Ariel

Further stabilizing his position among my favorite filmmakers, Aki Kaurismäki has crafted yet another masterpiece with "Ariel", a hilarious and heartbreaking love story that chronicles a life both destroyed and saved by crime.

Like he beautifully accomplishes in most of his films, Kaurismäki mixes dry humor and brooding melancholy in a realistic, natural manner. The atmosphere is layered with realism, but also playfulness. The story is layered with sadness, but also comedy. Kaurismäki masterfully translates all of the comedies and tragedies of life to the screen, populating this interpretation of the human experience with unconventional heroes and some of international cinema's most unexpectedly kind hearted characters. Kaurismäki humanizes those who would often be looked upon as despicable criminals in a way that makes me root for them more than I would for any superhero. This is not your conventional, mainstream Hollywood film, but it still remains entertaining and accessible. It is a quiet character study that blossoms into a love story, a black comedy, and a bleak crime drama all at once.

I saw my first Kaurismäki movie (Man Without a Past) a year ago and have seen and now own most of them. I love them all and watch them over and over, but Ariel is one of my favorites. The dark humor and irony is great, with all the usual elements of suicide, big, old American cars and cool music throughout, ending with the very appropriate "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in Finnish. All of Kaurismäki's movies demand every second of your attention or you will not "get it" and every time I watch one again, I notice something else. As to the gloom and doom, my Finnish friends tell me not to believe that Finland is truly as depicted here. :-))) I love the relationships: not gushy or fake, but faithful and just plain sweet. It seems much is understood without words and that's the way this movie is.

Synopsis: A good looking young guy inherits an old Cadillac convertible in Finland and the roof won't go up. He has no family or friends and has no work so he goes and looks for a better life or at least a way to survive. He is self sufficient and shows very little emotion in what life hands him. Luckily he isn't afraid to find work where he can but for some reason doesn't stand up for himself when wrongly accused of a crime.

Basically in my opinion it is about two people who are very lonely and find each other in a sad, cold,unfair world but you never hear them complain. The actors don't seem to be acting but are just every day folk. If you want to see something completely out of the ordinary then I highly recommend you see it. I recorded it off of TCM channel and watched it twice in the same day then I saved it.

This is the second Aki Kaurismäki film I have seen.The first one was 'The Man Without a Past. After enjoying that a lot, I decided to watch the other movies of Kaurismaki, because I believe he is very good in expressing the 'life' through the simple daily life events or talks. When I watched Ariel, the first thing I noticed was, as in the previous movie, the characters don't speak much, but when they speak they are concise and to the point. The relationships start very abruptly and different from what is normally expected, but all of them end up being loyal and caring. With the beginning of the journey of the miner (Kasurinen) to the south by a convertible car, the movie also starts to present its comedy, romance, action and drama. Kasurinen keeps his calmness through all that happens to him and in the end he achieves his goal. I can recommend this movie to those who like details .

There's something that seems deeply contradictory to the very nature of Kaurismaki's stuff - cinema which at the same time invites the viewer to pay closer attention while shunning him with his trademark apathy and deadpan humour. His characters appear hard, untearful and unselfpitying, their sentiments hermetically sealed behind glacial walls of Finnish unfeeling, yet behind the expressionless mask burn desire and pathos, the truly human stuff. It is not about negation, though it may seem so at first.

Everything Kaurismaki worked towards in his career up to Ariel is brought to a glorious, brilliant blooming here. Composition, shot selection, framing and lighting, everything clicks together to form a cinematic language that threatens to burst at the seams with meaningful restraint. Restraint in which silence communicates. His mastering of the craft so much perfected that dialogue becomes largely irrelevant. There are few lines and they appear to be utilized as a stylistic manner, short and delivered with deadpan unaffection, more than exposition.

Indeed Ariel is a movie mostly told in a visual manner, built upon scene by scene, in a steady and hypnotic succession not concerned with reaching emotionally draining highs and lows as much as with building an unbreakable rhythm of its own. And so it does, to the point that a 69 minute movie appears to last much longer, without outstaying its welcome.