1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 79: Drifting clouds
“Trams in Helsinki” (Wikipedia).
Things go from bad to worse in Aki Kaurismäki’s “proletariat” trilogy (1986–1990). Owners oppress proles. Proles oppress other proles; they take their misery out on each other.
The “Finland” trilogy, which Drifting Clouds (1996) inaugurates, is happier. Things go from lousy to dire … to hopeful. Most of the characters aren’t vile. They’re downtrodden, lonely souls; but they’re downtrodden and lonely in laconic solidarity with each other.
Maybe Kaurismäki once pined for revolution. Maybe that idealism gave way to bitterness when the requisite solidarity never materialized. Maybe that’s what fuels the rage of, e.g., The Match Factory Girl.
Drifting Clouds isn’t revolutionary. All it asks for is ordinary decency. Politically, it’s an about-face for Kaurismäki: away from vengeance, toward fellow-feeling and dutiful citizenship – even under capitalism.
Not that oppression has ceased in Drifting Clouds. The government cruelly cuts jobs. Big chains drive small restaurants out of business. Employers refuse to employ the un-networked. Banks refuse to lend to the poor. Casinos prey on the desperate. Gangsters swindle and threaten, and then carry out their threats.
But the victims are kinder to each other. That’s the difference. Some of the capitalists and bureaucrats are decent, too.
At the movie’s center is a touching marriage. Lauri (Kari Käänänen) and Ilona (Kaurismäki’s favorite actress, the remarkable Kati Ouitinen) get by via the “rent-to-own” system. Their television, sofa, and bookcase will require years of paying off; once the bookcase is paid for, they’ll be able to start buying books. Then they lose their jobs. They drink, they despair, but they keep going. They’ve already been through the wringer. They got married because they got pregnant. The child has been dead for years.
There are no other children in the movie. It’s a society of oldsters. Even the young adults seem old. Ilona works at a restaurant that is going broke because the aging patrons can no longer drink as much as they used to.
That sort of irony – heavy drinkers who can no longer drink; a child-centered, childless marriage; bookless bookcases – comes up again and again.
The restaurant – “Dubrovnik,” named for an Eastern European equivalent of Palm Beach – goes under. It’s a tragedy for the staff, yes. But the moment is marked by humanity. The owner does what she can for her workers. And, on the last night, clients come dressed up to pay their respects. They give away flowers. It’s funereal, dignified, and moving.
Lauri loses his job driving a tram. I have to eliminate four jobs, the supervisor tells his drivers. I’m not going to decide. I’ll let the cards do it. Lauri draws a low card. It seems heartless. Why not let him stay on the basis of seniority, or merit? But I wonder if the Finns see it differently. The procedure says: Your differences don’t matter. You are all basically equal. You each get an equal chance. Maybe deciding like this helps everybody to get along.
Earlier, I mentioned laconic solidarity. It matters that these are people of few words. One character is a drunk. His friends take him to rehab. When he’s better, he puts on his suit to leave, and his friends arrive to bring him home. They all walk out together without saying a word. Keeping quiet preserves everyone’s dignity and makes it easier to simply do the right thing.
It also makes the movie very funny. There’s something hilarious and winsome about the quiet acceptance of disaster. Who wants a society of whiners? Complaining isn’t endearing; petulance is poison. Much better to live as the Finns do.
In reality, of course, even Finns complain. We all do it. Drifting Clouds is an idealization, then. One comes away thinking, I wish I could bear hardship like that.
People suffer. We see it in their faces. We admire them for suffering quietly. We do what we can for them.
The Finns seem to have become a caring people; maybe they always had it in them. The state now famously encourages and heavily subsidizes child-rearing. Is it a last-ditch effort to escape always being a society of down-and-outs? I don’t know. I do know that today’s policies would have made all the difference to Lauri and Ilona, who can’t afford another child because they can’t even afford books for their rent-to-own bookcase.
P.S. A word on the director’s style, which is instantly recognizable. The action is carefully measured. In contrast, the physical elements are colorful, strikingly arranged, and witty. If the movie were a painting, it’d be a Baltic American Gothic … inside the Nighthawks diner. There are long scenes in which characters listen while live musicians play old pop dirges. I wonder how much of this was borrowed by Wes Anderson, who generates an entirely different – and, to my mind, obnoxious and forced – effect, all too cheery and precious. Closer in spirit to Kaurismäki is Terry Zwigoff (e.g., Ghost World). But his is not a solidaritous impulse. His heroes are irredeemable, unapologetic outcasts. They may be right, they may be noble, but they don’t make society better.
Things go from bad to worse in Aki Kaurismäki’s “proletariat” trilogy (1986–1990). Owners oppress proles. Proles oppress other proles; they take their misery out on each other.
The “Finland” trilogy, which Drifting Clouds (1996) inaugurates, is happier. Things go from lousy to dire … to hopeful. Most of the characters aren’t vile. They’re downtrodden, lonely souls; but they’re downtrodden and lonely in laconic solidarity with each other.
Maybe Kaurismäki once pined for revolution. Maybe that idealism gave way to bitterness when the requisite solidarity never materialized. Maybe that’s what fuels the rage of, e.g., The Match Factory Girl.
Drifting Clouds isn’t revolutionary. All it asks for is ordinary decency. Politically, it’s an about-face for Kaurismäki: away from vengeance, toward fellow-feeling and dutiful citizenship – even under capitalism.
Not that oppression has ceased in Drifting Clouds. The government cruelly cuts jobs. Big chains drive small restaurants out of business. Employers refuse to employ the un-networked. Banks refuse to lend to the poor. Casinos prey on the desperate. Gangsters swindle and threaten, and then carry out their threats.
But the victims are kinder to each other. That’s the difference. Some of the capitalists and bureaucrats are decent, too.
At the movie’s center is a touching marriage. Lauri (Kari Käänänen) and Ilona (Kaurismäki’s favorite actress, the remarkable Kati Ouitinen) get by via the “rent-to-own” system. Their television, sofa, and bookcase will require years of paying off; once the bookcase is paid for, they’ll be able to start buying books. Then they lose their jobs. They drink, they despair, but they keep going. They’ve already been through the wringer. They got married because they got pregnant. The child has been dead for years.
There are no other children in the movie. It’s a society of oldsters. Even the young adults seem old. Ilona works at a restaurant that is going broke because the aging patrons can no longer drink as much as they used to.
That sort of irony – heavy drinkers who can no longer drink; a child-centered, childless marriage; bookless bookcases – comes up again and again.
The restaurant – “Dubrovnik,” named for an Eastern European equivalent of Palm Beach – goes under. It’s a tragedy for the staff, yes. But the moment is marked by humanity. The owner does what she can for her workers. And, on the last night, clients come dressed up to pay their respects. They give away flowers. It’s funereal, dignified, and moving.
Lauri loses his job driving a tram. I have to eliminate four jobs, the supervisor tells his drivers. I’m not going to decide. I’ll let the cards do it. Lauri draws a low card. It seems heartless. Why not let him stay on the basis of seniority, or merit? But I wonder if the Finns see it differently. The procedure says: Your differences don’t matter. You are all basically equal. You each get an equal chance. Maybe deciding like this helps everybody to get along.
Earlier, I mentioned laconic solidarity. It matters that these are people of few words. One character is a drunk. His friends take him to rehab. When he’s better, he puts on his suit to leave, and his friends arrive to bring him home. They all walk out together without saying a word. Keeping quiet preserves everyone’s dignity and makes it easier to simply do the right thing.
It also makes the movie very funny. There’s something hilarious and winsome about the quiet acceptance of disaster. Who wants a society of whiners? Complaining isn’t endearing; petulance is poison. Much better to live as the Finns do.
In reality, of course, even Finns complain. We all do it. Drifting Clouds is an idealization, then. One comes away thinking, I wish I could bear hardship like that.
People suffer. We see it in their faces. We admire them for suffering quietly. We do what we can for them.
The Finns seem to have become a caring people; maybe they always had it in them. The state now famously encourages and heavily subsidizes child-rearing. Is it a last-ditch effort to escape always being a society of down-and-outs? I don’t know. I do know that today’s policies would have made all the difference to Lauri and Ilona, who can’t afford another child because they can’t even afford books for their rent-to-own bookcase.
P.S. A word on the director’s style, which is instantly recognizable. The action is carefully measured. In contrast, the physical elements are colorful, strikingly arranged, and witty. If the movie were a painting, it’d be a Baltic American Gothic … inside the Nighthawks diner. There are long scenes in which characters listen while live musicians play old pop dirges. I wonder how much of this was borrowed by Wes Anderson, who generates an entirely different – and, to my mind, obnoxious and forced – effect, all too cheery and precious. Closer in spirit to Kaurismäki is Terry Zwigoff (e.g., Ghost World). But his is not a solidaritous impulse. His heroes are irredeemable, unapologetic outcasts. They may be right, they may be noble, but they don’t make society better.