Director: Mikko Myllylahti (Finland, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany). Year of Release: 2022
The foot of a verdant and large hill. A man in a suit carrying an attaché case starts his climb. Eventually he reaches and enters a cabin at the top of the hill. When he speaks to a woman there she lets out a dramatic wail. She asks what will happen to the little people, the ones she cares about. What will happen, will happen, says the man in the suit. He urges her to sign a contract that he is proffering. She signs, then emits another heart rending wail.
A man in a red jacket making his way through a snowy landscape on skis, followed by a small boy. After they start ice fishing, we cut to a bar straight out of an Aki Kaurismäki film. Outside, everything is beige. Inside, the pub is full of people who look like normal people – that is, they look like no-one you normally see in a film. No-one is looking at anyone else. Instead they are all staring at some fixed point in the distance.
The man in the red jacket from the previous scene arrives. Pepe has more of a touch of Father Dougal about him. He rarely acts upon the world – he is acted upon. He is urged to stand on a chair while his friend Tuomas recites a long poem for his birthday. A woman brings a box containing a collection that they have made for him. Pepe summons over his son, and whispers in his ear. The boy rings the bell on the bar and Pepe announces that this round is on him.
There is something about this film which isn’t quite like real life. As in Kaurismäki films, the characters’ utter normality make them feel abnormal. The lighting and colour of the set has obviously been painstakingly selected to make us aware that this is a fiction. It was probably no coincidence that the film was preceded by the new film by Wes Anderson, another director who prides himself on depictions of extreme artificiality.
Pepe and his wife lie next to each other in bed. She reads a Freud hardback and giggles. When he looks over at her, she turns the light out. Later, they watch the television with their dinner on trays on their laps. Tuomas and his wife visit, and the adults play cards silently while Pepe’s son Pikku-Tuomas plays with his Skalextric set. In the dimly lit room it all looks a bit strange, not quite right, but you can’t put your finger on quite what’s wrong.
The townsfolk meet at the factory, in the pub or just around in the village and exchange tales of existential dread. These normal working class people talk about how life is absurd and devoid of meaning. If you don’t think about it too hard, it’s all pretty funny, but stop to think and you wonder just who is making fun of whom. You are much more likely to enjoy this film if you sit back and revel in it’s sense of fun than trying to derive any real meaning from it.
Pepe’s life is beset with problems, to which he reacts with a Panglossian stoicism, his glass remaining half full. His mother dies, and he remarks that she was starting to get old. Everyone loses their job at the local sawmill. Pepe says that the bosses must have a reason. Tuomas reveals first that his wife, then Pepe’s is seeing the local hairdresser. They sit outside in the car, windscreen wipers on, staring at the hairdresser’s flat, window lit up in red “like a Rotterdam brothel”.
Pepe breaks into the hairdresser’s house, and views his goings on through a hole in the ceiling. Tuomas meanwhile deals with their mutual problem much more directly. In one of film’s least brutal scenes of violence, Tuomas kills the hairdresser. Both men’s wifes flee, leaving Pepe along with Pikku-Tuomas. While this is happening, the former woodcutters get taken on at a new mine, and abused by environmental protestors outside.
All this happens before the really weird shit starts to happen. A glowing ball comes out of the tv set. A wild, dark, hairy animal dashes at speed through the local church. On a number of occasions, Pepe attends a meeting in the village hall. But what is the meeting about? On one occasion it’s a séance. On another, Jaakko – the man in charge – sings a strange song. Somewhere down the line. Pikku-Tuomas deserts him and moves in with Jaakko.
If you’re wondering what on earth is going on here, you’re asking the wrong question. Die Geschichte vom Holzfäller just is. Things happen, and there’s no explaining why. There’s a moment not long before the end, when Thomas enters a burning car, and you feel that the scene is supposed to be imbued with some Deep Symbolic Meaning. I preferred the film when it was just being silly.
You get the feeling that as the film continues, it gets more full of a sense of it’s own importance. That’s a shame. As long as it’s a Candide-like story of a man reacting to his word catastrophically falling apart with boundless optimism and a stiff upper lip, it works perfectly fine and is a pleasure to watch. When it is being quite ridiculous, it is even better. I got the feeling that towards the end, it felt the need to have to Say Something. That was where it was at its least effective.
CinePhil 