Category: At the cinema

Suden
Vuosi follows the complicated love-story between
Mikko, a middle-aged professor of literature (Kari Heiskanen) and his star pupil, the quiet, epileptic Sari (Krista Kosonen). Sari’s condition has
caused her to retreat from normal life, while Mikko’s fascination with 19th century
poetry is slowly alienating him from his family and colleagues; that is, until
the kindred spirits meet and begin their forbidden affair. The relationship
naturally causes a lot of friction, but Mikko and Sari manage to stick together
until the world accepts them, at least to some extent.

Visually, Saarela’s film is top-notch: Helsinki, for once, actually
looks like it’s a part of Europe and the
cinematography is captivating, especially when complemented by Tuomas Kantelinen’s beautiful score. Overall
the acting is decent, although Kosonen at times has trouble with the demanding
role, and it shows – luckily Heiskanen is usually there to pick her up. Worse,
the last third of the film gets confusing as a lot of plot lines are
artificially smoothed over (or ignored entirely), making the film seem like it
was wrapped up haphazardly and in a hurry.

{mosimage}It’s not that Suden Vuosi is a bad film, far from it – it’s just that its story
and style once again have difficulties keeping in synch with each other,
resulting in a film that builds up a lot of steam but ultimately falls flat
since the low-key story does not seem to demand such grand, over-the-top
imagery – like a faculty christmas party that looks like a rave (those classic
literature people sure know how to par-tay)
or a dramatically-lighted, erm, poetry lecturer doing push-ups – it’s just completely
out-of-place and silly, Aleksi Mäkelä
style. Somebody please get Saarela an honest-to-god action/thriller film to
direct – I want to see him do the Finnish Last
Boy Scout, so just give the man a script.

21 years later,
the cinema version based on the best-seller is finally released, under the
direction of Tom Tykwer, who started
to get success after his superb piece “Run Lola Run” in 1998.

The story is well
known by many: we follow the biography of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw), a fishmonger’s bastard
with a superb talent: he has the best and most developed sense of smell in the
world, intoxicated by the sweet fragrance of young women that will turn him
into not only the best perfumer of all times, but also a serial killer.

Framed by 18th
century in France,
the atmosphere and photography of the film is totally captivating. The
spectator gets immersed in the din of Paris,
the sumptuous villas, the corners of the smaller towns… All the social strata accurately
represented in front of the eyes – or should we say the nose? – of Jean
Baptiste.

{mosimage}Ben Whishaw´s
acting skills are not bad, but the treatment of the character seems ridiculous
in some scenes. I remember, many years ago when reading voraciously the pages
of Süskind´s book, to feel pity for the main character, to support him until
the last and climatic episode of his life, and to develop a clear sympathy for
his weaknesses, although this would mean the killing of young women. But the
sad and famished Jean Baptiste does not have the same effect in the film.
Sometimes it just look like a parody of a little animal,  a being just a little bit more humanized than
“Gollum/Smeagol” from Lord of the Rings, and even Tolkien´s character was able to create a closer relationship with
the spectator. The film results in being too long and I could not avoid some
yawning before the end of it.

A couple of
glorious contributions save most of the credit: one from Dustin Hoffman, superb in his role of Giuseppe Baldini, the old
master perfumer. The other, the long red hair of Rachel Hurd-Wood that brightens like fire in every second that this
English beauty appears on screen. A delightful vision all over the movie.

With great power
comes great responsibility. Grenouille did not control the power of his nose,
and Tykwer, the director, has neither succeeded in the great responsibility
over his shoulders to transmit the same energy than the book exhales. Twenty-one
years has been too long awaiting time for this result.

{quotes}Part Jackass, part Andy Kaufman, Sacha Baron Cohen is clearly a man who thrives on controversy, but to label him as a low-brow shock comedian is to miss the point.{/quotes} Yes, Borat is outrageous, tasteless and at times unbearably embarrassing to watch, but at the same time, intelligent and above all, pant-pissing, ‘tears-streaming-down your-cheeks’-class funny shit. Nothing is sacred, when Kazakhstan’s "number two reporter" is sent on a cultural fact-finding mission to the most superior nation of them all, the U.S and A.

On the surface level, Cohen’s comedy is based on blatant anti-semitism, misogyny and so on, but the punch line is delivered seemingly spontaneously by the unaware victims of Borat and the unashamed gut-laughter caused by the blatant breaking of convention. And that takes us back to superiority, something that Borat teaches the viewer quite a lot about.

{mosimage}Because of Borat’s bumbling social and physical clumsiness, people get a kick out of dismissing the Kazakhstani reporter as being mostly harmless and therefore must pay the price for their superiority, as Cohen mercilessly exploits all possible cracks their facades. The absurdity of the situations, and the way in which Cohen satirizes the patronizing attitudes which people have against a foreigner and his complete disregard of convention, makes for a type of comedy where the viewer can either writhe uncomfortably out of sympathy or laugh out loud while secretly enjoying a “I’m glad it’s not me” feeling of superiority for the poor victims of Borat’s bizarre deeds. The joke in Borat gets turned around so many times that the full title of the film turns from surface-funny bad English-joke to a very accurate description of the film: After all, the viewer does learn a lot about the American culture, and the nation of Kazakhstan has never in its history enjoyed such international fame – for, even though the Kazakhstani government got very upset, there is no such thing as bad publicity, as Matti Nykänen or Paris Hilton can confirm.