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Minimalist
effort: Outinen in The Man Without a Past.
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Into
Salvation
By Ann Morrow
The
Man Without a Past
Directed by Aki Kaurismaki
If the title of The Man Without ia
Past sounds familiar, it’s meant
to. An homage to many things 1950s (and a nominee for Best
Foreign Film Oscar), it slyly plays on such vintage movie
genres as the western and the weepy, but in a decidedly understated
way. Written and directed by Aki Kaurismaki, the film initially
comes off as a deadly dull Ingmar Bergman satire, but as the
viewer becomes immersed in the Finnish auteur’s way-laid-back
style, this lugubrious dramedy emerges as a wickedly deadpan
delight.
The Man (Markku Peltola) is beaten by a gang of hoodlums after
disembarking from a train, waking later in a Helsinki hospital
without a clue as to who he is or where he’s from. As glum
as the overcast skies of Finland, he drifts to the outskirts
of the city, and through the kindness of other dispossessed
strangers, spends an evening in a bar (where he discovers
he is not a drunkard), and finds shelter in a one-room shack
illegally rented out by a bullying security guard. The shack
is part of a commune of lost souls eking out an existence
from the skimpy refuse of a depressed nation, and making do
through an underground economy is one of the film’s amusingly
gloomy themes. The Man reuses a tea bag he keeps in a matchbox,
and grows small potatoes. But he also turns his squat into
the height of minimalist chic by scavenging an old jukebox
and setting the table with a single blue coffee mug. The film
similarly reimagines the desolation of Finland through its
1950s Scandinavian- moderne set design and glowing art- nouveau
color palette.
At the Salvation Army, the Man is given a used suit that turns
him into a vision of retro cool. Irma (Kati Outinen), a straight-laced
soup ladler, is so impressed she gets him a job with the army.
These desultory events occur with a bare minimum of dialogue
and long, portentous silences between the stoically expressionless
characters. Yet through Kaurismaki’s mordant wit and irony-free
populism, the film revels in an underhanded joi de vivre.
The Man kindles a romance with spinsterish Irma (Outinen’s
tightly repressed inner radiance won her the Best Actress
Award at Cannes). He transforms the army band into a fabulous
ensemble that is booked solid at hobo camps. He is caught
up in bizarrely funny mishaps simply because he refuses to
supply a fake name, and at one point, he is held on suspicion
of not being Finnish, an incident that plays out like Dashiell
Hammett on Thorazine. As he builds a new life for himself,
we realize he really is the Man, in a Nordic Johnny Cash kind
of way.
In one of the film’s many off-the-wall twists, Irma and the
Man are torn asunder by revelations from his past, for which
the music swells with comically melodramatic sudsiness. Perhaps
only an auteur of Kaurismaki’s inspired kookiness could concoct
a story inspired by the Salvation Army; but under his subversively
humanist worldview, it’s not only hip to be square, it’s downright
uplifting.
L.A.
Inconsequential
Hollywood
Homicide
Directed by Ron Shelton
Ron Shelton is the kind of man for whom guy talk is a thing
of beauty. Not the kind of guy talk that David Mamet pens—where
salesmen outflash each other’s business patois at machine-gun
speed—and not the kind of guy talk you might hear on lesser
sports-radio shows. I’m talking the kind of guy talk that
you may have been lucky enough to encounter in your life,
perhaps because your older siblings or their pals had wry,
Irish senses of humor combined with a basic understanding
of all things athletic. Shelton’s great baseball movie, Bull
Durham, is rife with such examples, so if you’re still
confused, rent that chestnut.
So it’s no surprise that Shelton, with screenwriter Robert
Souza, focuses intently on the guy-talk thing in Hollywood
Homicide, so much so that they kind of forget to develop
the rest of the movie, ostensibly a cop action thriller. Harrison
Ford, as senior partner Joe Gavilan, and Josh Hartnett, as
younger top gun K.C. Calden, get the banter down pretty well;
and the filmmaker’s running gag that, like everybody else
in L.A., these two policemen have to moonlight to make ends
meet, is delivered with amusing results. Gavilan, a realtor
down on his luck, hustles potential buyers on his cell phone
while simultaneously taking down clues from the brutal gangland-style
killing of a rap group. K.C., who thinks he’d rather be an
actor, practices his Brando while also teaching nubile young
things proper yoga technique.
Within the film’s first quarter, we know that the rap group’s
producer, the wonderfully named Antoine Sartain (Isaiah Washington),
is the guilty party. Clearly, Shelton isn’t wasting any time
with whodunits; he’d rather explore the quirky relationship
between Gavilan and Calden. Occasionally, the filmmakers throw
in side plots, such as the mysterious circumstances surrounding
K.C.’s cop father’s death, or an internal-affairs investigation
by Officer Macko (Bruce Greenwood), which seems entirely focused
on ruining Gavilan’s career. But these things, L.A. Confidential
as they are, stand in the way of Gavilan’s love scenes with
radio psychic Ruby (Lena Olin), or K.C.’s getting laid in
a hot tub.
To be fair, I don’t believe that Shelton ever intended this
movie to be deep or even critical. Rather, he seems to be
intent on offering mindless summer entertainment for people
not likely to indulge in The Matrix: Reloaded
or Rugrats Go Wild. The movie does have some delicious
moments, notably Ford’s character having to pursue Sartain
through the streets of Hollywood on a little girl’s bicycle,
and an aborted interrogation of our heroes by Macko in which
Gavilan plays realtor on his cell phone while Calden practices
his yoga technique. Overall, it’s a strange mishmash of a
film, with neither the adrenaline high of traditional chase
movies like, say, The Fugitive, or the sustained goofiness
of The Naked Gun.
—Laura
Leon
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