With Catherine I saw this movie on Sunday night. The German press had praised it unequivocally like few others this year. Beforehand I wasn’t too keen on seeing this film as somehow I had lost interest in Kaurismäki. It’s like if you have seen one Kaurismäki you have seen them all was what I thought. Like a band who does not evolve and always makes variations of their first then original record, for example the Red House Painters.

I was right and I was wrong.

Kaurismäki tells another fairy tale story set in the country of losers and social outcasts. Again it owes a lot to the film noir and is close to the early Jim Jarmush films especially Stranger than Paradise. Even the music used by Kaurismäki is quite similar. Instead of Screamin' Jay Hawkins with I Put a Spell on You it is blues like Blind Lemon Jefferson, rhythm & blues and rock 'n' roll which comes out of the jukebox in M’s (the man without a past who is brilliantly played by Markku Petolta whose facial expression is as vivid as that of an Easter Island statue) container. M even transforms the band of the salvation army into a rock 'n' roll outfit with the lead guitar sounding very much like Mark Knopfler though. This brings me to a nice reflection. M owns virtually nothing but he has music. He found the jukebox on the road. Music is free. M doesn’t even need an internet connection.

This time nevertheless Kaurismäki captures the sense of togetherness of the down and out who have nothing to lose in a succinct laconic way he didn’t before. I don't think the ideologically loaded concepts of solidarity and compassion are fitting here. An electrician branches the container of M to the power supply system. M who has no money asks the electrician what he owes him who responds:

That is probably the most striking trait of Kaurismäki’s characters. Despite a hard life without illusions they don’t lose their sense of humour. They actually create humour out of desperation. Like Zen masters they only live on the minimal and essential, are free like birds and full of practical often paradoxical wisdom.

Another scene illustrates the extreme improbable hard luck M encounters and how he gets out of the situation with an incredibly absurd action. M has found out by accident that before he lost his memory during an extremely violent attack by three young men he had been working as a welder and a company wants to employ him as such. He needs a bank account to get the job so he tries to open one. When talking to the female bank employee the bank is robbed and the two are locked into the strongroom. Unfortunately the alarm has been turned off as the bank is bust and the oxygene concentration in the room is decreasing rapidly. As the first idea to stop breathing simultaneously doesn’t turn out too practical M says that in this case he can as well smoke a cigarette. He rolls it and lights it. The exhaled smoke moves towards the smoke detector but the alarm doesn’t go on. Following the direction of the smoke with her eyes the bank employee sees the detector and switches the sprinkler system on by hand.