Jättiläinen (The Mine) felt a bit like The Big Short without the humour, fast-paced editing and clever exposition pieces.
There was a lot of good. The actors are great and there's fun scenes, mostly everything involving Jani Volanen.
There's an admirable level of restraint in the movie which is not too typical for a majority of Finnish 'big budget' films (one million euros). The movie was shot with a sense of patience. It looked good, the landscape shots were great. The muted colour palette in addition to the soundtrack compliments the melancholic and desperate feeling the main character Jussi (Joonas Saartamo) brings to the film with his performance.
Overall the movie doesn't want to make the issues of the movie a fun, silly spectacle which the aforementioned The Big Short did with its issue. However in the end everything felt somewhat shallow.
The characters' motivations are explored only with the main character and even his scenes are short, mostly him just being tired with his family. There's a buildup to him having an affair, but it doesn't go anywhere. The main 'villain' has no depth, he's simply greedy and wants profit.
The issue itself was left somewhat obscure. I understand that there was corruption but even the inevitable conclusion, environment pollution, had no impact in the film. There's clips from real life news, few shots of muddy lakes and that's it. The details of the corruption involved was the core of the movie and yet it felt shallow as well.
To wrap it up I'll return to The Big Short. After watching that movie I felt like I could, not need to, read the Wikipedia summary of the housing bubble.
After watching Jättiläinen I felt like I really should read the Wikipedia summary to fully understand what it was all about.
