Kauas pilvet karkaavat, 1996
[Drifting Clouds]
An
early episode in Drifting Clouds
encapsulates the wry, droll, yet affectionate fusion of pathos and
comedy that has come to define Aki Kaurismäki's idiosyncratic
cinema. A diligent and conscientious maître d' named Ilona
(Kati Outinen) attends to the dwindling, aging clientele of a once
popular, upscale postwar restaurant called Dubrovnik, before being
summoned into the kitchen for an emergency. The head chef (Markku
Peltola) has been found in a drunken state again, and is brandishing
a knife in front of the staff to prevent confiscation of his alcohol.
The burly porter, Melartin (Sakari Kuosmanen), confronts the inebriated
chef off camera and returns into frame clasping his bloodied, injured
wrist from the scuffle. The slight and delicate Ilona then steps
in (and off camera), a slap is heard, and Ilona reemerges in the
foreground with the kitchen knife and two liquor bottles, followed
by the dejected and visibly apologetic chef.
After work, Ilona's evening returns to a more familiar routine,
as she boards an empty trolley car, kisses the driver - her husband
Lauri (Kari Väänänen) - on the cheek, waits for him
to return the trolley car to the station at the end of his shift,
then the two drive home together. Arriving home, Lauri surprises
her with a television set that he had purchased on an installment
plan. Ilona frets over the additional incurred expense, remarking
that they still have outstanding debt from the purchase of their
couch and bookshelf, but Lauri reassures her that their expenses
are under control, rationalizing "We'll manage it, four years.
Then we can buy some books, too." However, their financial
situation unexpectedly changes when the transportation department
decides to restructure unprofitable routes within a month, and Lauri's
position is selected for termination by a random low card draw.
In an understatedly comical scene, Lauri redirects his frustration
over his unemployment by complaining to the movie theater operator
(who, coincidentally, is his sister) that the unnamed comedy that
they had just seen was "unbearable rubbish", having ironically
walked past the lobby posters of Jim Jarmusch's Night
on Earth (where Väänänen appears in the Helsinki
episode), Robert Bresson's L'Argent,
and Jean Vigo's L'Atalante. Laurie's
opportunities for new employment become even more limited when his
commercial driver's license is revoked after failing a hearing test,
and in disappointment, gets drunk at a local bar. The couple is
delivered yet another financial setback when the restaurant owner
(Elina Salo) is forced to sell Dubrovnik to a restaurant conglomerate
to repay her bank loan, and Ilona and the entire staff are given
their severance notices. Encountering few, and increasingly bleak,
prospects in a recession-afflicted Helsinki, the hapless couple
find themselves struggling to return to the normalcy of their mundane
and uneventful life.
Aki Kaurismäki presents an incisive, subversively funny, and
compassionate portrait of love, marriage, and perseverance in Drifting
Clouds. Using signature elements of deadpan humor, vivid
color palette, kitschy mise-en-scene, and irony of situation, Kaurismäki
reflects the disillusionment, crisis of identity, and existential
angst of a country struggling to cope with the impact of a post
Cold War-induced recession: the chef's alcohol abuse (which is amusingly
commented on as an occupational hazard), Lauri's reluctant sale
of his disproportionately oversized Buick automobile, and the restaurant
owner's resigned acceptance of her failure to modernize. In an understated
and poignant scene, an anxious and distracted Ilona immovably stands
beside a picture of their lost young son, represented by a childhood
photograph of the late actor and Kaurismäki regular, Matti
Pellonpää (whose own weakness for alcohol contributed
to his untimely death), for whom the film is dedicated. It is a
reflection of the personal toll and sense of despair that pervades
the film's bleak and oppressive urban landscape, and the inexorable
bonds of love, hope, and community that galvanizes the human spirit
in the face of overwhelming pain and insurmountable adversity.
© Acquarello 2002. All rights reserved.
Every morning at the break of dawn, Nikander (Matti Pellonpää) and
his co-worker (Esko Nikkari) conduct their silent ritual by making their way
through a maze of trucks parked in the depot of a waste management company, picking
up their daily itinerary, settling into their assigned vehicle, driving to their
designated industrial areas to collect the accumulated trash from the cumbersome
dumpsters, and taking an occasional break from work by stopping at a convenient
diner before resuming their collection route. Eager to celebrate the end of the
work week with a bottle of liquor smuggled into the locker room, Nikander's colleague
attempts to entice him with a business proposition that he has been planning
for years: to launch a start-up garbage disposal service with Nikander serving
as his foreman. It is an attractive offer that seems well suited to Nikander's
own curious efforts at self-enrichment as he alternately spends his evenings
studying English language comprehension through pre-recorded instructional lessons
and playing bingo at a local gaming parlor. Preying on Nikander's conscience
with a sobering reflection on his increasingly failing health as well as his
unfulfilled promises to his devoted wife for an exotic vacation and a life of
luxury - along with a humble (and humorous) wish to die behind a desk instead
of behind the wheel of a garbage truck - his colleague convinces him to accept
the proposal, and conveys his consent by indicating that he should take a course
in order to help him prepare for his new professional role. However, tragedy
strikes before his colleague's plans can be set to motion, and Nikander soon
finds himself seemingly trapped in the same rut of his dead-end job until he
again meets a genial and attentive cashier named Ilona (Kati Outinen) taking
a smoking break - a supermarket samaritan who had once dressed his wounded arm
after a car repair injury - and immediately falls for her. 
In
the highly competitive corporate environment of modern-day Denmark,
Hamlet (Pirkka-Pekka Petelius) is the heir to his father's (Pentti
Auer) majority stake in the family's diversified commercial enterprise.
His father's business partner and senior board member, Klaus (Esko
Salminen), is negotiating a delicate, multilayered transaction with
rival companies to sell off less profitable ventures in exchange for
cornering the market on a single, novelty product line: rubber ducks
from Sweden. Having earlier caused the death of the elder Hamlet in
order to gain the post of Chief Executive Officer and to marry his
mistress, Hamlet's mother, Gertrude (Elina Salo), Klaus has now enlisted
the aid of his chief lieutenant, Polonius (Esko Nikkari), to formulate
a strategy in order to divest Hamlet of his shareholdings and realize
his ambition of the rubber duck monopoly. To this end, Polonius has
instructed his daughter, Hamlet's girlfriend, Ophelia (Kati Outinen),
to drive Hamlet to the brink of passion, then rebuff him in an attempt
to persuade the young heir into marrying her and thereby wrest control
of his shares. Meanwhile, Hamlet's childhood friend, Lauri Polonius
(Kari Väänänen), impulsively resigns from the company
after a failed attempt to negotiate for new office (one that does
not require entrance through the restroom) and to plead with him to
stop his amorous pursuit of Ophelia. Severing ties with Hamlet, Lauri
embarks on a trip to Sweden in order to resume his academic studies,
making a final entreaty to Ophelia to resist Hamlet's indelicate advances.
Abandoned by his friend, haunted by his father's restless spirit,
and frustrated by his beloved Ophelia's constant rejection, Hamlet
sinks into a state of confusion, melancholy, guilt, and despair. 
Taisto
(Turo Pajala) is the archetypal Kaurismäki anti-hero. His unkempt,
impassive demeanor serves as a disarming, impenetrable defense mechanism
against the seeming absurdity of his hapless life. The film opens
to the activity of a mine shutdown, as Taisto and his coworkers resignedly
look on as the explosives are detonated. A disillusioned friend gives
Taisto the keys to his prized possession - a Cadillac convertible
- and tells him to drive as far away as he can, before committing
suicide in the men's room of the diner. Heeding his friend's somber
advice, he decides to pack his suitcase and leave home. Within seconds
of driving away, the roof of his garage collapses. Taisto's luck immediately
turns from bad to worse when two assailants target him at a mobile
hamburger stand and rob him of his life savings. The following morning,
he finds a job as a day laborer at a shipyard loading dock, and decides
to celebrate in the evening by going to a bar, where he invariably
falls asleep. One afternoon, a meter maid named Irmeli (Susanna Haavisto)
stops to admire the convertible and issues a parking ticket, but Taisto
succeeds in getting the ticket discarded by agreeing to take her out
to dinner. Taisto immediately falls in love with her (in his usual
inexpressive way), and, in between job hunting, spends time bonding
with Irmeli and her young, and equally reticent, son. However, his
near-perfect life collapses when a chance encounter with one of the
muggers is captured on a police surveillance camera at a subway station,
and Taisto is arrested.
Amid
the mechanical din of the automated assembly line is the quiet despair
of a lost soul. Her name is Iris (Kati Outinen), a dour, impassive
young woman who oversees the labeling of matchbox packages. She performs
her task with silent, methodical precision: removing duplicates, moistening
unaffixed labels, tamping down curled edges. Riding home on a public
bus, her time is spent reading vacuous romance novels. Her home life
provides little comfort to her overwhelming sense of loneliness -
her mother (Elina Salo) and stepfather (Esko Nikkar) sit transfixed
in front of the television until she calls them to dinner, where table
conversation proves to be equally nonexistent. After finishing her
chores, Iris changes into her best clothes and goes to the local dance
hall. The perennial wallflower, she patiently sits as the ladies around
her are asked to dance, while she attempts to occupy her time by sipping
beverages and listening to sentimental love songs. And so the sad
ritual of Iris' alienated life progresses until one day when she impulsively
decides to spend her wages on a red dress. Punished by her parents
for squandering the rent money, Iris is ordered to return the dress,
but instead, goes to a nightclub where she catches the eye of a reticent
man named Arne (Vesa Vierikko). But as the camera captures alternating
glances of Arne's abstracted composure and Iris' enraptured euphoria,
it is evident that their union is not the great, consuming love that
she longs for. When Arne's repeated attempts at severing their relationship
become too blatant to ignore, Iris' desperation takes hold.