An Aki Kaurismaki Film
Aki Kaurismaki’s minimalist, darkly comedic style uses the diegesis, in conjunction with a stylized acting method, to subtly reflect on and examine social issues throughout his filmography. The bleak endings that once characterized his style in The Worker’s Trilogy, represented here by The Match Factory Girl (1990), are obsolete in recent films like The Man Without A Past (2002) and Le Havre (2011), wherein the finish finds fate much kinder to the characters. The stylized acting remains deadpan as ever, but the change in the character’s outlook by the film’s close cultivates a semblance of hope that was previously absent in Kaurismaki’s work. Optimism and hope only enriches Kaurismaki’s filmic style by allowing the abstract, beautiful qualities of life that can’t be bought or faked – love, happiness – to contrast with the heavy, concrete issues subsidized by capitalism – homelessness, the crippling cycle of poverty. The transition to an optimistic ending marks Kaurismaki’s movement from viewing the story as a conduit for political and social critique, reminiscent of Bertolt Brecht, to engaging with his films as social comment from a humanistic point of view.
In speaking about Kaurismaki within the context of an auteur study, the consistency in style and depth of his film’s interior meanings and motifs is an interesting place to start. First, to define auteur, Andrew Sarris’ original English-version understanding of François Truffaut’s theory explains the multi-faceted term as “three concentric circles: the outer circle as technique; the middle circle, personal style; and the inner circle, interior meaning”. It’s also important to note that Sarris understands the ‘interior meaning’ as “an élan of the soul”, with soul being defined as “that intangible difference between one personality and another”[i]. Kaurismaki embodies all three of these circles, but looking at his filmography’s overall view of humanity, interior meaning provides the opportunity to explore Kaurismaki’s soul as understood through his films.
Stylistically, trilogy or not, Kaurismaki is known for a no-frills approach to filmmaking. A scene is broken down from an establishing shot to medium close ups, treating objects and people with equal importance. His shots are contemplative and most interested in simple and methodical action. They use the same slow, observational style to show the mundane and the rousing. This combination of a minimalist camera style with a melodramatic plot is greatly enhanced by the stylized performance of his actors, whose facial expressions are mostly blank and unemotional. The plot and lighting exudes melodrama, but the minimalist expression of the camera and acting style develops distance and objectivity, resulting in dark humor found in the serious social critique that permeates Kaurismaki’s style.
His lighting technique follows the same transition as his endings. The Worker’s Trilogy starts very brightly lit, but ends with mostly shadows and darkness, expressing the fatalistic mood of the female protagonist. A Man Without A Past, produced mid-stylistic transition, begins with eerie fluorescent lighting contrasted against the black night framed in the train windows. The finish leaves the a couple, bathed in darkness with a faint glimmer of the optimism to come; the two lover’s shadows are illuminated by the brightness of the light – and the future – they are walking towards. Le Havre begins with high contrast lighting to cast dark shadows, setting the melodramatic mood for a doomed criminal’s last moments. The ending shot closes on a bright, blossoming cherry tree, glowing in the sun. The environments become more dramatic than the actors, conveying the histrionic mood that matches the dire situations facing all his characters. The contrast of expressive lighting and melodramatic plots with an overly simplified acting style calls attention to the underwhelmed attitudes of the characters. While character actions and the subjective settings highlight situations that warrant reaction, the passive facial expressions and body language accept the fate of oppression unquestioningly. However, in order to understand the reality of the social and political issues explored in Kaurismaki’s films, it’s essential to understand the political and social climate of the Scandinavian states.
The political context of Kaurismaki’s work is very much influenced by his own attitudes towards Finland’s treatment of the working class. In the Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, Sanna Kivimäki describes the political mood in Scandinavia, “The Worker’s Trilogy’s temporal and spatial context is a capitalistic Nordic welfare state in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a time when economic polarization started to increase, consumption styles became more diversified and money became ‘sexier’ than it has been previously (Siltala 2002:21).”[ii] The social and political ramifications of class structures and lack of economic disparity render lower class workers as a replaceable cog in an outdated machine. The changing class order and hierarchy created wealth mobility only for the middle and upper classes, leaving the working class with little hope or opportunity for better employment and quality of life. The working class family could offer their children no other options than a job at a factory for the rest of their lives. Children ended up supporting their parents, who were either out of work or retired with a tiny pension. This is the situation in which the match factory girl finds herself, living a dismal existence filled with mind-numbingly repetitive tasks, locked in the cycle of poverty – until she tastes the life of the middle class.
The Worker’s Trilogy films begin with a montage of lower class labor, realistically and painstakingly documenting all the repetitive, menial operations required of the garbage worker or factory girl. The opening impression of the laborers is not relatable, but mechanical, playing an unskilled role in the productions of goods (and in a wider view, cogs in the huge machine that is the capitalist economy). The lower classes are foremost workers, not humans. This mindset is also enforced by the acting style, consisting of blank faces and only movements motivated by basic needs like cooking, walking to or from work, and setting the table, etc. The lack of any real reaction to alarming events exploits Brechtian distanciation through the “A-effect”[iii]. Brecht describes this acting technique as,
“…taking the human social incidents to be portrayed and labeling them as something striking, something that calls for explanation, is not to be taken for granted, not just natural. The object of this effect is to allow the spectator to criticize constructively from a social point of view”.[iv]
Bretcht’s intentions, when applied to Kaurismaki’s cinema, elevate Iris’ struggles beyond just one girl, but the entire situation of the working classes. Kaurismaki shows Iris functioning as the state views poor laborers, devoid of all human qualities like emotion and expression. Her humanity manages to shine through the monotony through her poisonous rebellion. The viewer is able to view the state and middle class opinion of laborers through the stiff emotionless acting; but through the contrast of the stylized acting and the melodramatic lighting and plots, the viewer can see all that is wrong with this current political system and understanding.
The Match Factory Girl opens with the protagonist, Iris, working in a brightly lit factory. The last scene shows Iris in the same spot, but darkly lit. Melodramatic lighting, or mood lighting, reflects the character’s mood as well as the mood of the scene: Iris is without hope. The gloomy expressive lighting draws attention to the repetition of the scene as a representation of the never-ending cycle of hard labor and destitution that her trivial rebellion fails to break. The camera angle echoes the stagnant working class attitude, straightforward and centered – completely anonymous. This is also true of the acting style, characterized by minimal facial or bodily expression, persisting from her first scene in the factory to the bitter end. These stylistic aspects contrasting at the beginning and ending of the film distance the viewer from the emotional drama to focus more heavily at the class paradigm that Kaurismaki openly addresses.
Iris is a robot controlled by the state for labor purposes, rather than a human being capable of emotions like joy, suffering and revenge. The middle class man, when he mistakes Iris for a prostitute, also renders her incapable of feeling or existence outside labor, sexual or otherwise. To contrast Kaurismaki’s style, in films emphasizing deep, expressive emotion through an actor or actress’s performance, the audience is overwhelmed by sentiment; becoming more concerned with a particular character’s plight than the character as a product of a broken system with the director’s social commentary. Iris isn’t immediately human in this film – she is a representative of the working class used to expose the injustice of a broken economic system. The film ends as the police take Iris away from her usual spot at the factory. Without any reaction at all, Iris is lead out of the prison of lower class labor to actual jail; the camera is left watching (and hearing) the factory go on without her. This ending only reinforces her role as a rogue cog in a huge machine. The inevitability that a similar cog will replace her is quietly alluded to, examining the impact of her little rebellion as almost nonexistent. Iris’ action as a reaction to the oppression of lower class workers goes nowhere, rendering the individual powerless against the state.
The 2002 film, A Man Without A Past, is part of Kaurismaki’s transitional period, somewhere between a total social critique and the hopeful melodrama. His minimalist camera frame and acting style remain in tact, but the ending begins to stray from a strict adherence to the social themes Kaurismaki incorporates into his narrative. A man falls victim to violent thieves and loses his memory as a result of their attack. The man’s name, credited as M, could elude to his primal status as a blank slate, simply a Man, without the preconceived notions of social pressures and institutional boundaries acquired over time with memory. M leaves the hospital as vulnerable as a child, left to fend (unsuccessfully) for himself until a lower class family takes pity on him. Claire Thompson describes M’s situation perfectly, “…‘the little man’ is pitted against the state and the market who are shown doing their best to disempower citizens”.[v] The government and medical systems do not believe his condition and refuse to assist him. The Salvation Army gives him employment, but this job labels him as part of the most needy and undesirable level of society. A capitalist security guard charges exorbitantly high rent fees for an old shipping container, exploiting M’s new status as an undesirable. In fact, almost every person M comes into contact with is a metaphor for a corrupt and vicious economic system; including the poor family that takes him – their dismal lifestyle is the ultimate consequence for such a system.
Kaurismaki’s camera is mostly stable and minimalist throughout the film; however, he has developed the use of the stable camera to include a striking point-of-view shot, entirely subjective and empathetic to the character. The shot mimics a confused and unsteady pace, with the camera at eye level, reflecting the interiority of an injured man. There are no sounds of pain or calling for help; the audience is only shown the fearful reactions of the bystanders. Their faces are worried or alarmed – one girl even hides – but no one offers to help or assist in any way. This kind of personalized, vulnerable shot evokes strong feelings of empathy and identification. M is seen as a monster and Kaurismaki draws the appropriate parallels to the original monster, Frankenstein. The parallel between Frankenstein and M continues, is strong, especially at the beginning of the film (the lack of a name, no concept of social normality, etc.) When M is left for dead, he is last seen in an overhead shot, lying face-up, his face hidden by a welding mask. Cut to the shaky POV shot as M hobbles to the bathroom. After collapsing, he is pronounced dead twice: once by the janitor who finds him and again by the doctors at the hospital – yet both times he rises again. A very obvious visual allusion occurs in the hospital: M rises from the dead, getting up stiffly from under a white sheet, his face completely covered in bandages. This Frankenstein allusion ties in perfectly with the melodrama of Kaurismaki’s style, and the POV shot confirms it. The melodrama and empathy associated with Frankenstein, well known as misunderstood character, allows for a level of sincere human compassion unprecedented in Kaurismaki’s narratives. M’s ending is happier than Frankenstein’s, eventually finding hope and love. M, the new age Frankenstein, is portrayed as an individual that beat society’s prejudices and economic barriers to find happiness and companionship.
The individual prevailing over society is also the main theme of Kaurismaki’s latest film, Le Havre. The film follows the story of an elderly man, Marcel, with a sick wife, helps a young black boy, Idrissa, illegally immigrate to find his mother. Kaurismaki’s critique in this film is immigration and the role the state plays in persecuting illegal immigrants. The state is represented by a very adept detective, who figures out Idrissa is residing with Marcel almost immediately. However, in typical Kaurismaki-style, the detective’s individual empathy wins out over his duty to a corrupt and unjust state when he lets the Idrissa escape. The theme of the individual against the state shows up throughout all Kaurismaki’s filmography, but in his more recent films, the individual succeeds against the faulty institution; the power of empathy and goodwill between human beings shown to be stronger than the oppression of the state.
Kaurismaki’s emphasis on humanity is more dominant in Le Havre because of the central role of empathy regarding the protagonist and Idrissa. At the beginning, Marcel is a man who normally takes other’s kindness and compassion for granted, as evidenced by his white lies regarding payment to the baker. His attitude reversal, prompted by his wife’s illness, marks identification with the little boy, Idrissa; Marcel looks to his wife as a caregiver as much as Idrissa relies on his mother in his helpless adolescence. Both characters must learn to fend for themselves. Idrissa, who is hiding under a dock, approaches Marcel, and the film cuts between POV shots from Idrissa to Marcel as they eye each other. The audience is asked to identify with both characters and then form a reaction. Marcel, on his own when his wife is in the hospital, must take responsibility for himself and his actions as an individual. He reacts to Idrissa by purchasing food and water for him. He proves his ability and independence as an individual when he leads Idrissa to the safety of his mother. In other words, human decency becomes the driving force in the plot. The individual’s own response and action to situations creates reactions and consequences that defy the depravity of the state. The connection between two individuals, as human beings feeling empathy for one another, becomes stronger than the state as an agency of action.
A Man Without A Past explores a social critique through M, a victim of mob-mentality and cruelty, getting a second chance through individual human decency. The Match Factory Girl examines an individual rebellion against subsidized oppression of the lower classes. Le Havre observes the power of the individual agency to foil the state, specifically in terms of illegal immigration. The heavy reliance on the ‘kindness of strangers’ (as Blanche might put it) in later films follows the progression of Kaurismaki’s political views. Just as he used alienation and distanciation to focus solely on politics, his happier endings and empathetic camera have shifted to focus on the capacity of the individual to affect the change they want to see in the world. This concept is artfully demonstrated through the representation of television. Television, specifically the news reporting rebellion (Tiananmen Square, etc.), is featured in all of Kaurismaki’s films, but in Le Havre, the television is turned off. The viewer witnesses the remote being picked up and the screen going black, whereas in the previously mentioned films, the television sequences go on for 2 minutes or so; the camera lingering on the screen, and the sound enduring after the images of war and suffering leave the frame.
In an interview with Sight & Sound two years ago, Kaurismaki addresses the theme of individual versus society directly when Michael Brooke examines his character’s as “believing in human decency”, to which, Kaurismaki answers, “Individuals yes, societies no. But I have become more and more optimistic during the years, because the hope is gone”.[vi] This is an interesting point of view that does match the outcome of his films perfectly. His recent films feature hope for the future, even in dismal conditions, while The Match Factory Girl extinguishes all hope, with only two options in life: jail or hard labor. Kaurismaki seems to want to provide his audiences with hope because he feels there is no more hope for change in today’s oppressive society and politics. The drastic change in outlook, which once exploited Brechtian distanciation to focus the audience solely on political and social issues, evolved to concentrate on empathy and concern with other’s struggle as the ultimate rebellion. By respecting and taking action to help one another, the lower classes are able to overcome the adversity and survive oppression through human connection.
Kaurismaki changes his style by cultivating an approach that allows the audience to feel and connect with the characters on a basic human level. However, the social critique remains too crucial and ingrained in the story to be entirely unnoticed. In a small way, he has moved past the separation of critique and empathy to join them, creating a parallel between two drastically different styles: neorealism and melodrama. The real locations and focus on the lower classes evoke the topics most elegantly explored by the neo-realist greats like Bresson and De Sica. However, the moody lighting and maturing style of an empathetic camera develop the intense drama pioneered by Douglas Sirk and expanded on by Rainier Werner Fassbinder. As the director’s views on politics have changed, consequently, his view of political cinema has changed. As an auteur, Kaurismaki has grown into a new political philosophy that directly influences the style and plot structure in his films, drastically altering his focus, content and filmic language to create his more recent filmography.
In conclusion, Kaurismaki exhibits himself as an auteur through the traditional Andrew Sarris definition, referencing the ‘elan of the soul’[vii], but also by the changing views and evolving styles prevalent in looking at Kaurismaki’s entire filmography. More than a series of films, the collection looks at the influence of politics and social issues as well as the transformation of those views into an entirely new world view. Kaurismaki, as an auteur, reveals the inner meaning of his films through his own technique and style, genre mixing to create an unseen shade of filmic language. Kaurismaki brings the attention to social problems through film, through art, finding subtle and nuanced ways to bring about awareness in his viewers. Kaurismaki utilizes the subjectivity of film as a medium to create his style entirely attributed to his own ideas and awareness, as the producer, director and auteur of An Aki Kaurismaki Film.
[i] Andrew Sarris, “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962,” in The Film Studies Reader, ed. Joanne Hollows, Peter Hutchings, and Mark Jancovich (London; New York: Arnold ; Co-published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press, 2000), 563.
[ii] C. Claire Thomson, ed., Northern Constellations: New Readings in Nordic Cinema, Norvik Press Series A, no. 26 (Norwich, UK: Norvik Press, 2006), 74.
[iii] Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, trans. John Willett, 13th edition (London: Hill and Wang, 1964), 125.
[iv] Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, 125.
[v] Thomson, Northern Constellations, 137.
[vi] Michael Brooke, “MINOR QUAY. (cover Story),” Sight & Sound 22, no. 5 (May 2012): 17.
[vii] Sarris, “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962,” 563.
Works Cited:
Brecht, Bertolt. 1964. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Translated by John Willett. 13th edition. London: Hill and Wang.
Brooke, Michael. 2012. “MINOR QUAY. (cover Story).” Sight & Sound 22 (5): 16–20.
Kivimäki, Sanna. 2012. “Working-Class Girls in a Welfare State: Finnishness, Social Class and Gender in Aki Kaurismäki’s Workers’ Trilogy (1986–1990).” Journal of Scandanavian Cinema 2 (1): 73–88. doi:10.1386/jsca.2.1.73_1.
Sarris, Andrew. 2000. “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962.” In The Film Studies Reader, edited by Joanne Hollows, Peter Hutchings, and Mark Jancovich, 561 – 564. London; New York: Arnold ; Co-published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press.
Thomson, C. Claire, ed. 2006. Northern Constellations: New Readings in Nordic Cinema. Norvik Press Series A no. 26. Norwich, UK: Norvik Press.
