It's an amazing film. I mean, I keep thinking about it days later. It's just so, so, different. Arctic woods, Sami witchcraft, war, love, language, it's an unseen mix that amazed me. My eyes stayed stuck on the screen every single minute of it.
What I can tell and let you enjoy the surprise: 1944, near the end of the war. 3 guys, a Russian soldier, a Finish soldier and a Laplander (Sami) woman are stuck in a cabin in the woods very up somewhere north on the Finish-Russian border. No one understands the two other languages.
But they talk. They say what they want, but they hear, hey, what they want to hear. It's funny, it's dramatic. Each character is deep, I felt close to each one of them. Every minute of the movie is subtitle and delightful !
The cinematography is perfect. The photography is beautiful (easy, filming there !), the actors play perfect. I did believe, that they didn't understand the others.
The only down part of the story is at the beginning, you might don't understand at all, like us, what's going on.
So, important, what to know before watching : It's not explained, like we're all supposed to know about it: Finland was a Nazi ally and fighting against Russia in behalf of Germany. The Finnish army was punishing soldiers not willing to fight by chaining them to a rock with a riffle, dressed with a German Wafen SS coat, to wait for the Russian enemies to get by. A way to force them to become a kamikaze. As I understand, everyone knows about that Finnish kamikaze (kukushka) story, both in Finland and in Russia. But you get lost if you don't know this piece of History.
Other two's stories are clear.
Don't miss it.
What I can tell and let you enjoy the surprise: 1944, near the end of the war. 3 guys, a Russian soldier, a Finish soldier and a Laplander (Sami) woman are stuck in a cabin in the woods very up somewhere north on the Finish-Russian border. No one understands the two other languages.
But they talk. They say what they want, but they hear, hey, what they want to hear. It's funny, it's dramatic. Each character is deep, I felt close to each one of them. Every minute of the movie is subtitle and delightful !
The cinematography is perfect. The photography is beautiful (easy, filming there !), the actors play perfect. I did believe, that they didn't understand the others.
The only down part of the story is at the beginning, you might don't understand at all, like us, what's going on.
So, important, what to know before watching : It's not explained, like we're all supposed to know about it: Finland was a Nazi ally and fighting against Russia in behalf of Germany. The Finnish army was punishing soldiers not willing to fight by chaining them to a rock with a riffle, dressed with a German Wafen SS coat, to wait for the Russian enemies to get by. A way to force them to become a kamikaze. As I understand, everyone knows about that Finnish kamikaze (kukushka) story, both in Finland and in Russia. But you get lost if you don't know this piece of History.
Other two's stories are clear.
Don't miss it.