The Other Side of Hope review: Polished gem from a unique filmmaker
By Paul Byrnes
March 28, 2018 — 1.07pm
The Other Side of Hope. Credit:Palace Films
THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE ★★★★
(M) 100 minutes
Here's a guide for those who have never seen a film by Aki Kaurismaki. I heard him describe himself once as "the best filmmaker in the world but I make the worst films".
He is one of Finland's national treasures; he was once a prodigious drinker though he is said to have reformed; he and his brother Mika, also a director, established the Midnight Sun Film Festival in the Arctic Circle in mid-summer, showing films in a tent in a place where the sun never sets.
Kaurismaki makes films about down-and-out people. They have often hit rock bottom and are so downtrodden they don't know it. Then something happens and they find reserves, or love, or a small victory, or death.
It's hard to pinpoint what makes Kaurismaki so different to any filmmaker on the planet.
He has redefined the idea of minimalist deadpan: Jim Jarmusch looks like a screamer by comparison. He finds humour in every aspect of life, starting with its terrifying oppressiveness.
Maybe it's the effect of those long dark winters, but Kaurismaki's films journey towards hope. That makes the title of this new one both typical and a bit scary: we're going beyond hope?
Khaled (Sherwan Haji) emerges from a pile of coal on a ship in Helsinki harbour and asks for political asylum. At the same time, middle-aged Waldemar (Sakari Kuosmanen) abandons his marriage, sells his wholesale shirt business and buys a run-down restaurant, with three run-down staff. Khaled eventually washes up here when he runs away from the refugee centre. He has lost his sister Miriam (Niroz Haji) in the flight from Syria. Mazdak (Simon Hussein Al-Bazoon), an Iraqi refugee, tries to find her.
Kaurismaki's settings are as downbeat as his characters – often as not, dimly lit rooms in the worst neighbourhoods.
By contrast, most of his characters are better than their surroundings – but not all. He does not lie about human weakness and cruelty. There is a struggle between good and evil at the heart of all his films, although this one takes a less obvious route with evil. Everyone Khaled meets in the refugee centre is kind to him; when he escapes, several people help him, but not all. There are bad men out there.
Most of the characters face a daily question: to be kind or unkind. Kaurismaki builds a heroic narrative around that idea, when the people in the restaurant are called upon to act.
So what makes Kaurismaki so different? He does have an extraordinary depth of love for the medium to draw on, but his films are models of simplicity. No effects, no car chases; hardly ever a raised voice. Characters walk on and off screen, the camera hardly moving except for mild comic emphasis.
He brings a strong intelligence to the writing, a weary sense of the world's harshness. His feeling for comedy is light and always unpredictable, but he is driven by compassion. You always know that his heroes are going to surprise us at some point, discovering their own power for action.
A retrospective at the Sydney Film Festival in June will showcase 10 more Kaurismaki films, which will also screen in Melbourne and Canberra.