Le Havre

Le Havre. Aki Kaurismäki. 2011. ⚅

Getting financing for movies these days is more complimacated. Just look at this:

I think that’s ten institutions doing the financing? And we’re not talking big budgets, either:

4M Euros.

[the end]

This is a wonderful movie. The actors are amazeballs, and the limited teal/green palette makes everything cohere. And it’s all very moving.

Kaurismäki nails it once again.

Watching this box set has been a journey.

I got it because I was thinking YAY THOSE 80S MOVIES WERE SO MUCH FUN, and then it turned out that I hadn’t really watched that many of them before, and… they… weren’t that much fun? Crime and Punishment, Calamari Union, Hamlet Goes Business… they’re all good, but they’re not brilliant. Kinda sophomoric?

So that was a huge let-down and I was thinking that Kaurismäki was just kinda meh (except for his key movies like The Matchstick Girl Factory Girl Match)…

And then the fantastic movies started! Drifting Clouds! Amazing! The Man Without a Past! Wonderful! Le Havre! Sublime! The Other Side of Hope! Yay!

So it’s opposite land totally. I was expecting early brilliant movies and later boring movies, but the early movies were goofy friendly exercises in movie making, and the later movies are fantastic.

(With some exceptions.)

So I’m really happy I got this box set now.

(And it’s a really good set, with great-looking 2K transfers, a bunch of shorts (but otherwise not a lot of extras), and a nice booklet:

Good stuff, as usual, from Curzon/Artificial Eye.