On Thursday, I watched Aki Kaurismäki's Ariel. Ariel is the second film in his Proletariat Trilogy. I have the other two near the top of my Videomatica queue.
The first Kaurismäki film I saw was either Crime and Punishment or The Leningrad Cowboys Go America. It was at some sort of a Kaurismäki festival at the Pacific Cinematheque. I was entertained by the Leningrad Cowboys, but fell asleep during Crime and Punishment (it was bleak, I was tired, whatever). A long while later, perhaps years later, I rented Man Without a Past at videomatica (actually walked into the store and rented it). Then shortly after that, I rented it again... and again. I rented it no fewer than three times, probably more. It was that good. Man Without a Past was the second film in his Finland Trilogy (also known as the "Helsinki Trilogy" and the "Loser Trilogy").
If the real Finland is anything like Kaurismäki's Finland, then it is a country of shallow affect. Kaurismäki's characters face violence, injustice, and general misfortune with absolute stoicism... or maybe it's a Schopenhauerian optimism. In any case, the complete absence of any feeling of entitlement makes Kaurismäki's characters and films eminently watchable.
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I love Man Without a Past! The deadpan humour is great. We saw Lights in the Dusk too, but we didn't like it as much. We have several more of his movies on our Zip list.
ReplyDeleteZip? How is zip? It takes forever for me to get movies from videomatica... I suspect that aside from my remoteness, their processing is also a little slow. Where does zip ship from? What's your turn around time?
ReplyDeleteZip is pretty good. The movies used to come from Ontario, but now some of them come from Vancouver. It usually takes a day for them to receive a return and one day for us to receive a new movie. I'm not sure how long it takes for them to ship from Ontario. Most of the ones we have received recently have been from Vancouver.
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