Talents are sometimes distributed to families. Today's cinema is blessed with several pairs of film-makers brothers, who collaborate as directors and screenwriters, sometimes actors, in remarkable films. One such pair is that of the Finnish brothers Mika and Aki Kaurismäki. Their artistic paths diverged, but at the beginning of their careers they worked together a lot. 'Arvottomat' ('The Worthless') is the first feature length fiction film directed by either of them, in this case Mika, and was released in 1982. The script is written by the two brothers together, and Aki appears as an actor in a minor but important supporting role. None of them had turned 30, but the film already announced their special talents, addressed some of the themes that would return in the following films, and already had the kind of characters and atmosphere that would be specific to the films of the 'Kaurismäki brand'.
The main hero of the film, Manne, is a guy who lives on the fringes of society. He washes dishes in a restaurant, but it is obvious that this is not his main source of income. Among his friends is the beautiful Veera (whom he may love, and perhaps she loves him too), a musician in search of success, another young man who lives by buying and selling objects of dubious provenance. The latter buys a painting which, if it is authentic, can be worth a lot of money. A very rich collector, but also a gang of mobsters are interested in getting their hands on the painting. Manne will manage to get a nice sum of money from the collector, which can arrange his and his friends' lives, but only if he escapes the mobsters and the police who are on his trail in a Finland frozen in winter and green in summer.
The Kaurismäki brothers were very young and at the beginning of their cinematic journeys when they made this film. I think their intention then was to adapt to the realities and landscapes of Finland some of the fashionable currents of international cinema in the previous decades. 'Arvottomat' combines film noir with the road movie genre. The streets of the cities of Helsinki and Tampere become the scene of the heroes' peregrinations and car chases (a GAZ Volga car is the hero of these scenes). The landscapes of Finland, of a rustic Finland on the verge of extinction, recall the trilogy of 'road movies' by Wim Wenders. We can identify in many places cinematic quotes, but the characters already have the moods of the heroes of the later films of the two brothers: inadaptability, refusal of social conventions, melancholy, friendship as the ultimate value. Matti Pellonpää and Pirkko Hämäläinen are excellent at the head of a cast in which each character has its place and distinct typology. 'Arvottomat' is a starting point of the Kaurismäkis' careers, but also a film that is worth watching for its own cinematic qualities.
