Ikitie

2017 is the year that I started following Finnish movies too. Aki Kaurismäki's latest, "Toivon tuolla puolen", and "Tom of Finland" proved to be great starting points.

"Ikitie", on the other hand, reminds me that no matter how good it can get, there are always gonna be mediocre efforts as well.

It's a prestige project belonging to Finland 100 program - which celebrates a century of independence, and includes 13 Finnish movies largely funded by private sector.

It's all about a man (Tommi Korpela) forced to leave family and Finland to start a bitter new life in Soviet territory. He's always in trouble, not having a chance to return to his family, not being able to live peacefully as well.

This is connected to bigger if relatively forgotten part of history of early Soviet era. During the Great Depression of the 1930's, great father Stalin called American people to relocate to Soviet Union - to build a better world behind the iron curtain. Nearly 10,000 followed the call; their community is where Jussi ends up.

"Ikitie" was surely made for international attention and maybe foreign language Oscar in mind, so the makers have found it important to create a Finnish epic which looks like Hollywood project.

This has resulted in roaring success on visual side - production values are great, the movie looks truly beautiful -, but failure on creative side.

I am not familiar with the true story, or novel by Antti Tuuri, that the screenplay is based on, but the storytelling is just weak.

The events are not very varied, interesting or connected too, bringing us just a series of moments from one man's journey. The result is too shallow to have a natural fluidity or be able to address any complex issues contained in the story.

Sadly for a movie concentrating on the state of mind (and life) of the main character, it is not able to create a strong emotional connection with neither him nor any around him.

The characters are paper-thin which is neither a great start for building rapport with audience nor offering great performances, leaving us with exactly one semi-intriguing person on screen.

And this intriguing figure is not the central hero but his nemesis, played by Hannu-Pekka Björkman, who is able to surprise with some devilish charm and uncertainty, like a trickster figure.

The lack of development for Tommy Korpela's much-suffering main character leaves him mostly with a chance to look sad or remorseful.

So they have spent more energy playing with his appearances through time (beard, haircut, etc) rather than character development. Think Brad Pitt in "Legends of the Fall", only with more straight and much more good-looking version of Hillar Kohv.

The main character's life choices may also seem infuriating to modern audiences, especially as his behaviour and motifs are understandable mainly for those familiar with a history of Red Russia's oppression. The background needs some additional explanation to strike a chord with wider, maybe international, circle of movie lovers.

Also, "Ikitie" suffers from too much "acting", resulting in some unnatural-sounding dialogue, resembling a play rather than a movie. The usual problem with Estonian movies too.

The project has other connections to Estonia as well, including the shared history under Russian regime, filming locations (Sillamäe, Tallinn, Haapsalu, and Varangu) and some Estonian actors used, such as Hendrik Toompere Sr. and the late Lembit Ulfsak. But their roles are small.

Based on his resume so far, Antti-Jussi Annila is an interesting director for sure, but "Ikitie" is simply a disappointment, and not a very interesting disappointment at that.

By the way, the screenplay was written by A-J Annila and other famous Finnish filmmaker, Aku Louhimies, who was supposed to direct it but had to honor other commitments instead. Which is directing and co-writing a war drama "Tuntematon Sotilas" ("Unknown Soldier"), another famous movie from the Finland 100 program.

Very good movie. The story is awful but it was shown without excess, not overdoing the gruesome aspects and yet not saving anything. Good direction, edition and casting. The actors had done a good job. Nice work in showing the time and uses: set decoration, costume design, makeup. Nothing is out of tone. Whenever you hear someone saying socialism is what we need, make them watch this movie. Noone needs socialism, no matter if in the russian way or the nazi one, nor Cuban, Chinese or any kind of socialism. And noone needs any kind of politics that take away your rights. If you need spies and violence to keep people's will, then you know it's not good.

PD I knew I've already seen the actress that play Sarah. I thought she was American because she sounds very American. I've just checked on her and she's the star of Borgen, the excelent Danish tv show!

A jewel from Finland. The story ignored in the narrative of depiction of horrors of Communism. Very well done.

It is difficult to live in a life that has been forced and worse than it is to be accused of the the worst qualities in existence throughout history, but if this story which full of patience and the brutality of man was real that means the world is bigger than imagined in our minds

You can see my score right there. I will not describe the plot or go into spoilers -- there are plenty of that here already. Instead, I will discuss the things that were left storming in my mind after watching this beautifully delivered, tormenting and utterly heartbreaking movie. I'll touch on my thoughts about the movie as well, but I'm sure most couldn't care less about my thoughts, so I suggest you move on to the next review.

So... I am not against communism in principle. On a theory level it's a very nice and wholesome idea, but it could never work in our world. Not in humanity's current state and the inherent scarcity that comes with living in a finite, limited planet. There are unlimited futures before us and who knows, maybe in a few of them it'll become plausible and maybe even the norm. But it's hard to see our self-destructing species lasting long enough to see something utopistic like that.

I wanted to get that out of the way, lest someone would mistake my harsh stance against the soviets to be against communism as a concept. It's not.

Soviet Union was -- as all "transitional" dictatures always are -- a shameful stain in humanity's history. From an everyday perspective it was probably fine for some, if not most, but dictatures can never, not ever, exist without abundance of death, misery and loss of freedom.

There are plenty of books and films about the tragedies that took place both behind the curtain and in plain display. There's no lack of content from this perspective. I'm sure there's almost an equal amount of similar content, but from the opposite perspective. There are many sides to everything, nothing is plain black and white. But it'd take immense mental gymnastics not to see the SU for what it was: A tragedy for many, people and entire nations alike.

This movie breaks my heart. The entire concept, the utterly despicable act of forcefully hauling suspected communists beyond the border, even if not in preparation of shooting them directly afterwards, is such a hard thing to understand. It must've taken such a gigantic enmity to be able to do something like that to another human, a fellow citizen, in front of their family no less.

But we could never truly understand today what it must've been like back then, when the wounds of a civil war were still fresh in everyone's memory. And it might be incorrect to state that "we" as a collective could "never" understand such monstrous deeds. I'm certain there are many that can.

But I know I can't.

Well, my obvious and shameful privilege aside, and my fairly biased take on history, this was a great watch. The story feels real -- we've heard stories like this our entire lives -- and the cast does a great job bringing the characters alive.

There are some truly harrowing moments buried within. The movie does a sufficient job bringing forth the weight of those. It feels very heavy at times, especially towards the end. And it just keeps getting more and more rough.

I love the way the main character, Jussi, was written and portrayed. I haven't read the book this is apparently based on, but Jussi just feels very Finnish to me, in this movie at least. There's very little emotion in his face most of the time, though you can tell how he feels behind those eyes. But when he shows his feelings, it's a contained thunderstorm. He doesn't speak much, doesn't talk about himself either -- all these are things that a lot of people around the world would probably find utterly boring and plain -- but he breaks under pressure like most men would. There are no classical heroes in this story. Not one.

But there's soul in that. It's hard to put into words, but I could feel him, in a way. He straightens his back, utters no words, betrays no emotions, looks into the distance with empty eyes and accepts his place. Bides his time, or if worse would come to worst, he'd march towards his and his fellows' abrupt, unjustified end before a line of soviet rifles, with his chin up, silent and devoid of excess facial expressions.

There's a certain beauty in that. Though I recognize it's probably overly romanticized. But it's a movie after all, so I say it's only fitting.

A lot of the smaller arcs move a little chaotically. It's not hard to follow, really, but brings a certain disruption to the experience every once in a while. Though it might just be that it enhances it. Hard to say, since I enjoyed it thoroughly regardless.

It looks beautiful, in a somewhat gritty way. The steads, the nature, the props and clothing; it all seemed authentic enough for my peasant eyes.

There's one line, towards the end, that stuck with me. You'll know what I mean once you get there yourself.

All in all, it was a surprisingly good experience. I was expecting it to be just another overly corny and cheesy Finnish drama that takes place -- as these often do -- in the war and war-adjacent periods. But it turned out to be quite a bleak and slow-paced movie that has a certain soul to it. I'd recommend this to most.