AldenG
Joined Aug 2000
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Reviews2
AldenG's rating
Kassila's "Niskavuori" is a masterful treatment of Hella Wuolijoki's Finnish classic of light historical literature.
Niskavuori is the name of the family and the agrarian manor at the center of this tale. The film examines a cross-section of life in rural Finland at a time when the last feudal generation was passing the mantle of leadership and doership to the first generation of the nascent urbanism and internationalism that would transform Finland within a few decades from a modest, primarily agrarian economy to a world leader in industry and electronics. The matron of Niskavuori must decide to whom she will pass on the manor -- to her son whose vigor and determination represent the new Finland but who seems to be forsaking his neurotic wife for an illicit liaison with the newly arrived schoolteacher? To the overseer of the manor? She has few choices for preserving what generations of Niskavuoris have built.
The chemistry among these three actors, and to a lesser extent the neurotic, nattering, eyelash-batting wife, is exceptional.
The film plays quickly, but along the way we see a variety of occasions and characters portrayed with Kassila's characteristic attention to detail: reaping and threshing, tea with the vicar, exuberant barn dancing, the telephone operator as consummate village snoop and gossip, the vibrant young schoolteacher, the master of Niskavuori torn between duty and destiny.
As usual in Kassila's films of this sort, the smell, taste, and texture of Finland fairly leap off the screen.
The dialogue is a particularly strong point of "Niskavuori", distilling the characters' thoughts to an essence of historical currents, to words one would never hear in such perfection from real people, yet which seem exactly right in the context of the film. They contribute to the sense of heightened reality, the awareness that we are witnessing not merely individuals in conflict but the colliding and swirling currents of destiny.
Satu Silvo is ravishing in the role of the schoolteacher -- intellectual, modern, and sensual all at once. Esko Salminen is the picture of Finnish manhood at the time, vigorous, boisterous, but saddled with the obligations of a society in flux and a neighboring Russia threatening to swallow the entire country as it would swallow all the Baltic states across the gulf. Rauni Luoma is thoroughly convincing as the indomitable but world-weary matron of Niskavuori.
This is a film that deserves to be seen outside of Finland. Because it is so richly and topically Finnish, it defies true comparison, but it is on the order of "O Pioneers!" or Troell-Moberg's "The Emigrants". It would play to the current hunger for substance and tradition, much as "My Life as a Dog" did in its time -- but this is a more serious film, a feast of historical insight and detail presented in an engaging and easily digestible form.
Niskavuori is the name of the family and the agrarian manor at the center of this tale. The film examines a cross-section of life in rural Finland at a time when the last feudal generation was passing the mantle of leadership and doership to the first generation of the nascent urbanism and internationalism that would transform Finland within a few decades from a modest, primarily agrarian economy to a world leader in industry and electronics. The matron of Niskavuori must decide to whom she will pass on the manor -- to her son whose vigor and determination represent the new Finland but who seems to be forsaking his neurotic wife for an illicit liaison with the newly arrived schoolteacher? To the overseer of the manor? She has few choices for preserving what generations of Niskavuoris have built.
The chemistry among these three actors, and to a lesser extent the neurotic, nattering, eyelash-batting wife, is exceptional.
The film plays quickly, but along the way we see a variety of occasions and characters portrayed with Kassila's characteristic attention to detail: reaping and threshing, tea with the vicar, exuberant barn dancing, the telephone operator as consummate village snoop and gossip, the vibrant young schoolteacher, the master of Niskavuori torn between duty and destiny.
As usual in Kassila's films of this sort, the smell, taste, and texture of Finland fairly leap off the screen.
The dialogue is a particularly strong point of "Niskavuori", distilling the characters' thoughts to an essence of historical currents, to words one would never hear in such perfection from real people, yet which seem exactly right in the context of the film. They contribute to the sense of heightened reality, the awareness that we are witnessing not merely individuals in conflict but the colliding and swirling currents of destiny.
Satu Silvo is ravishing in the role of the schoolteacher -- intellectual, modern, and sensual all at once. Esko Salminen is the picture of Finnish manhood at the time, vigorous, boisterous, but saddled with the obligations of a society in flux and a neighboring Russia threatening to swallow the entire country as it would swallow all the Baltic states across the gulf. Rauni Luoma is thoroughly convincing as the indomitable but world-weary matron of Niskavuori.
This is a film that deserves to be seen outside of Finland. Because it is so richly and topically Finnish, it defies true comparison, but it is on the order of "O Pioneers!" or Troell-Moberg's "The Emigrants". It would play to the current hunger for substance and tradition, much as "My Life as a Dog" did in its time -- but this is a more serious film, a feast of historical insight and detail presented in an engaging and easily digestible form.
Literally "The Loveliness and Wretchedness of Human Life", the title of this film might translate more fluidly to English as "Reminiscence and Regret".
Based on the eponymous reminiscences (1945) of the Nobel-winning Finnish author F.E. Sillanpää, this is one of the finest films ever made in Finland. It is unfathomable to this reviewer that this and other films by Kassila (see "Niskavuori" for another of almost the same caliber) have never to my knowledge been distributed internationally -- at least they do not seem ever to have reached the United States. It is remarkable to compare the films that have been so distributed, for instance those of the Kaurismäki brothers, to this and other works of greater substance that have languished in ill-deserved obscurity.
"Reminiscence and Regret" opens with a scene of Matti sitting with his family on a Sunday afternoon in summer, a scene of clench-jawed domestic tranquility forced to the breaking point. The silence and tension are palpable. The creak of a floorboard under a rocking chair is tantamount to a statement. An argument erupts, a row ensues, and in the aftermath, Matti sneaks away -- not for the first time, we gather -- into the white sub-Arctic night for an odyssey of solitude and reminiscence.
Gradually we learn that he married far beneath his station in life, wearing his choice almost as a badge of defiance (or might it be spite?) over the years. As the plot unfolds, we are introduced to the other woman in his youth and we learn about the circumstances, decisions, and misunderstandings that shaped their destinies.
Along the way we are taken on a meticulously authentic tour of Finnish interiors, both architectural and psychological, in an unblinking look at the melancholy and fatalism of Finnish life in the first half of the 1900's.
One can practically smell the countryside, the walls and floors of the homes and hotels, the wine and vodka and rich food of the carousals we witness... I can recall no richer cinematic record of the period and strata of Finnish life into which this film delves. There is a half hilarious, half horrific comic sequence in which we follow the derailing of neighbors sent to fetch the errant Matti back home.
But much of the film concentrates on remembrance and reminiscence as Matti retraces the events, decisions, and external circumstances that led him to the life he has lived and, eventually, to this odyssey of reconsideration.
At the end of the film, one feels that nothing could have transpired differently. Kassila's penchant for understatement and distillation are everywhere evident in "Reminiscence and Regret". This reviewer has not seen enough of his films to know whether this is the culminating masterpiece of his career, but it is certainly one of the culminating masterpieces of Finnish cinema.
One can only hope that "Ihmiselon ihanuus ja kurjuus" will someday be made available to the rest of the world, because it deserves and would easily gain admission to the ranks of international classics.
Based on the eponymous reminiscences (1945) of the Nobel-winning Finnish author F.E. Sillanpää, this is one of the finest films ever made in Finland. It is unfathomable to this reviewer that this and other films by Kassila (see "Niskavuori" for another of almost the same caliber) have never to my knowledge been distributed internationally -- at least they do not seem ever to have reached the United States. It is remarkable to compare the films that have been so distributed, for instance those of the Kaurismäki brothers, to this and other works of greater substance that have languished in ill-deserved obscurity.
"Reminiscence and Regret" opens with a scene of Matti sitting with his family on a Sunday afternoon in summer, a scene of clench-jawed domestic tranquility forced to the breaking point. The silence and tension are palpable. The creak of a floorboard under a rocking chair is tantamount to a statement. An argument erupts, a row ensues, and in the aftermath, Matti sneaks away -- not for the first time, we gather -- into the white sub-Arctic night for an odyssey of solitude and reminiscence.
Gradually we learn that he married far beneath his station in life, wearing his choice almost as a badge of defiance (or might it be spite?) over the years. As the plot unfolds, we are introduced to the other woman in his youth and we learn about the circumstances, decisions, and misunderstandings that shaped their destinies.
Along the way we are taken on a meticulously authentic tour of Finnish interiors, both architectural and psychological, in an unblinking look at the melancholy and fatalism of Finnish life in the first half of the 1900's.
One can practically smell the countryside, the walls and floors of the homes and hotels, the wine and vodka and rich food of the carousals we witness... I can recall no richer cinematic record of the period and strata of Finnish life into which this film delves. There is a half hilarious, half horrific comic sequence in which we follow the derailing of neighbors sent to fetch the errant Matti back home.
But much of the film concentrates on remembrance and reminiscence as Matti retraces the events, decisions, and external circumstances that led him to the life he has lived and, eventually, to this odyssey of reconsideration.
At the end of the film, one feels that nothing could have transpired differently. Kassila's penchant for understatement and distillation are everywhere evident in "Reminiscence and Regret". This reviewer has not seen enough of his films to know whether this is the culminating masterpiece of his career, but it is certainly one of the culminating masterpieces of Finnish cinema.
One can only hope that "Ihmiselon ihanuus ja kurjuus" will someday be made available to the rest of the world, because it deserves and would easily gain admission to the ranks of international classics.