Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Laconic, Gloomy and Brilliant, 6 Nov 2002
The thing that hits you in both films is the incredibly gloomy and dirty surroundings. Having lived both in London and Helsinki, I must confess I have rarely seen anything like the housing estates and flats in these films.However, the surroundings suit the films' themes perfectly; after all, the stories are hardly about shiny, happy people holding hands. The first one is about a man who is made redundant and decides to kill himself, and the second one about a lonely unhappy girl who sleeps with a disturbingly emotionless man. Although Kaurismäki's storylines are remarkably full of ideas in their simplicity, the small details and oneliners are worth mentioning. The harshness with which the hero of the first film is sacked and the lack of verbal communication by Iris's parents ar just two examples of Kaurismaki's eye for detail. Every single gesture and word is meaningful and has been carefully thought about by the director. All in all, these films should be regarded as masterpieces of black comedy.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Better fewer, but better, 28 Dec 2002
These are two superb but criminally underrated films which I recommend to everyone whose senses haven't yet been blunted by overexposure to Hollywood pap. Kaurismaki's films shouldn't work- but in some wonderfully inexplicable way they do. Full of wit and pathos, with brilliantly delivered lines like, "The working class has no fatherland", they are proletarian fairy tales where the ending isn't always happy. Kaurismaki has managed to capture the contradictory and often fragmentary nature of the reality of working class existence (NB, existence, not life) under late capitalism and expressed it cinematically. In spite of their apparent dourness, (and "dourness" is a criticism often unfairly levelled at Kaurismaki's work) both the main characters in the films, Henri in "I hired a contract killer" and Iris in "The match factory girl" are desperately struggling to live. And it's through their struggle that you realize the beauty, but also the agonizing tragedy of existence. Both films have great soundtracks, and the opening sequences are unforgettable. And all of that without an iota of pretentiousness. It's been de riguer of late to flirt with "working class" themes and characters- the mind numbing "8 Mile" and the god awful banality of "Maid in Manhatten" spring to mind. But don't be misled. After watching Kati Outinen's excellent performance as Iris, it throws into stark relief what total patronising drivel Hollywood is churning out these days, and makes you wonder how they get away with it.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Got a Light?, 26 Mar 2005
The Match Factory Girl is bitter-sweet, almost wordless, very Finnish in atmosphere but not actual physical surroundings (the Finns I knew had never seen anywhere like the depressed places shown, a point made by another reviewer).
The story is simple: girl lives with mother and (?) step-father. she works in a match factory, they take her pay. She has no life, so sends off for a rather (?) tarty dress. It arrives by post. She is slapped and told to send it back. She wears it to a bar, is seduced and made pregnant by an uncaring executive. She later has an abortion, sleeps again with the man but also poisons him. she then trawls bars, poisoning cruising men. The end of the story and film is not long in coming. all this to the, again, very bitterly-sweet music of Finnish tango (with male singer).
This film is as little to do with concrete reality as, say, Pasport to Pimlico. But is has spiritual or psychological truth built into it. Tellingly, the Russians (in Kazakhstan) I knew all loved it, the Finns in London less so. Recommended.
As to the Contract Killer film, somehow I cannot rate that highly. The strange world of Match Factory becomes almost surrealist as the couple try to hire and then escape from the killer. Not much good as entertainment...
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