Kauas pilvet karkaavat. Aki Kaurismäki. 1996. ⚅
I’m just plowing through the remaining Kaurismäki movies. Only four more to go!
This is the first movie (I think?) after his first… unsuccessful movie? I mean, none of them were huge blockbusters, right, but Leningrad Cowboys Meets Moses is the first one that disappointed his fans, if I’m reading imdb correctly.
So is Kaurismäki doubling down on his aesthetic or is he trying something new?
[forty minutes pass]
This is such a sweet movie — quite reminiscent of Kaurismäki’s earlier trilogy that ended with The Matchstick Factory Girl, but more… assured? If there’s ever been characters in a movie that you yearn for a happy fate, it’s these two, and it’s just incredibly efficiently Kaurismäki made the audience feel for them.
The cinematography’s lovely, in a slightly super-real way, with sharp shadows and sets that look just a bit more real than reality.
[the end]
I laughed, I cried… well, mostly the latter.
It’s a crowd-pleaser of a movie for sure, and I’m happy to be one of the crowd. This does make me somewhat suspicious, though:
But what the hell. It’s a delightful movie.
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