Aki Kaurismaki is a great director, and yet, I would love to see him taking over some more ambitious projects. 'Lights in the Dusk' is a wonderful film from many aspects, and yet the lack of ambition of his principal hero seems to somehow overcome the whole atmosphere to an extent that it defies the logic, at least for the non-Finn viewer. The black and cynical humor in his Leningrad Cowboys series seems to have been overtaken here by plain despair.
The hero of the film Koistinen (we never know his first name) is the loneliest man on Earth. He is a night-watchman who seems to be unable to connect with any of his colleagues, the only human who seems to care for him being the woman from the hot-dogs kiosk whose existence he barely acknowledges. He is not a bad man, he cares for animals, he has some baseless plans to open a business of his own who are doomed to failure, as is any tentative to look into the eyes of a woman or to just connect at all with another human being. His way of being makes him the typical victim for a criminal scheme, and the price to be paid of those who will abuse him is no more than showing him that somebody maybe cares.
The cinematography of Kaurismaki is really exquisite. It is not only what he shows (the deeming lights and shades of the North, a city in an almost permanent night or dusk) but also what he does not show. An empty chair or a tripping closing door are for example his best means to describe a scene of violence without showing any violence. His actors are all wonderful, but their strength is better shown in the empty stares. They communicate or live their parallel lives in silence, and the film could have lacked any dialog without losing too much of his expressiveness.
And yet, at the end, this story of victimization and resignation risks to be too depressing to be convincing. It reminded me the end of the wonderful Romanian film of Cristi Puiu 'Moartea Domnului Lazarescu'. As in Puiu's movie, it is only in the last sequence that the hero acknowledges the hand of human solidarity that is trying to reach him. Viewers leave with the feeling of wishing maybe the hero would have dared and achieved more, or that the director could have done the same.
The hero of the film Koistinen (we never know his first name) is the loneliest man on Earth. He is a night-watchman who seems to be unable to connect with any of his colleagues, the only human who seems to care for him being the woman from the hot-dogs kiosk whose existence he barely acknowledges. He is not a bad man, he cares for animals, he has some baseless plans to open a business of his own who are doomed to failure, as is any tentative to look into the eyes of a woman or to just connect at all with another human being. His way of being makes him the typical victim for a criminal scheme, and the price to be paid of those who will abuse him is no more than showing him that somebody maybe cares.
The cinematography of Kaurismaki is really exquisite. It is not only what he shows (the deeming lights and shades of the North, a city in an almost permanent night or dusk) but also what he does not show. An empty chair or a tripping closing door are for example his best means to describe a scene of violence without showing any violence. His actors are all wonderful, but their strength is better shown in the empty stares. They communicate or live their parallel lives in silence, and the film could have lacked any dialog without losing too much of his expressiveness.
And yet, at the end, this story of victimization and resignation risks to be too depressing to be convincing. It reminded me the end of the wonderful Romanian film of Cristi Puiu 'Moartea Domnului Lazarescu'. As in Puiu's movie, it is only in the last sequence that the hero acknowledges the hand of human solidarity that is trying to reach him. Viewers leave with the feeling of wishing maybe the hero would have dared and achieved more, or that the director could have done the same.