Aki Kaurismaki: A maverick auteur ②

Aki is deeply influenced by Italian Neorealism and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. “Or with Fassbinder, who also worked at a frantic, cutdown pace, fitting feature-length narratives into short and cheap schedules.” (Simon,25) This compares Fassbinder’ cinematic style with Aki’s. Also, Aki gives neo-realism his own interpretation. For example, the quest for secure work in De Sica’s Shoeshine and Bicycle Thieves turn into comedy in Aki’s hands. The characters in Aki’s films are seeking for nothing but love, well-being, dignity and living. As Aki said, “It’s all the same story. People try to survive in the world they were born.” The principle of “live view” in Italian Neorealism has a direct impact on Aki’s creation. The “Working-class Trilogy” and the “Loser Trilogy” are all like slices of real life. The camera films in a documentary way, which shows the protagonist’s working environment. Here are some examples. In the opening scene of “Shadows in Paradise”, several trucks are driving through the main gate, and then stop at some garbage containers around the beach, Nikander, the hero, starts to move the garbage; In Ariel, the miners are loitering around, then the sharp alarm rings, with a “boom” sound, the mine is collapsing; In opening scene of “The Match Factory Girl”, a monotonous process of assembling matches is completely shown to us; In “Drifting Clouds”, a black jazz pianist are playing in a quaint cafeteria, then the camera pans to the poker face head waitress Ilona. Afterwards, it cuts to a waiter whispering to Ilona, and she seems a bit shocked then everything returns to normal after she goes into the kitchen; In “Lights in the Dusk”, with a slow panning shot, pale cyan lighting is showing on the screen, accompanied by bleak darkness in Helsinki. Our protagonist Koistinen is performing his daily routine, like a robot. “The high-tech city of glass houses both the successful crook and the judiciary, but has no place for the ordinary worker who must live in the interstices of the new social order.” (Vincendeau,70) This demonstrates the working-class’s marginal living status in Helsinki. Characters as being outsiders are exiled from the society and it’s not only a physical isolation, but also an mental isolation from the higher class. In Aki’s films, the protagonists’ simple and embarrassed residential environments are always been demonstrated in an elaborate way. In Loser Trilogy, the residences of protagonists are all rented, which are considerably rough. In The Man Without a Past, M is living in a container, whose former owner was frozen to death last winter; In Drifting Clouds, the couple’s house is the most “luxurious” among those marginal people. After the couple lost their jobs, the furniture that is bought on installments is all taken back by the retailers.
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Thank you for sharing this.