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 lights in the dusk interview
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Aki Kaurismäki: not Finland’s Dr Feelgood. “A man named Koistinen searches the hard world for a small crack to crawl in through, but both his fellow beings and the faceless apparatus of society see it as their business to crush his modest hopes, one after another. Thus Koistinen is deprived of his job, his freedom, and his dreams.”Cheer up, it might never happen. Not the kind of advice you imagine Aki Kaurismäki would welcome. For over two decades Finland’s most celebrated filmmaker has forged a body of deadpan, absurdist work. Under his hangdog gaze Helsinki seems marinated in a gloomy fug of cigarette smoke and whisky fumes; its dropouts and misfits struggle, fail and endure, so long as they don’t commit Kaurismäki’s cardinal sin and show their feelings.  Kaurismäki’s own outline (above) for Lights In The Dusk, the nominal third part in his “Loser” trilogy, following Drifting Clouds and The Man Without A Past, plays his pokerfaced strategy to its existential endgame. Previously, his droll worldview has been suffused with a wry humanism and humour. Yet Lights’ modern-day film noir trappings - lonely Koistinen (Janne Hyytiäinen) effectively duped by femme fatale Mirja (the fabulously feline Maria Järvenhelmi) - highlight a hitherto underplayed cynicism. Yoked to Kaurismäki’s glacial pacing – imagine Jim Jarmusch on temazepam – repetitive, static set-ups and stubborn denial of overt emotion, he risks self-parody and alienation more than ever before. If it’s hard to watch, you’d imagine it’s even less fun to enact, but actress Maria Järvenhelmi positively gushes with praise for Kaurismäki’s minimalist methods. “It’s a question of trust and of accepting the style,” she insists. “Once you accept it, you think, OK we will play with these rules now. He can make this atmosphere on set very cosy and comfortable and makes you feel there is nothing to be afraid of.”  Despite the overriding despondency, Lights does end on a potential note of redemption, Kaurismäki coolly noting that “the author has a reputation for being soft-hearted, so we assume there is a spark of hope illuminating the final scene.” Järvenhelmi agrees. “Aki is a great fan of Charles Chaplin, and the thing that makes Chaplin a genius film director is that he can capture at the same time, in the same scene, tragedy and comedy. And mostly life is a comedy and a tragedy at the same time.” Maybe that explains Kaurismäki’s seemingly habitual ambivalence – he still doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Leigh Singer
Lights In The Dusk, on selected release 06 April 07.
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