Dir.
Aku Louhimies, Finland, 2005, 132mins
Cast. Mikko Kouki, Sulevi Peltola, Matleena Kuusniemi
Reviewed by Richard Mellor
Would-be visitors to Helsinki are best advised
to steer clear of this new film by Finnish director Aku Louhimies.
For Frozen Land, a grim depiction of wrongdoing, misfortune
and constant human frailty set amid a frost-bitten, grim
cityscape, hardly sells the capital as an ideal holiday option.
Frozen Land, not-so-loosely based
on Tolstoy’s short
story Faux Billet, presents the interlinked misadventures
of more than 10 diverse characters, all ensconced on various
levels of the slippery class scale. Such a sizable crowd
constitutes what is often labelled a ‘rich tapestry’,
or perhaps a ‘patchwork quilt’ of human life.
Such summaries just don’t apply to Frozen Land though,
as its characters lack any sort of normality – instead
they are all utterly bonkers. Almost every personality here
is a breakdown waiting to happen, due to the apparent pressures
of Helsinki winters. The folk on show here share a common
problem; each is all too taken with the self-destruct button.
Reviving the central theme of Tolstoy’s novella, Louhimies’ plot
traces a spiralling cycle of nastiness. An initial evil is
committed; the indignant victim then avenges the sin by doing
something equally unkind themselves, and so on. In this case,
the trigger is an English teacher getting the sack. Rapidly,
three storyline threads begin, each with doom on their minds.
After his father turns to drink, the
teacher’s son
Niko teams up with young computer whizz Tuomas and his intelligent
girlfriend – whom Niko not so secretly craves – to
doubly produce counterfeit money and hack into a social database.
These illegal actions soon catch up with them, and the trio’s
fragile relationship dissolves into a morose mix of rape,
drugs and prison sentences.
Some of Niko’s fake currency
ends up in the hands of mulleted worker Isto. After unsuspectingly
using the note and ending up in jail, Isto gives in to
his petty criminal instincts: he steals a car and meets
a recovering alcoholic, poverty-stricken Teukka. The loathsome
pair go on a bender seeking women and absolution, with
fatal consequences.
Investigating their unlawful behaviour
is stressed-out policewoman Hannele. She is taking increasing
doses of anti-depressants she takes to shut out the gloomy
realities of the world; her doting husband can do nothing
to halt his wife’s
obvious decline. Eventually the pressure becomes too much
for both.
Louhimies is faithful to the episodic
structure of Tolstoy’s
tale, as one event leads to another, without central focus
or principal character. In this way, Frozen Land is much
like Pulp Fiction with its sweeping portrait of loosely-connected
urban characters; it is also one of the few films to match
Tarantino’s cult drama for violence and uncompromising
edge.
The likeness ends there. Under its
violent exterior, Pulp Fiction was clearly playful and
exaggerated – it was
fiction, with a constant comic sense. Despite the unlikely
events on show, Frozen Land feels terribly real though: never
is there a sense of fiction here. It is a deeply depressing
film from start to end, save for very occasional dashes of
seriously uncomfortable black humour.
Though the film is perhaps ten minutes
too long, it retains a perky rhythm. The film is aided
too by the excellent cast; particularly Jasper Pääkkönen as the naïve
Niko and Sulevi Peltola’s alcoholic Teukka, somehow
eliciting sympathy. His lined, scarred and torrid-looking
face is remarkable in its own right. A snowed-under Helsinki
is shown in similarly fascinated detail, from shabby lots
to suburban avenues.
For all these commendable qualities,
Frozen Land remains unshakeably bleak and depressing, with
the suggestion that everyone eventually caves in under
pressure. Perhaps this is the case in Helsinki, but not
as a rule. Such pessimism is rarely welcome – and
especially not when thrust upon a viewer in unremitting
swathes.
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