Kaurismäki’s “Hamlet Goes Business” Takes the Bard Into Bizarro Territory

Aki Kaurismäki’s films were bizarro before bizarro became a thing. I can think of no other auteur who has done for the motion picture what authors like Kevin L. Donihe have done for alternative fiction—consummately married the mundane to the peculiar.

If there’s one thing that our readers will find appealing about Hamlet Goes Business, a film that could otherwise be summarized as a black-and-white arthouse melodrama, it’s the depths to which it goes to highlight the absurdity of ole Anonymous‘s play.

The high contrast black-and-white photography feels less like an homage to Shakespearean theater and more like a tip of the hat to Kafka fans who have relished cinema’s adaptations of the same (think Orson Welles’ production of The Trial). Indeed, the entire film feels less like a Shakespeare tragedy and more like an exercise in lampooning industrialism and Capitalism, and the people responsible for both.

Where the play starts out with two watchmen convincing Hamlet’s friend, Horatio, to stand watch with them so as to catch sight of the King’s ghost, Hamlet Goes Business opens on a tight shot of a puppy yapping, his cries falling on deaf ears.

Instead of the Prince’s friend becoming convinced that a specter spells bad things for the future of Denmark, Kaurismäki’s story finds Klaus (the Claudius character of the Shakespeare text) poisoning the King before sucking face with the widow Gertrude in a shot yanked straight out of Gone with the Wind.

In a first act reveal that would have likely drawn belly laughs from John Kennedy Toole, Prince Hamlet himself (played sublimely by Pirkka-Pekka Petelius) is shown to be a paunchy, greasy-haired brat.

The other men populating this adaptation are profoundly dense, their actions motivated by the basest of fears and desires. An early scene involving ham is laugh-out-loud funny but, also, symbolic of the flick’s central theme—man’s voracious appetite for amassing things. Wealth describes not only money but anything that can be horded and/or devoured.

As Polonius (Esko Nikkari) explains early on, the porky prince has the controlling shares of the family company with the rest belonging to the banks. Polonius takes for granted that Prince Hamlet will be too stupid to object to a modest allowance in lieu of a promotion. It’s his firm belief that the little bastard is so dumb that he won’t realize that the role of company president is his birthright.

At the King’s funeral, Klaus tells Hamlet that he has something he wants to show him. The next very abridged sequence is introduced by an intertitle reading, “Satan and Jesus on the Mountain.” It consists solely of Klaus showing the prince around the company’s factory as if introducing him to the nuts and bolts of Capitalism.

The intertitle seems to suggest that Klaus is the Devil, tempting the son with the fruits of other people’s labor. It’s a captivating metaphor, particularly in what is an otherwise pretty silly film. That Hamlet is then quite literally thrust upon Ofelia (Kaurismäki perennial Kati Outinen), the daughter of a “good family,” furthers this rather blunt metaphor.

The Finnish director behind this short and defiantly sloppy re-imagining is fond of calling his films dog shit, pointing out that they are failures when held up against the works which inspired them. In Kaurismäki’s eyes, even his masterworks—the Oscar-nominated ‘Man Without a Past‘ and his faithfully rendered film of La Vie de Boheme—are garbage compared to the Art of Bresson’s Mouchette or Ozu’s Tokyo Story.

Many would read the director’s comments as self-deprecation, but that’s only if you aren’t hip to the artist’s rather wicked sense of humor. This is the same guy who jarred David Lynch at Cannes by allegedly whispering, “Who are you?”

Silly and haphazard as much of Hamlet Goes Business is, it’s still a cinematic marvel and a well-crafted one at that. As a filmmaker notorious for his economy with dialogue, Kaurismäki never fails to deliver sparse lines that fester in one’s brain. Example:

[After rebutting Hamlet’s advances, Ofelia sits, slouched, on the bed, staring up at him timidly.]

Ofelia: You know I can’t. Not before marriage.

Hamlet: That’s blackmail, darling.

[Moments later, Hamlet advances towards her again, this time to the sort of melodramatic strings of a Douglas Sirk film.]

Ofelia: No, don’t. We’d both regret it afterwards.

Hamlet: That’s what you think.

Ofelia: What did you say?

Hamlet: Leave me now. I promised to dine with my mother.

[Ofelia gets up to leave as Hamlet exhales cigarette smoke and broods. As she leaves, Hamlet turns off the source of the melodramatic music—a reel-to-reel recorder—and turns to a vintage jukebox sitting against the wall of his bedroom.]

The mise-en-scène here is a key component of Kaurismäki’s signature brand of bizarro. On one level, it can be read as a meta-fictional detail bordering on parody, but on another it’s representative of the anachronisms that make his films so unique. I dare any viewer to name another artist working in motion pictures who better juxtaposes such incongruous elements.

After Ofelia leaves, Hamlet kicks the jukebox in anger, compelling it to skip to a 45” whose chorus commands, “Hush! Hush! You’re talkin’ too much.”

Unlike much of the 69-year old’s ouevre, Hamlet Goes Business was not well-received here in America. Of the few reviews that one can dig up on the Internet, nearly all of them agree that the flick is short, stilted and anything but representative of Kaurismäki at the height of his powers.

This strikes me as hilarious since the picture shares so much in common with an American film that suffered the same critical fate upon its release. There are aspects here that will call to mind The Hudsucker Proxy, a screwball comedy directed by the Coen Brothers and co-written by Sam Raimi (Evil Dead, A Simple Plan).

The most obvious similarities are the the ridiculously long dinner table and Polonius’s central hypothesis that Hamlet will be too stupid to succeed. It’s worth noting, however, that The Hudsucker Proxy didn’t come out until 1994, a full five years after ‘Hamlet‘ was released on our Shores.

Like the Coen Brothers, Kaurismäki has an affinity for the village idiot, a character that often propels his narratives forward (see: Leningrad Cowboys Go America). In ‘Hamlet,’ it is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who are the big, dumb goons while Kaurismäki’s favorite male lead, the late-Matti Pellonpää (Ariel, Night on Earth), fills the ancillary role of The Guard (a conglomeration of the three guardsmen from the Shakespeare text).

The Guard and his young ward are obviously simpletons of the sort that are often found in the periphery of a Coen Brothers flick. Think Steve Buscemi’s Donnie in The Big Lebowski or Ryan Hurst’s Lump Hudson from their 2004 remake of The Ladykillers.

This correlation drew itself in my mind when I was less than a quarter of the way into Hamlet Goes Business. And the more I dwelt upon it, the more it made sense. For all of the credit that we give the Coen Brothers for their signature style, it’s impossible not to see Kaurismäki’s work in almost everything of theirs.

The way that Hamlet gobbles a thick slice of ham over his father’s dead body reminds one of nothing so much as George Clooney’s Harry Pfarrer messily gobbling hors d’oeuvres in Burn After Reading. Just when this theory begins to feel far-fetched, ask yourself what made Fargo, the Coens’ 1996 original film, so “original.”

At the time, cosmopolitan American audiences were widely unfamiliar with that distinctly Scandinavian Midwest populated by pregnant police officer Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) and loser car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy). What’s more, the laconic deadpan humor typical of Scandinavian countries was foreign to their ears.

It was this deadpan comedy and the way that the Coens portrayed Minnesota as a bleak winter tundra that got American viewers’ attention. Here was something that was rather eccentric and undoubtedly one-of-a-kind…except it wasn’t.

One could easily picture the Coens’ silent, stone-faced killer, Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Storemare), meeting one of Pellonpää’s sad sack working class characters at a pub in Kaurismäki’s Loser Trilogy (Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, The Match Factory Girl). And that bleak winter tundra has been well-represented in the auteur’s canon, from Ariel all the way up to Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses.

This is not to slight the exceptionally talented Coens in any way, simply to state for posterity that the Finns did it first, Kaurismäki in particular. Here we are given one of the most indescribably odd adaptations of any classic volume. It’s equal parts Orson Welles drama and Three Stooges-style slapstick.

The incongruity I mentioned earlier pops up again when we arrive at one of the director’s perpetual live music sequences. Here it’s a raw punk rock performance of “Rich Little Bitch” by Melrose, one of Lapland’s greatest bands, whose rhythm section consists of a spiky-haired kid with a giant stand-up bass.

While most reviewers are probably right when they say that Hamlet Goes Business is an imperfect film, they neglect the fact that it is still head and shoulders above the hackneyed productions of Hamlet that are rolled out on the stages of International theaters on a near-constant basis. If there’s one thing going for it it’s the director’s obvious restlessness with the source material.

The resulting picture succeeds by virtue of its almost perverse refusal to acknowledge the play’s underlying concerns. The preternatural relationship between Prince Hamlet and his mother is reduced here to a throwaway line of dialogue that reduces the heir’s Oedipal complex to nothing more than the co-dependence of any sexless geek.

If it’s not a masterwork on the order of the director’s later port city stories (La Havre and The Other Side of Hope) then it’s definitely a worthy sizzle reel, demonstrating Kaurismaki’s knack for rendering the boring wildly compelling. If nothing else, it’s surely a worthy stocking stuffer for someone who loathes the Bard.

If you’re familiar with the Shakespeare play then you already know this one doesn’t end well, at least not historically. But in Hamlet Goes Business nothing goes according to plan. Don’t be surprised if the film’s ending finds you smiling. This is just part of what makes it so bizarre.

February 1, 2020 by Silent Motorist Media

Films That Fell Through the Cracks: “Aaltra” (2004)

“Aaltra”

(Film Movement Series; Delépine et K/Vern)

Some films have the ability to leave you in awe while others are in possession of something capable of driving you mad. Delépine and Kervern’s directorial debut, the nebulously titled Aaltra, is in full possession of both.

Described as a darkly comic road movie, this French-Belgium co-production came and went from European arthouses, collecting warm if largely pedestrian praise from native critics, ultimately landing on our shores only after New York City’s Film Movement launched their e-commerce distribution model in 2003.

The relative obscurity that it has existed in is unfortunate, first and foremost because discerning audiences deserve to see it but, furthermore, because American independent filmmakers could learn a lot from its style and structure.

Aaltra‘s plot seems tailor-made for the sort of broad bromantic comedies that Tinseltown loves to turn out like a cheap escort…at least on paper. To wit: After finding out that his neighbor’s lazy farmhand Gus (the hulking, disheveled de Kervern, credited here as K/Vern) has been screwing his wife, a nerdy motorbike enthusiast and failing company man (French funnyman Benoît Delépine) speeds out into the fields and instigates a haphazard fistfight.

As the two men wrestle, their bodies land in the gaping maw of Gus’s combine harvester. The machine swallows them up, leaving each of them paralyzed below the waist. After realizing that they are both F.U.B.A.R., they begrudgingly decide to team up to take on the corporate bigwigs at Aaltra, the manufacturer of the offending combine.

Naturally, a sort of stand-offish camaraderie develops between the two, one that would be easy to picture drowning in saccharine if placed within the wrong hands. Fortunately for us, Delépine and Kervern are not the wrong hands and Aaltra is not that sort of movie.

Eschewing the buddy comedy formula in favor of something at once more realistic and more surreal than anything most of us are used to, pic presents us with the kind of story that often plays out among modern men in the real world; emotions are stifled, feelings left unexpressed and base urges rule supreme.

Instead of the faux-meditative scene that would find Delépine’s Ben confiding in Gus about the disintegration of his marriage and the laughably awkward details of his sex life, Delépine and Kervern never speak of Gus’s covetous tryst or Ben’s wife at all.

This left quite the impression on me when first I saw it since it flies in the face of our collective understanding of narrative composition. And it’s this kind of ultra-realistic detail (or lack thereof) that gives Aaltra its charm. Of course Ben and Gus never engage in some contrived heart-to-heart about marriage, infidelity or divorce.

Why bother? No use squabbling about yesterday when tomorrow is gonna be lousy enough. After all, each is now half a man in their own eyes, but together they form one mean son of a bitch.

Those seeking an escape from the hypostatized universe of Hollywood cinema would do well to seek this one out. It provides viewers with a slightly askew realism that hasn’t been seen since Jeunet and Caro’s Delicatessan or, at least, Kaurismäki’s Leningrad Cowboys Go America (fitting that Kaurismäki should cameo in Aaltra‘s denouement).

There is much of the Theater of Cruelty on display, almost all of it more comical than anything Alejandro Jodorowsky ever committed to celluloid (save, perhaps, for select bits of Fando y Lis). From the way the male nurse fucks with them once he’s confirmed that they cannot feel their legs to Ben’s surreptitious theft of a barfly’s drink when he’s not looking.

There is also something of American vintage here in the particular physical comedy that both men employ. Gus’s slow ascension while lying in an automatic hospital bed feels like it was engineered to be an homage to the age of Keaton and Chaplin. And that’s to say nothing of Ben’s Harold Lloyd-worthy pratfalls.

We know from early on that Aaltra‘s journey will have its end in Finland, so it is appropriate that our dyspeptic duo manage to illustrate that country’s aversion to arbitrary loquaciousness. When an old sod at a pub talks relentlessly at a laconic patron, going on and on about something as seemingly mundane as air conditioning in a tractor, we can feel the collective pain of the Finns.

Subtle touches of physical and visual humor soon give way to an extremity that’s every bit as amusing and confounding. The flick is especially effective at juxtaposing the average person’s veneer of samaritanism with the patina of short-tempered prejudice simmering under the surface.

This paradox is first displayed in a worker’s removal of Ben and Gus from a motocross track. “You guys can’t stay here,” he exclaims. “It kills the dream.”

Just when you might begin to feel pity for them, pic reminds us how wrong that sentiment would be. As it turns out, these two scabrous individuals work well together, effortlessly pulling grift after grift on the proud fools in their path. These are guys who think nothing of stealing popcorn from a little boy and threatening to slit his throat if he snitches.

Their primary victims: Every bourgeois idiot who dares to count themselves as well-meaning do-gooders when, in reality, they treat the handicapped as anything but equal. Their encounter with a British motocross star and grade A wank (Jason Flemyng) is almost as riotous as the psychological havoc they wreak on an uptight German couple (Brrring! Brrring!).

It’s the wealthy and entitled Brit who gets one of the flick’s most quotable lines: “It’s people like you that give fucking people in wheelchairs a bad fucking name!” This emerges as one of the only lines worth mentioning in a film whose economy with the verbal gives every line weight.

Like all of the best comedies, Aaltra is also a tragedy, one that opts to impress its poignancy through stark and random images and penetrating silences instead of overwrought pathos.

The beach sequence, featured prominently in the DVD release’s artwork, leaves an indelible impression not only for its blackly comic tableau but, also, the austere beauty of the same. No other director has ever made such effective use of the Lord’s prayer, certainly not in such a perfectly literate fashion.

One of the funniest scenes in the entire picture is also one of its most tense. A stocky Finn with a greasy pompadour sings a flamboyant rendition of Bobby Hebb’s R & B classic “Sunny” while our cripples sit back eating sausage and a room full of mean-looking skinheads seethe.

It’s in moments like this that Delépine and Kervern’s message comes through loud and clear: You need not fear for the well-being of these antagonistic protagonists, but you should worry about everyone else around them.

According to IMDB, Aaltra’s worldwide box office amounted to little more than $6,000 in sales. This may be discouraging if film fans equate financial success with artistic success. Personally, I choose not to.

Part of me believes that true art has no monetary value, only a kind of spiritual one. But as a gambling man, my money’s on this one finding the audience it deserves on streaming platforms.

As for its directors, they have gone on to make a number of unique projects including their Aaltra follow-up Avida. It’s my intention to check that one out sooner than later. I have it on good authority that it made at least seven gs.—Bob Freville

January 29, 2020 by Silent Motorist Media

‘Cynthia’ is a Surprisingly Touching Horror-Comedy

“Cynthia” (2018) DVD Review

by Bob Freville

Those of us who were alive during the latter half of the 20^th century can remember a time when babies were the focus of a wave of excellent and, oftentimes, atrocious horror movies. 1974’s It’s Alive!, 1982’s Basket Case and the respective follow-ups to each of those titles introduced us to the perils of postpartum aggression and fetal abomination long before antinatalism penetrated pop culture.

Like Larry Cohen and Frank Henenlotter before them, writer/producer Robert Rhine and co-directors Devon Downs & Kenny Gage mine parenthood and pregnancy for satire. One would think that Cynthia‘s indie budget and the relative inexperience of the above the line creative team would result in a sub-par rip-off of the aforementioned films. Instead, they make it work to their advantage by going their own way.

This is not another tired bad seed movie of the kind that Hollywood keeps churning out. Rather it is a raucous dark comedy with heart that masquerades as an exploitation horror movie. Sure, an ancillary character is disemboweled mid-coitus and yes, a stark naked victim thinks nothing of attempting to escape from her predator with her tits out and her underwear hanging off…in a professional setting.

But Cynthia is much more than some bloody B-movie, it is a well-written and well-acted tragedy of sorts, a picture which spends more time on the human condition than it does on creature effects or bloodshed.

Halloween‘s Scout Taylor-Compton and Masters of Sex’s Kyle Jones are a young couple who have been struggling for some time to get preggers. After repeated fertility treatments fail, they are shocked to find that their very last shot took. They are going to have a baby at long last…but their baby has some odd company in the womb.

Their unborn child’s companion is eager to greet the world and it’ll stop at nothing to be with its new family. What follows is something quite different than what most viewers will be expecting.

The film is at its best when it’s lampooning the idiotic and selfish reasons why certain people want to have children. It also deftly explores the frustratingly clinical approach many couples take in order to bear fruit, so to speak.

The best scenes in Cynthia have little to do with what most die hard horror fans would consider the hallmarks of the genre. Robert Rhine hands in a script brimming with memorable dialogue, brilliant transitions and likable characters…even when they are being absolute shits.

What pic manages to illustrate is just how easily humans can disregard each others’ feelings when it comes to satiating their own desires and needs. Nowhere is this more clear than in the way the filmmakers make us empathize with the flick’s negligent father-to-be.

Earlier I mentioned antinatalism, but it bears mentioning again since Cynthia may be the first of the mutant baby movies to properly elucidate the suffering of the child who didn’t ask to be born. When Taylor-Compton’s Robin goes looking for her missing infant daughter in an air vent and discovers her with the hideously deformed Cynthia, her mutated offspring lets out a guttural whimper that effectively conveys the agony and yearning which are our birthright as humans.

If genre fans need added incentive to see Cynthia they can count on the always game Bill motherfuckin’ Moseley (Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, House of 1,000 Corpses) for a bizarre cross-dressing cameo and Moseley’s Devil’s Rejects co-star Sid Haig as a sleazy cop to rival most of the grotty punks he played in the Seventies.

Check this picture out today if you like genre films that have more on their mind than gore and one-dimensional throwaway victims. If I was prone to giving things a rating, this one would easily earn four bloody diapers.

You can watch Cynthia now on DVD and Prime Streaming.

July 5, 2019 by Silent Motorist Media

Devil’s Path – Film Review

by Bob Freville

Matthew Montgomery’s indie thriller Devil’s Path is a masterfully tense thriller whose seemingly simple premise—two male strangers meet up at a nature trail that’s the site of discreet gay hookups and end up being pursued by homophobes—quickly becomes something far more complicated and equally disturbing.

On the face of it, the film’s vulnerable nature-loving loner appears to be a hopeless romantic with a yen for solitude and a paradoxical yearning to find true love. By contrast, his reluctant companion is increasingly cynical and hostile. But the story’s many subtle twists and turns send a clear message: Don’t judge people by their outward appearances or their sexual proclivities.

As the picture plays out with some incredible cinematography and subtle musical composition, both of which bely Devil’s Path‘s low budget, we learn that this isn’t your typical man hunting man horror movie. Instead it is a smart psychological mystery that explores everything from child abuse and incest to the duel dangers of absolutism and so-called healthy skepticism.

Imagine if Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy, Night Moves) was tapped to direct a murder mystery written by Gregg Araki (Mysterious Skin, Now Apocalypse) and you get a hazy idea of what’s in store for you with Devil’s Path.

To say too much more about the plot would be to spoil what is, in essence, the anti-Hollywood thriller, a film that doesn’t need a large ensemble, fancy sets or high-priced special effects to produce enthralling, shocking and highly watchable results.

This one would make for a good double bill with either Deliverence or Sound of my Voice. A grade-A nail biter that will keep you guessing, not just about where the story will end up but why there aren’t more flicks of its caliber.

Rent or buy it today from Breaking Glass Pictures.

May 25, 2019 by Silent Motorist Media

The Maze (2010) Movie Review

by Zakary McGaha

Warning: This review has spoilers.

I don’t like writing bad reviews. I don’t enjoy using gigantic amounts of snark to tear things apart. But The Maze, a 2010 horror film directed by Stephen Shimek, deserves more than snark: it deserves super snark.

The Maze is a film I used to see all the time back in the days of video stores…as in, I saw the DVD collecting dust on various shelves. I don’t recall ever having picked it up, which is strange considering its poster is pretty neat. I guess it’s true what they say about psychic abilities: they’re stronger when you’re a kid.

I knew avoiding the thing was necessary without knowing anything about it. These days, my psychic abilities must have diminished greatly considering I was excited when I saw the familiar poster pop up on one of my streaming channels.

I went in expecting a fun, Halloween-tinted slasher story about people in a corn maze. I figured a nostalgic chord would be struck. Being a country boy, I have fond memories of corn mazes. They’re the perfect settings for slasher stories because anyone can easily hide along the trail, and if they know the layout better than you, you’re in for a doozy. Given this, how could a slasher film set in a corn maze NOT be good…or, at the very least, passable?

Watch The Maze if you want to see how the proverbial “they” can screw up the most foolproof of concepts.

It’s a common thing among people who love shitting on horror movies to say, “Them characters is stupid.” But, concerning this movie, they’re entirely justified. The “killer” of this film (who turns out being the most non-imposing dirty cop in the history of law enforcement) has everything going for him in terms of carrying out his sadistic fantasies with ease.

He finds himself up against the most incompetent, ANNOYING group of personality-lacking losers who’ve ever shamed the whole of cinema with their presence. We learn literally nothing about any of them (except stupid shit), and, unlike in good slasher movies, none of them are interesting enough to keep us entertained before they get killed. Hell, I don’t even care about “liking” the characters in slasher movies before they’re killed. I just want characters who are…I don’t know, “fun” to watch? Not boring?

Anyway, non-characters aside, let’s focus on the kills. Uniformly, every single one was lame. The “killer” (who I will continue to reference in quotes in order to exaggerate his lameness) carried around a wimpy switchblade or something, and all he did was shank and cut people.

The blood was minimal, and the “killer” spends the entire movie looking like some sort of “no-one-understands-me” teen in a red hoodie and jeans. He’s quite the scrawny villain, which made it hard for me to wrap my head around how he was able to swipe at everyone with his switchblade.

Said “killer” also spent a lot of time doing stupid shit, like putting his victims in chairs and placing hats on them.

Coming up with things to say about this movie is hard due to its overall emptiness. It was basically a generic, poorly done, passionless slasher movie that ended up being a dirty cop movie for the last twenty minutes.

There are no reasons to watch this movie: none of the characters (including the “killer”) are interesting enough to watch, there’s zero gore, there’s no style, there are no themes…there’s, simply, nothing.

It’s hard to imagine why this movie was made. They couldn’t have possibly thought that people would pay to see it.

I probably come across as a sour reviewer, but I’m not. I like cheesy, generic horror. It’s my thing. My only stipulation is that it’s at least made with fun. I mean, if watching this movie felt like a chore, I can’t imagine what making it felt like.

0/5 stars.

March 18, 2019 by Silent Motorist Media