STUDIO: Criterion
RELEASE DATE: September 23, 2008
STARRING: Kati Outinen, Elina Salo, Esko Nikkari, Toro Pajala, Susanna Haavisto, Matti Pellonpaa, Sakari Kuosmanen, and Esko Nikkari
WRITTEN BY: Aki Kaurismaki
DIRECTED BY: Aki Kaurismaki
FEATURES: None

"Eclipse is a selection of lost, forgotten, or overshadowed classics in simple, affordable edition. Each series is a brief cinematheque retrospective for the adventurous home viewer." The 12th set in the Eclipse line from Criterion - previous sets featured overshadowed work by Akira Kurosawa, Samuel Fuller, Louis Malle, and more - features three early works by the masterful Aki Kaurismaki. Who? Kaurismaki may be far from a household name in most American neighborhoods, but he is an ICON in the right circles and with most critics. If I throw out his name in the screening room for critics here in Chicago, people who write about movies for a living start to drool. His reputation over the last two decades of filmmaking has only grown in circles of international film lovers. Three of his early films, all of which feature working class characters struggling for basic survival, are being released by Criterion as a part of their Eclipse series. The films aren't available individually and include no special features, but at roughly $10 a piece, who's complaining?

SHADOWS IN PARADISE (VARJOJA PARATISISSA)

What's most fascinating to me about Aki Kaurismaki's Proletariat Trilogy is how instantly you could tell that Kaurismaki was a masterful director. I'll admit that I came on board with this fascinating Finnish director very late in his career with 2002's The Man Without a Past. So, I was unfamiliar with all three of these "overshadowed classics". Mere minutes into 1986's Shadows in Paradise and any film lover can tell that Kaurismaki knows exactly what he's doing. He's one of the most deliberate and detailed directors working today. Take the story of Nikander and Ilona, a garbage truck worker and a supermarket employee, which could be called a romantic comedy but only in the most Finnish sense of the words. Kaurismaki doesn't tell a story of romance as much as inevitability. These people don't feel passionately for each other but they can barely survive in this brutal, cold world. Why not have a partner in the attempt? The excellently written liner notes for Shadows in Paradise sum up the droll comedy of the film with this fantastic exchange - "I'm not going to die behind the wheel."/"Then where?"/"Behind a desk." But that exchange doesn't just sum up the comedy but the worldview of this riveting film (and, really, all three films). We take small steps from wheel to desk and from single to together. Nikander is too violent to be alone and Ilona is too unlucky. There is joy but it's not of the typical, Hollywood variety. (Note: Shadows in Paradise looks stunning too, just like all of three films, with typically perfect Criterion transfers.)

ARIEL

Shadows in Paradise won the Jussi Award, the Finnish equivalent of the Oscar, and he announced that he would make a sequel to that film, which turned out to be 1988's Ariel. Of course, Ariel is a sequel in only the thematic sense of the word, in the same way that Krystof Kieslowski's White is a sequel to his Blue. Ariel features none of the same actors, but does focus on the plight of working-class outcasts yet again. This time it's Taisto, a Lapland coal miner who leaves for Helsinki after his father kills himself. He's just trying to find something better than his boring life and he does so when he meets single mother Irmeli. Ariel is a much darker film than Shadows in Paradise, even verging into noir territory. Once again however, Kaurismaki is telling a story of people looking for any light at all in this very dark tunnel we call a world. According to the packaging, Ariel was the film that put Kaurismaki on the international movie map. Kaurismaki often gets compared to Jim Jarmusch and you can easily see that in Ariel. Fans of Jarmusch's Down by Law and Stranger Than Paradise should definitely check it out.

THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL (TULITIKKUTEHAAN TYTTO)

Between Ariel and the final film in Kaurismaki's Proletariat Trilogy, The Match Factory Girl, Kaurismaki actually made a movie that featured Jarmusch in a cameo and that really put him on the arthouse map, Leningrad Cowboys Go America. He went back to the plight of the working class to close out his thematic trilogy with the pitch-black The Match Factory Girl, starring regular collaborator (and also star of Shadows in Paradise) Kati Outinen. She's riveting as another part of the machine of this world who basically skips a gear one day and goes over the edge. Like a lot of people, she has been ignored by society. Unlike most, she's going to do something about it. Match Factory Girl is dark, fascinating cinema and represents a slight switch in the Proletariat Trilogy from looking for something greater through traditional roads like love and leaving home and taking it for yourself.

All three films, which Criterion calls "social-realist farces", are worth seeing for any fan of international cinema. I was familiar with Kaurismaki's more recent, widely available work, but not any of these three excellent films. It's what a line like Eclipse was made for - to introduce someone to the early or unheralded work of a highly influential film artist and we can't encourage the continuation of this series strongly enough.