Aki Kaurismäki is the most famous Finnish director out there today, he is also a filmmakers with the most international production in the history of Finland. When he made Kauas pilvet karkaavat (Drifting Clouds) he wanted to find the optimism without forgetting the reality; to make neo-realism in color. "When I started working on Drifting Clouds I located Frank Capra's emotional story of salvation, It's a Wonderful Life on one fringe, Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves on other and the Finnish reality somewhere in between." One who watches the films by Kaurismäki will see his love towards real cinema. He's like one of the French new wave filmmakers who loved cinema. His unique style has a lot of influences from neo-realism, poetic realism, Jean-Luc Godard and Robert Bresson. Even in the scene where the main characters go to Bio Rex (an old movie theater in Helsinki) there are posters from masterpieces such as Jean Vigo's L'Atalante and Robert Bresson's L'Argent.
In Drifting Clouds Kaurismäki wanted to continue his stories about "losers with high morality.": Ilona and Lauri are two lovers living in Helsinki. Suddenly recession hits them and both of them lose their jobs. The desperate search for work starts when neither of them wants to take welfare from the state. The film portrays the recession in Finland in early 1990's: it was a desperate time in Finland, unemployment and inflation was up to the roof but it also portrays the "old" Finland, Finland before it joined the European Union.
The story of Drifting Clouds might sound conventional or a bit pretentious to some and that's what it could easily have been, if it wasn't directed by Aki Kaurismäki. The reason why the film doesn't feel pretentious and conventional is the honesty and sincerity of Kaurismäki, but also the severe Bressonian aesthetics. The core of Kaurismäki's art is perhaps turning insignificant to meaningful which is the beauty of minimalism. The aesthetics in all of his film is Bressonian: minimalist, geographically perfect - not a single useless image; there's nothing insignificant in 'mise-en-scene'.
Drifting Clouds tries to find optimism in recession. The twists of the storyline partly reminded me of Julien Duvivier's masterful film of French poetic realism: La belle équipe (1936) which portrays a group of five penniless workers who suddenly won the lottery and decide to start an outdoor restaurant of their own. The similarities don't just stop at the storyline: there is something similar in the narrative as well, and even that Kaurismäki isn't often considered as a cinematic poet, I think his naturalistic realism has something poetic in it at times.
Aki Kaurismäki's films are satires, tragicomedies and many may find them dull and weird. But in the end I think his films appeal to most of the people: they aren't really challenging or mysterious. But they achieve to build pure emotional experiences. They are brilliant portrayals of the Finnish society; his films exhale the Finnish agony and reality. Drifting Clouds is a smart satire about dreams passing by and the optimism which is everywhere - it just needs to be found.
In Drifting Clouds Kaurismäki wanted to continue his stories about "losers with high morality.": Ilona and Lauri are two lovers living in Helsinki. Suddenly recession hits them and both of them lose their jobs. The desperate search for work starts when neither of them wants to take welfare from the state. The film portrays the recession in Finland in early 1990's: it was a desperate time in Finland, unemployment and inflation was up to the roof but it also portrays the "old" Finland, Finland before it joined the European Union.
The story of Drifting Clouds might sound conventional or a bit pretentious to some and that's what it could easily have been, if it wasn't directed by Aki Kaurismäki. The reason why the film doesn't feel pretentious and conventional is the honesty and sincerity of Kaurismäki, but also the severe Bressonian aesthetics. The core of Kaurismäki's art is perhaps turning insignificant to meaningful which is the beauty of minimalism. The aesthetics in all of his film is Bressonian: minimalist, geographically perfect - not a single useless image; there's nothing insignificant in 'mise-en-scene'.
Drifting Clouds tries to find optimism in recession. The twists of the storyline partly reminded me of Julien Duvivier's masterful film of French poetic realism: La belle équipe (1936) which portrays a group of five penniless workers who suddenly won the lottery and decide to start an outdoor restaurant of their own. The similarities don't just stop at the storyline: there is something similar in the narrative as well, and even that Kaurismäki isn't often considered as a cinematic poet, I think his naturalistic realism has something poetic in it at times.
Aki Kaurismäki's films are satires, tragicomedies and many may find them dull and weird. But in the end I think his films appeal to most of the people: they aren't really challenging or mysterious. But they achieve to build pure emotional experiences. They are brilliant portrayals of the Finnish society; his films exhale the Finnish agony and reality. Drifting Clouds is a smart satire about dreams passing by and the optimism which is everywhere - it just needs to be found.