Varjoja paratiisissa (1986)

User Rating:

7.6/10   

Director:

Aki Kaurismäki

Writer:

Aki Kaurismäki (writer)

Release Date:

17 October 1986 (Finland)

Genre:

Comedy | Romance

Plot:

An episode in the life of Nikander, a garbage man, involving the death of a co-worker, an affair and much more.

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Matti Pellonpää	...	Nikander
Kati Outinen	...	Ilona Rajamäki
Sakari Kuosmanen	...	Melartin
Esko Nikkari	...	Co-worker (työkaveri)
Kylli Köngäs	...	Ilona's Girlfriend (ystävätär)
Pekka Laiho	...	Shop Steward (myymälänhoitaja)
Jukka-Pekka Palo	...	Third Man (kolmasmies)
Svante Korkiakoski	...	Police (poliisi)
Mari Rantasila	...	Nikander's Sister (Nikanderin sisar)
Safka Pekkonen	...	Pianist (pianisti) (as Safka)
Antti Ortamo	...	2nd pianist (pianisti II)
Mato Valtonen	...	Pelle (as Markku Valtonen)
Sakke Järvenpää	...	Staffan (as Sakari Järvenpää)
Ulla Kuosmanen	...	Melartin's wife (Melartinin vaimo)
Neka Haapanen	...	Cook (kokki)

Also Known As:

Shadows in Paradise

Runtime:

USA:76 min

Country:

Finland

Language:

Finnish | Swedish | English

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Iceland:L | Finland:S

Company:

Villealfa Filmproduction Oy

Quotes:

[first lines]
Nikander: Friday!
Co-worker: [co-worker is offering Nikander a drink] You want?
Nikander: I'm driving.
Co-worker: Listen, Nikander. We've been a team quite a while. But I've been doing this for 25 years. I'm getting tired and so is my heart.
Nikander: What's the matter with it?
Co-worker: What ever.
Nikander: I've got an idea - my own company. Five trucks to start with...
Co-worker: What does it end?
Co-worker: The sky is the limit. The state and the banks will back us. I know everything about this game, but I'm not going to die behind the wheel.
[...]

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Laitakaupungin valot (2006)

Where is the paradise?

The foremost question is where there is here a paradise. Usually, the 30 - 40 years old Finnish men in Kaurismäki's movies look around 5o. They work hard, some of them night shift, in their scarce leisure time they sit in some bar drinking vodka and sometimes picking up a girl for a night or two. From Kaurismäki's movies, it seems that every man does do that, so that the patterns are also known to the women and therefore there is no need for further explanation. This is called Kaurismäki's minimalist style, and not seldom it leads to quite unexpected humor.

Nikander (lit. "Victory-Man"), the protagonist of "Shadows in Paradise", is one of these losers, but with the exception that he wants to change his situation and thus had started to learn English early. Together with his older colleague, he plans to open his own business. One day, his colleague is killed during work by a sadden heart attack. Nikander meets shortly after the pretty Ilona one of whose specialties is loosing her jobs. Now they start an in- and out-relationship. Ilona comes back to Nikander whenever she is in trouble, this time she stole a cash box filled with money from the supermarket that gave her the notice because the director's daughter needed a position and an apartment.

Marriage is always considered an arrangement amongst losers in Kaurismäki's movies. In "Ariel" (1988), Kasurinen and Irmeli just have two vacancies. In "Lights in the Dusk", the very beautiful Mirja, entering an almost completely empty restaurant, and sitting down at Koistinen's table, starts to speak very personally to him. When he tells her, they could now leave for a bar, then sleep together and afterward getting married, the two faces show no reaction. Is Paradise the reign or the absence of all bother, then paradise must mean, in Kaurismäkis movies the absence of any light that comes into the darkness of these losers, since this light could bring them down to a dark path.