Lights In The Dusk. Aki Kaurismaki. 2006

This is the second film I've seen of Kaurismaki's, the first being, 'Leningrad Cowboys Go To America'. I came upon him because of my unadulterated love of all things Jim Jarmusch who cites him as a major influence (once you've seen the two, the connection is palpable...Jarmusch even plays a dodgy car salesman in 'Leningrad'). This had all the absurdity of 'Leningrad' without any of the sweetness. The central protagonist, Koistinen is a hopeless loner and, if we're being mean, a total loser; he becomes embroiled with a group of Finnish gangsters through his infatuation with their moll, Mirja. The humour is so dry, it's like trying to eat a piece of burnt toast whilst having a severe case of laryngitis. You want to sympathise with Koistinen because he's actually done nothing wrong but he's as apathetic to everything as his environment is to him (Kaurismaki is very picky about which bits of Helsinki he shows his audience...it's not an advert for tourism); in fact, his whole demeanour suggests that trying to work his way out of the spiral of disaster he's involved in is simply too much effort. So, I've made this sound like a depressing hour and a half in the cinema. It's not. Kaurismaki sets up this cinematic world as a piece of absurdist theatre from the get-go. There's barely any camera movement and his signature narrative elipses and inclusion of dead time are all here to remind you that you're just watching a film and this is just a bit of fun. So, why not throw the central character in jail for something he hasn't done and while you're at it, kick him when he's down on his luck? After all, it's just a laugh!

I had read various reviews of this film suggesting that it isn't bleak because the central character never loses his sense of hope (some people can't take it, can they!). Frankly, I think this is rubbish. I don't think Koistinen has any hope to start with and that's precisely what makes him so great and the film so funny. He's never surprised or outraged by anything that happens to him because he doesn't view the world en rose; he is wholly accepting of the repetition, the boredom and banality of everyday life... which leads me to wonder whether Kaurismaki had seen Jarmusch's 'Broken Flowers' before he made this?