Lights in the Dusk
Directed by Aki Kaurismäki
Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s deadpan style isn’t always enjoyable. His hard-faced characters seem pointlessly glum except that Kaurismäki means to point out the glumness in life. Things go bad. People are cruel. Struggle is all. Accept that, and Kaurismäki begins to seem funny. His newest import, Lights in the Dusk, follows Koistinen (Janne Hyytiäinen), a morose security guard with high hopes but who suffers a slow drop to ignominy. The film’s humor derives from the comedy of inevitability. It is the flip side of tragedy.
Funniest thing is, Kaurismäki is not a cynic. Fascinated with human drudgery, he has an interest in the common nature of desperate people that is almost affectionate. When average man Koistinen is targeted by a local crime boss and set up for both a romantic con and a robbery, Kaurismäki portraits of the tricksters—the granite faced hood (Ilkka Koivula) and his blond moll (Maria Järvenhelmi)—are so pathetically real and unpretty that we edge toward forgiveness. They don’t seem to realize that the joke they play on Koistinen is already played on them.
Next to the phony esprit de corps on view in Ocean’s Thirteen, Kaurismäki’s deadpan seems refreshingly honest. While rejecting the specious optimism Hollywood sells, he distills the world to its unadorned truth: work, anomie and frustration. It’s what used to be known as a beatnik perspective—everyday existentialism. Kaurismäki’s references to 1950s-style rock ’n’ roll rebellion even imply that leisure is routine. Koistinen assures his deceitful date that he knows how to rock but all we see is his desperation.
The downbeat tone of Lights in the Dusk just escapes offense and self-parody due to Kaurismäki’s careful, subtle craftsmanship. This film is as strikingly designed as Wim Wenders’ Don’t Come Knocking. Kaurismäki similarly uses Edward Hopper-style compositions; Finland’s dockside, bars, bank and factories create a picturesque mood. The images are sharp and rich (gorgeous, lucid celluloid). It’s a cool version of poetic realism in which scenes of dislocation (such as Koistinen’s inability to communicate with a shy female hotdog vendor) are so ripe they tickle.
Lights in the Dusk’s sad tale could almost be a Fassbinder movie about predators and prey. But Kaurismäki’s storytelling favors piquancy over social critique. Hyytiäinen has the dour handsomeness of a hangdog Dirk Bogarde. He receives hard, accusatory stares from everyone. They all seem to see the loneliness, sadness and doofusness that keeps him from fitting in. People not only close doors on Koistinen, when they open doors, he’s caught in the negative space like a claustrophobic Buster Keaton. And yet, when this outsider notices a black child and an abandoned dog sitting outside a bar, he realizes that in this world, even he has certain social advantages. Scenes like this prove Kaurismäki is a master of pathos. After years of unhelpful Jim Jarmusch comparisons, it took the plangent quality of Jared Hess’ work in Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre to make Kaurismäki credible for American sensibilities.
