Calamari Union

Following up a successful first movie can be a difficult struggle; Kaurismäki deflected it after "Crime And Punishment" by quickly doing this one, completely different and very funny. We're treated to a number of Finnish derelicts and lower-class guys in a poor suburb of Helsinki, as they decide to mount an expedition to reach the Mayfair of the city (just get there, that is). You'll immediately notice that they talk of this as if there lay a strange and superhuman challenge in just reaching the place. As their trials begin, we realize that maybe Helsinki _is_ a really dangerous city.

The film is full of scenes of weird comedy and pinpoint satire, and as an extra accent every one of the men is called Frank, except one. The film really rocks, and you'll keep wondering what happens next.

Kaurismaki followed on the dour and heavy drama of his debut Crime and Punishment with the often funny, significantly more light-hearted, absurdist fare of Calamari Union. Fifteen guys named Frank and their retarded companion Pekka (who speaks English for some reason) decide to leave their seedy downtown neighborhood and dead-end lives behind and move to the suburb of Eira, on the other side of the city. Eira immediately acquires a quasi-mythic status, equal parts promised land and elysian fields, and their trip through the hostile, soulless city landscape is beset with hardships worthy to a trip filled with such religious allegories.

There's not much of a plot to speak of. The Franks make their way through the city and is every man out for himself. Once in a while they stop to comment on their surroundings, sleep in phone booths, trees and other strange places, offer nuggets of wisdom about vanity, inactivity, time and age, part scathing social critique and part insights into human nature; they also stop to hijack members of the parliament, a hearse, get free rides in a taxi or on top of a car, sleep in a beach or under a table and last but not least, die funny or just plain random deaths.

That is Calamari Union in a nutshell and there lie both its charms and failures. It has the improvised feeling of a freejazz piece - like them, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It can be inspired, infectiously cool and funny but it can also be meandering and aimless. You take the good with the bad I guess.

After seeing most of Aki Kaurismäki's films and then veering back to his second film, it almost felt like I was watching an all-star cast because most of the actors he collaborated throughout his career is here. And, boy, did I miss my favorite Finnish actor, Matti Pellonpää.

I'm just happy Kaurismäki didn't continue directing while drunk.

It also reminded me of Reservoir Dogs. Did Tarantino saw this movie?

This film, from the beginning of Kaurismäki's career, reminded me, to a certain extent, of another iconic film about the lost illusions of the 60s and 70s generations, The Wretches Are Still Singing, by the Greek Nikos Nikolaidis.

Of course, Nikolaidis's cinematic language is much more caustic and corrosive. Kaurismäki is faithful to his minimalist principles, as a poet of the absurd. But the essential theme is the same: a lost generation, overtaken by events, that searches, in vain, for a meaning in life in the technocracy that emerged from the rubble of the revolution (real or imaginary).

If Nikolaidis is destructive (and he would be even more so in 1983's Sweet Bunch, in which he practically defends urban guerrilla warfare) Kaurismäki is poetic, transforming disillusionment into a chimerical search for the mythical Eira, Holy Grail of aimless knights, survivors of punk nihilism.

An interesting and original work, even for those who already know Kaurismäki's minimal cinematographic language.

Finnish film "Calamari Union" is not at all a motion picture with a defined setting.It is more of a visual experience with surreal touches which must be seen many times to feel the plight of hapless rock musicians in an urban milieu.In "Calamari Union",there is also a minor battle of sexes to be witnessed as most of the women get their demands met by hapless,vulnerable men.Women are shown as strong willed individuals who would not stop at anything to humiliate, scorn confused men who are treated as mere caddish oafs.Rock music is also one of this film's leading element which reveals the hidden talent of some vagrant musicians.There are some mellifluous tunes which could easily be lapped up by music lovers.No talented film director in the history of modern cinema has come even remotely closer to Finnish author Aki Kaurismaki's vision of urban angst.This is a director who has made an absolutely wise use of his hometown Helsinki and its nocturnal atmosphere by shooting in pristine black and white.He shows why some people are not able to put any order in their utterly disorganized,messy lives.A unique film which is absolutely needed for those nihilists who believe that they are part of existential times.PS:A great film dedicated to Baudelaire,Michaux and Prévert who still hover on earth.Lalit Rao does not care if non Francophones are not aware of Baudelaire,Michaux and Prévert.