Drifting Clouds (Kauas pilvet karkaavat) is the movie that introduced me to Aki Kaurismäki’s world, a world unlike any other. Before the movie, PIFF 2009 screened his ten-minute long short movie Dogs Have No Hell as a primer. I learnt that the acting would be minimal, humor deadpan, reel old, and the setting Helsinki.
I had thought that the director belonged to the 70’s era. He started in the 80’s and was most prolific during the 90’s. Drifting Clouds was made in 1996 and Dogs Have No Hell in 2002. The reason could be in what Kaurismäki once said: “Cinema is dead. It died 1962, I think it was in October!”
Drifting Clouds is about a childless middle-aged middle-class couple Ilona and Lauri living in Helsinki with their dog. The setting reminded me of Teresa, Tomas and Karenin in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being though the similarities end there. Ilona works as a head-waitress in an old-fashioned restaurant and Lauri as a tram-driver.
They talk less, rarely make eye contact and never smile. They are not suffering, though they are not euphoric. They are simply in Aki Kaurismäki’s world. That is good, because when their world begins to fall apart with fate delivering one blow after another they continue to talk less, rarely make eye contact and never smile. While this might sound depressing, imagine their immunity to suffering and their hope for a better day. No, do not imagine the better day.
The deadpan delivery works wonders, for us, while watching their difficulties. One day, after Lauri is relieved of his government job on losing a lottery, he tries to get a private job. He comes back to his wife and says, “They took my license because I am deaf in one ear.” After the restaurant closes down, Ilona, the head-waitress, tries for a job as a waitress. “You are too old,” the restaurant chief says. “I am only 38,” she replies. “That’s why. You might drop dead any day.” “You are over 50.” “I have contacts.”
I later watched The Match Factory Girl and Lights in the Dusk. They have the same style, the same stamp of Kaurismäki, arguably the greatest Finnish director. I noticed his empathy for the “worker class”, they being cheated by the richer people or the Government or fate. None of these characters are distinguishable, as if that is how the rest of the world sees them. There are never any children around, as if they are too burdensome.
Image Source: IMDB
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[...] about Divorzio all’italiana, Katyn, Die Fälscher, Portret podwójny, Fame Chimica, Meurtrières, Drifting Clouds, Three Monkeys, and Emotional Arithmetic. There are eight others that I didn’t write [...]