Lupaus (2005)

There is a reason why I rarely watch Finnish movie. Yes, I like Kaurismäki - but he's in his own league, right? I am reminded of why I don't. I watched Lupaus (2005), a film about the Lotta Svärd movement, a paramilitary organization in, among other countries, Finland and Estonia. Finnish Lotta Svärd members volunteered in the WW2 carrying out different functions. But this movie wasn't about the Lotta Svärd movement as such. I was curious about whether the depiction of the Lotta movement as a right-wing movement is actually true. I got no answer to that whatsoever. This wasn't a political film. You might even call it anti-political in its way of stubbornly looking away from political issues. The story revolved around a group of young girls who contribute to helping the Finnish front - but without carrying guns (or, at least, that was the principle).

There's nothing wrong, of course, in focusing on personal stories. But then you have to make a decent job out of that as a film maker. Ilkka Vanne's film did not convince me. The young girls portrayed in the film did not evolve into interesting characters. Mostly, they were reduced to the angelic heroism of a pure, young girl, confronted with the grim, gritty reality of war. Even though it did touch on the women's struggle for independence, it did not really leave any room for any real or deep conflicts. Nor did it give any substantial depiction of the afflictions of war. Nothing in this movie provided any friction with regard to a) conventional storytelling, b) conventional, Finnish acting (where every god damn word is articulated so heavily that you think that the actors' heads are going to explode) and c) conventional Finnish war films. This film is simply too much. Too much young-girl-fondles-horse, too much Florence Nightingale, too much young-man-dies-in-the-snow-and-the-strings-tell-you-CRY, BITCH, CRY! And as the beatiful man bend over to tell the young girl goodbye, my stomach went BÖÖÖRP & my mind drifted towards all the edible things in the world.

One thing I couldn't stop thinking about (this says something about my lack of emotional investment in the whole thing) was why we didn't see any of the women (I think) smoking. Didn't women smoke at all during those days? Or was it just that a smoking woman would have rubbed agains the Florence Nightingale formula? EDIT: The lotta svärd members were not allowed to smoke while wearing uniforms. Now that is interesting. Neither were they allowed to drink alcohol while "on duty".

OK, so say a few nice things about this movie. The cinematography & color scale worked fine. The fighting scenes with the unsteady camera were all right too. But let's face it. What kind of war movie ends with a picture of THE FINNISH FLAG? To me, that was really tasteless and was only an addition to why this movie veered towards the nationalistic message of "be proud of your past, people of Finland". Sacrifice/nation/sacrifice.

Did I learn much about the Lotta movement? Well, a little something, that's true. Did the film excavate female experiences of the war? Eh, not really. Yes, it attempted to ignite the lacrimation system. My black & cynical heart was not moved one inch.

I wonder why Finnish films involve so little experiments & why most films seem to be through-and-through conventional. Sweden at least has more than one interesting film-maker, and over there, reviewers complain that few films deviate from the pattern. Any suggestions?

(this seems far more interesting than Lupaus.)