Author: Fang Hanjun
1
Aki Korimaski is an idealist.
According to the current buzzword, it is a "white left", but he is undoubtedly standing from the perspective of the destiny of all mankind, with deep insights and thinking, often breaking the boundaries of time and space and the country, breaking through the barriers of ideology, and compassion in time. Mind, aim at a refugee or a citizen and give an in-depth explanation. In other words, this is an extraordinary and artistic "Bai Zuo", we affectionately call him "Aki". But his personality is stubborn, and his apparent temperament seems to be at odds with his gentle movie style. This is exactly the mystery and uniqueness of Aki.
After a lapse of 5 years, after "Le Havre", he once again created "The Other Side of Hope" (2017), which focuses on refugees. The whole film runs through Aki’s cold humor. You must really understand it. Ji's movie is not an easy task. As far as the subject matter of refugees is concerned, the plot program is similar, but in terms of performance, each has its own emphasis. Aki's shot is a taste that gradually changes from cold to warm, much like old fire soup in a pot. After the taste, it is refreshing and appetizing. This is his creative preference. But unlike the previous years that were deliberately blurred, "The Other Side of Hope" has electronic fingerprint scanning, computer entry, and mobile phone calls, but the typewriter is still the same. It seems that his habit of liking old objects can't be changed.
The story in the film cannot be avoided from the year. The Syrian Aleppo war is going on. The Syrian government forces, the opposition forces, the ISIS terrorist organization, as well as the United States-led coalition forces and the Russian forces supporting the Syrian government forces, are in this land. After a prolonged fight and wrestling started, Syria has truly become a land of blood and tears, suffocating and desperate. Khalid Ali, born in 1991, was a refugee who fled from Aleppo. His fiancée died at the beginning of the war.
Khalid used to be an engineer in a car repair factory. One day after get off work, his home was in ruins. His parents were bombed to death. He took his younger sister Miriam and borrowed 6000 US dollars from his deceased fiancée’s father. From Turkey, passing through Greece, Macedonia, Slovenia, and arriving in Hungary, his brother and sister separated in the chaos. Since then, there is no word. He came to Gdansk, Poland, was chased by a group of skinheads, and fled a cargo ship loaded with coal. .
When he woke up, he was already in the Baltic Sea, and the captain treated him well, so he came to Finland, completely by accident. The beginning of the movie is that he walked ashore with a black face, a real "black man", which shows Aki's overwhelming sympathy and cold humor. After staying overnight, Khalid took the initiative to apply for asylum at the police station and was then sent to a refugee reception center where he met Mazdak, a refugee from Iraq.
Seeing Khalid's bitter hatred, Mazdak, who had been here for two years, told him to pretend to be happy so that he would not cause trouble. When he made a statement to the residence center, the female examiner asked him about his beliefs. He said that when his home was blown up, he had no belief. The other party said then fill in an atheist. He said not. This illustrates the contradiction in Khalid's heart.
In the end, the Finnish Residency Application Center refused his legal stay on the grounds that there was no fighting in Aleppo. Before being escorted for repatriation, fortunately the kind Finnish girl gave him a way out and let him go. The film is interspersed with television news and broadcast the fierce fighting in Aleppo, which forms a reference to the residence center's rejection of his application, and it is also a kind of irony.
2
One hour after the film entered, Khalid was finally able to meet the Finnish businessman Wikstrom. Wikstrom is another line in the film. Different from the deep affection of the cobbler and his wife in the previous work "Le Havre", the businessman broke up with his wife and left the house at the beginning, and drove into the hotel. Helpless to break up with his wife, or because of economic factors.
Aki slowly uncovered the leaky panties of Finland and Europe's economic downturn, human hypocrisy, racism, and so on. Wikstrom is engaged in shirt sales, and one of the old clients, played by Katy Ottingen, said that he was leaving Finland to live in Mexico City. She persuaded him to try to be a catering business, saying, "People should drink when their destiny is bad, and they should drink even more when the day is better." This is one aspect of the sluggish and unpopular Finnish economy.
Wikstrom wanted to open a restaurant, but he didn't have enough money. He came to the underground casino and won 60,000 yuan, which made people say that he would not come again, and he was a master of the casino. Of course, this time, he just wanted to buy restaurants. 250,000 bought a restaurant called Golden Pint, and took in Karam, Neil Shining and female intern Miria. In this context, the escaped Khalid shrank beside the trash can in the restaurant and met Wickstrom. Quite funny, it's like fighting a war, all punching each other. But Vikstrom, with a nosebleed, had to make arrangements for him to eat and drink.
In this way, Khalid stayed in the restaurant. More than that, the kind boss and staff arranged a hiding place for him to prevent surprise inspections by the immigration bureau. The kid who got him a fake certificate, gave him a fake residence permit. It happened that as soon as Khalid got the residence permit and went out, after he kindly dropped the coin to the beggar, he met the police, which was really good. Khalid was very happy, the only thing he cared about was his sister. This night, Mazdak ran to tell him that his sister had news, in Lithuania. It was the boss Vicstrom who came forward, and for the sake of safety, he discussed with the cross-border freight driver and asked him to piggyback.
In this way, Khalid's sister came safely from Lithuania. Of course the siblings were happy to meet each other. They meet to report to the police station tomorrow, and they don't want to be illegal. But when Khalid walked through the underpass, he was stabbed as a Jew by the "skinheads". The next day, we actually saw Khalid who was enduring the pain, and he reluctantly leaned back not far from the police station, waiting for his sister. The younger sister didn't notice it, so he let her younger sister go to work. He came to the beach and stared into the distance. At this time, the stray dog in the restaurant came over and played with him, as if this was his only relative while he was still alive. It seems that he is not as good as a stray dog.
3
The film seems simple, but it contains many things. As the middle-class Wikstrom's restaurant was in a recession, he switched to Japanese sushi dishes, which became popular for a while, and then it became a catering ballroom. The recession of the Finnish economy can be felt everywhere. Of course, there may be some exaggeration.
Another feature of the film is music. Whether it is on the street or in the restaurant, there are interspersed singers who play and sing. This is their heartfelt confession to the people of the world. Before being deported, Khalid used an Arab instrument to play a sad song affectionately, just like his final life tossing and turning. The film can be completely regarded as a music film. The end of the film is specifically marked "Memorial to Pete Van Bash".
The tragic outcome of Khalid, a Syrian refugee, suffices to show that Europe is not the best place to live for refugees. Europe’s own ills are becoming more and more difficult to return. Their citizens are thinking about relocation, let alone refugees from the Middle East. The skinheads of racists obviously have their own ideas about the violence of refugees. Whether refugees and the spread of terrorism are inevitable or only one step away, it all depends on how you treat refugees.
But in my opinion, Aki's attitude towards refugees, or his consistent thoughts, is unavoidable and simple. I also mentioned this in the film review about "Le Havre". The refugee issue is obviously a complicated issue that needs time and facts to clarify. So, I said from the beginning that the director is an idealist. He hates war, hates racism, is born with wildness, and is inevitably mixed with ideological "simple and rude", which just forms a contrast with his warm films.
Perhaps his unrestrained freedom is greatly related to his experience. Aki is purely an alternative to the international film scene, an atypical celebrity director. He was born in Finland on April 4, 1957. He graduated from the University of Helsinki with a degree in communications engineering. He has worked as a cleaner, a dishwasher and a postman. He has also written film reviews. Later, he watched a large number of films at the Munich Film Archive. He started his filmmaking career at the age of. We can see his stylized, rigorous, warm, and concise style of stage play from his past films such as "Women in the Match Factory", "A Man Without a Past", and "Life in Bohemia". This is in line with his nature and Experience has a lot to do. Of course, it is more of his inherent thinking. Any creation is ultimately established by personal thoughts. People without thoughts, creation is just a pale pile of ashes.
In the end, we saw "The Other Side of Hope". It happened that there was no hope. Europe despaired refugees and disappointed its own citizens. But I have a certain kind of distaste for his repeated attitude. In other words, what the film narrates is not all the facts, and most of the refugees admitted are arranged. Of course, there are refugees who have been on the road, even drowning in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. There are also the fact that thousands of local women were molested by many refugees on New Year’s Eve in Cologne and other places on December 31, 2015, not to mention from refugees. Transformed terrorists and "lone wolf" attacks in China are enough to explain that the refugee problem is a multiple and complex issue, not as simple as the one involved in the film. Of course, Aki did not stand on the moral high ground and blindly bury it, but overall his "left" ideological tendencies are obvious.
4
And I like his movies. It's not the subject of his movie, nor his plot. What I like is his expression and mirror language. His calmness above the infectious power is often heart-palpiting. feel. This is his extraordinary and unique artistic touch. He always grasps a point, and then expands to the surface, and gradually will always capture people's hearts.
We noticed that Aki still habitually uses 35mm film to shoot, and each frame of painting is as clean as a delicate oil painting. Especially in the one-to-one performance, the dialogue between the characters is close to whispers, expressionless, and inevitably rigid. They seem to be slow, but extremely happy, similar to the drama-like scenes and positions, plus the unique parallel of Northern Europe. The light, high-gray and cool-toned lens shows Aki's minimalist quiet mirror language.
The film’s dialogue is very exciting, as the Iraqi refugee Mazdak said, "All the sad people are sent back", which makes Khalid feel some kind of urgent personal threat. Another example is Khalid’s sister Miriam said, “It’s easier to die. I want to live. I want to keep my identity. I will surrender tomorrow. You are the best brother in the world.” This is a powerful attitude for refugees to preserve their personality and self-esteem. . What's interesting is that people in the film often talk. In the same atmosphere of the scene, there is almost a tone, which corresponds to the motionlessness of the lens, and never sees random shaking. This is what he is more true.
We can feel his film with a solemn sense of ritual. Obviously, he regards film creation as a sacred job. Furthermore, Aki borrowed from the lens language of many film masters. I always thought that whoever mastered the rich and simple lens language would have the potential of classic movies in his films. This is a clear and tightly integrated creative power. From this perspective, most of Aki's films can be used as excellent examples of university film teaching.
Think about how he uses the lens language, how to coordinate the relationship between the character and the lens, and how he uses the lens that intersects near and far, so that the characters are more layered and angular, and the movie is more vivid. If we sink our hearts, we can slowly feel the unique artistic quality of his films from Aki's films. This is the pleasing feature that I have repeatedly talked about in his movies.
2017, 8, 3
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