Paha maa (2004)
With a script written and structured around the unofficial Finnish anthem (hrm) Murheellisten Laulujen Maa I didn't quite know what to expect from this film. It won the "Best Movie" prize from the Church of Sweden in 2005, but also a number of serious awards. Finnish cinema is simliar to general Scandinavianin the sense that it is very fond of day-to-day human debasement - not only in the form of alcohol, drugs, sex and violence, but also and more importantly as it manifests in boredom and all-too-human shittiness. The difference is that whereas Swedish movies are often based on a narrow social clique's political views and social experiences, Finnish elokuvat are usually more convincing. When you're stuck with social realism, Swedes and Danes tend to focus on the "social", whereas Finns go for "realism" - you haven't seen an actor playing "drunk" or "alcoholic" until you've seen a Finn do it in a Finnish movie. None of that American shit with people being on their ass one second, and clear as day the next.... Paha Maa basically depicts a series of depressing events, some closely interrelated, some randomly produced in a butterfly effect fashion, and the story moves through all stages of humanity and subhumanity, only to offer some vague hope at the end.
If you're into politics, the "upper class" shadily fleets by as it ever so often does in Finnish films, but for the most part Paha Maa presents a series of highly believable underclass/lower middle class characters involved in more or often less incredible events. There is very little mercy and romanticizing here. The major model for each and every participant is this: an individual is dealt a bad hand by life/fate, and chooses to make the absolutely worst possible decisions for some or no reason. Having aggravated an already intolerable position, the character proceeds to pass some or most of the terrible consequences on to someone else. There are some seriously touching moments, and not a few black comedy highlights, but there are also very stupid (but hence also surprising and effective) plot twists. The impressive part of this film is the portrayal of each and every character, whether it be the castrated family man or the old Alcoholics Anonymous drunkard turned vacuum cleaner salesman turned murderer. Each and every participant is brought forth as a manifest failure of a human being, while still retaining a (realistic) degree of humanity, in the sense that you could actually know any of these guys and think they were decent enough people to hang around with. Perhaps preferable to the guys you hang around with now, in some cases? The song on which the movie is based is often interpreted as a parody of irresponsible, fatalistic thinking and romanticism. This is reflected in the story, absurd as it may often be, since while the film acknowledges and bemoans social misery in a "progressive" manner, it also exposes horrible and unnecessary choices leading to doom in a way that could surely be seen as "conservative". This attitude is symptomatic of the never-completed Welfare state of Finland - there is a certain empathy for the unlucky, but also an iron clad contempt for many forms of failure amoral behavior (this attitude is perhaps even more common in Sweden, believe it or not, since the populace has been deprived of any social responsibility by the state - for better or for worse, I might add,).
Paha Maa has vacuum cleaner lethal beatings, male-on-male as well as male-on-female rape, far-worse-than-The-Office socially uncomfortable situations and any number of strange occurrences. It is, however, not directed by Gaspar Noel - the story, with its odd undertones of humor and Suomen C'est La Vie, proceeds without bothering you with self-centered attempts on the part of the director to keep you squirming by making unpleasant things more unpleasant than they would be in real life. Silly as it may seem, I found it unsettling and won't be watching it again for a while, but it was a good film.
