Aki Kaurismaki documentary!

What was this about?

Anyway, glad to hear he's working on a new film. One of the greatest filmmakers of our era, IMHO.

ok

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104890/

http://criterioncast.com/2011/09/23/5-new-clips-from-aki-kaurismakis-le-havre/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/apr/04/aki-kaurismaki-le-havre-interview?INTCMP=SRCH

He lights another cigarette, and tells me he has only just started smoking again. How many a day? "Three boxes, 60. My record is 12 boxes. When I have to deal with idiotic questions like yours I have to smoke more." That's a bit rude. He grins like a little boy who knows he's gone too far. "Well, I wanted a reaction. I didn't mean to be rude, I just wanted to provoke you."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLZZbK0Rquo

i feel like i've seen people talking about le havre in another thread?

just saw this, it was tremendous. i'd never seen anything by him before.

I envy your impending epiphany. He is one of the greatest living filmmakers, IMO.

Haha, I see upthread that I have repeated myself, but IT IS TRUE

IMHO

i'm surprised by how little interesting writing there is about this movie. it is a very, very strange film. in some ways it feels like a french "new wave" movie - the foregrounding of its own mechanisms and devices, for instance. the acting is incredibly strange. none of it is naturalistic, or it's a different kind of naturalism somehow. it just engages your brain differently. i can see why people bring up chaplin. he frames things in tableau, like paintings. he wants to bring elements together in the frame, or in your mind, and see what reactions take place.

i don't know if this is something he does all the time, but i was struck by how the movie seemed to take place at every/all moments of the 20th century. there were cars from the 50s, 60s and 70s, outfits from all over the place, phones from the 30s and the 2000s, Euro banknotes. the sensational darroussin in his weirdly belted outfit looked like a cross between an east german stasi and an extra in the taking of pelham 1 2 3. it helped the movie feel timeless, like a fable, but also had the opposite effect: this boy's story, or those of boys like him, has specifically taken place in ALL these times, in ALL these les havres.

Wow, cool observations. Check out his very early stuff, like Ariel, and you will see that all of these things are very much his hallmarks, but certainly they are not commented on enough. He has some great, deadpan quotes about directing actors but I sometimes wonder if these belie an actual, intuitive rigor to direction that he is too modest to talk about. I guess only his actors know.

ah:

While Bresson would have his actors (or, as he called them, “models”) repeat their lines over and over again, until they were drained of all emotion from the sheer dullness of repetition, Kaurismäki uses an opposite approach to get a similar effect: his actors do not know what their lines are until right before they speak them. Sometimes, he has them read the lines off cue cards. On the rare occasions when Kaurismäki does give his actors a script in advance, it is prefaced by something like “The same sentences every morning without passion.” (17) And, although his actors say that Kaurismäki always shoots only one take, the director himself once admitted to an interviewer that he actually shoots the rehearsal and then pretends to the actors that he is shooting the first take. He does this because he wants them thinking as little as possible about “acting” and more about reading a line as simply as possible. The result is an impassive acting style that serves a double purpose: to mimic the uncaring capitalistic society looming over Kaurismäki’s films, and to work in comedic counterpoint to the frequently dramatic content of the dialogue itself.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2m-eofdBJC0J:www.sensesofcinema.com/2009/great-directors/aki-kaurismaki/+kaurismaki+on+actors&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari

holy shit

that is weirder than i ever would have believed

My dream is to spend a year just researching and writing a book on AK. Maybe I should do it, I dunno.

I know he would hate it already, haha

of course! he hates everything!

certainly it was clear that he was doing something radically different with his actors, you don't get a full-grown brechtian effect like that by happenstance

As an insightful friend of mine has pointed out - Kaurismaki also shoots work (as in, work done with one's hands) so much better than any other director. When you see someone working in a factory or building something or washing dishes in a Kaurismaki film, you really see the work they are doing as a series of actions, almost subliminally (he doesn't dwell on these things, it's just part of what he does). If you look at the way work is shown in most films, you can't really understand what is involved. It's just a visual abstraction that conjures some idea of labor without really showing it.

Just...the forms in his films are so perfect. Even his lesser films are so perfectly constructed.

liked Le Havre v much when i went to see it last night, and have now enjoyed reading the (too few!) posts on this thread (esp like tracer's comments about the way that the film's slightly elusive periodisation points to a larger universal/historical condition). the style of the film did strike me as v. bressonian - one of the v. first shots, of feet walking, seemed partic 'pickpockety' - but yeah, allied to that is kaurismaki's own beautiful whimsy and compassion. for a moment i thought that the 'miracle' at the end of the film was another 'lie' staged by arletty and the doctors for the husband's benefit, but the final scene w/ the cherry blossoms (v. Ozo-y!) seemed to suggest it was to be taken at 'face value'.

it was interesting seeing this film not long after seeing the Dardennes' The Kid With a Bike - two films about an adult unexpectedly caring for a vulnerable child, both with a great feel for location, and for the possibility of community, even now.

Kaurismaki and Takeshi Kitano are my two favourite working directors and they have many similarities i think

Two Finns are in a bar. After hours of silence, one man raises his glass to the other and says, “Cheers.” The other man snaps back, “I didn’t come here for conversation.”

this is one of my fave jokes by the way altho in my version dude says something like "I thought we were drinking, not chatting"

That joke could make me move to Finland.

nice. where does the joke come from?

loved The Other Side of Hope

its total absence from year-end discussion is a fuckin' crime

Agreed. I think he's so reliably great that people take him granted.

maybe he's not "serious" enough for some people

his movies never seem to get shown by the centrist dad arthouse clique in my city

this movie was amazing

sort of a diptych with le havre, really

it's like if jim jarmusch movies were actually good!

couldn't read this story without thinking of these films

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/22/uk-home-office-tells-stateless-man-go-home?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

stunned that this is the only thread on kaurismaki on ilx

loved The Other Side of Hope

its total absence from year-end discussion is a fuckin' crime

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Sunday, December 10, 2017 9:49 PM (five months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otmfm

I need to watch Calamari Union.

the Aki Kaurismäki poll

NYC retro

http://metrograph.com/series/series/215/total-kaurismki-show

Wow, nice. Odds are high that I'll check this out on Saturday, and scanning the schedule it looks like that day they're showing the only three I haven't seen (I think) - Crime & Punishment, Hamlet, and Calamari Union. Any recs on which one I should pick?

I've seen Hamlet, liked it. CU is on Vimeo.

ah man what a drag, I would've tried to come up to NYC for this but so soon. all 35mm! fuck me running

Yeah I really wish I could be around to catch more of the color films in 35, like Drifting Clouds.

For those unable to get to NYC, this Region 2 blu ray set is available fairly cheaply, in the UK at least:

https://curzonartificialeye.com/the-aki-kaurism%C3%A4ki-collection/

are they not showing La Vie de Boheme? It's got no dates next to it

They must be... perhaps some scheduling dilemma soon to be resolved.

actually, the Calamari Union that is on Vimeo is a cheap US remake! so I missed it. Fuck.

priority number one was drifting clouds but I couldn't make it because of exhibiting at Mocca festival. However, I am going to man without a past tonight.

Drifting Clouds was a treat, but I was a little baffled by the boite ex machina that resolved things

gonna try to make Juha tomw night

I made it to Match Factory Girl, which was wonderful in 35mm. On the big screen, I had a lot of fun being able to observe the micro-changes in expression on Kati Outinen's face. As always with AK I discovered some laff moments that I'd never noticed before.

How's the new one?

Same Aki, different day. I loved it & laughed a lot, easily top ten of the year for me.

would be interested to know the bingo score per this thread

In every Aki Kaurismäki film ever

The female lead is the spitting image of a young Kati Outinen, even

Yeah, it really is objectively Just Another Kaurismaki Film but somehow this one really hit with me - the warmth and the no-nonsense portrayal of how the working class gets fucked over and the lobby cards.

great soundtrack too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9W1n6kygmI
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