected in an all-archival documentary film focusing on political history from half a century ago, but during these uncertain times, the film is a gripping reminder about a meaningless conference that had a profound effect in changing the world, yet more importantly, it painfully shows what our present lacks. As we watch the very idea of diplomacy being dismantled in the largely ego-fueled, power-hungry authoritarian world of Trump and Putin, this film is a testament to a time when adversaries could find a common ground and actually keep the peace. Now we see how painfully we miss these basic tenets of international relations. “Give me more boring speeches and conferences,” Franck says, “as the alternative is always much worse.
