Juha

A pleasant little trifle - a modern-day Finnish silent film, with few intertitles (but a somewhat tacky music score) about a decent cabbage farmer whose wife is lured away by a seedy underworld type. The film sketches their initial contented lifestyle with deliberate naivete ("Happy as children," says the caption), all the better to set up the ultimate tragedy. Cleanly and simply shot, the film is obviously no great shakes, but it places itself with total conviction within the silent film aesthetic - tipping us off to the villain's nastiness, for example, through an unselfconscious shot of him stepping gleefully on a butterfly; and also finding room for a classic-type shot of a dog running after the bus carrying away his master. The design of just-so-slightly exaggerated faces and postures is sustained quite well, setting up an ending that seems authentically modern and tragic for all its bogeyman-type trappings.

Juhais a black and white film with no sound, yet it is one of the best Finnish movies this year. Director Kaurismäki has drawn great performances out of the three leads, especially Outinen, who truly knows how to act "without words". The script is reasonably short and keeps the audience content through these silent 78 minutes. So, if you can overcome your prejudices against black and white silent movies, do see this one. "Juha" really delivers!

The first reaction is: a silent movie? in black & white?? In Finnish??? Have no fear. This is a terrific movie, one of the best of the year, perhaps even Kaurismaki's best. Tremendous soundtrack, equally good acting, beautifully written. Juha brings it all together with rare power. Don't dare miss this one.

"Juha" is a finnish silent-movie in black and white about a farmer called Juha. This is probably the least commercial tag-line in 1999. However, if you, by any chance, manage to overcome your own prejudice, and see this film, you will experience 70 minutes of marvellous movie-making. It's poetic, it's warm and it has tons of careful, naïve humor. It is another masterpiece from the finnish master Aki Kaurismäki. See it.

Juha is the last silent film of the 20th century. And a truly great one, I might add. Adapting a Finnish literary classic (already brought to the screen three times), Scandinavian master Aki Kaurismäki (whose movies have always had limited dialogue, mind) tells a cruel, touching story of love, loss and revenge.

Weirdly for a Kaurismäki movie, Juha seems to open on a happy note: we witness the everyday life of the eponymous farmer (a never better Sakari Kuosmanen) and his wife Marja (the consistently astounding Kati Outinen). The two don't lead the easiest of lives, but somehow they manage to survive and keep an optimistic view on existence.

That's when Shemeikka (André Wilms, whose previous work with the director includes Bohemian Life and Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses) enters the game. He comes from the big city, and is forced to spend the night at Juha's because of a lousy car. The following morning he returns home, only this time he's got company: he has seduced Marja, promising her a better life. Sadly, she'll come to regret her choice as it turns out that Shemeikka actually runs a brothel. All she can do is hope her husband will forgive her and come to the rescue.

The audacious aspect of Juha is not the fact that it's shot in black and white (Kaurismäki does that quite often), but the fact that there's no sound at all. Dialogue is shown through title cards, and the rest of the action is left to the strength of the performances: Kuosmanen shows a staggering intensity as the leading man, Outinen is at her most vulnerable playing his wife, and Wilms is perhaps the best villain the Finnish director has ever come up with. Utterly cold and repulsive, he really makes sure you won't like him.

Juha works thanks to its honesty and raw power: it's not a pastiche of silent movies, but a serious, endearing tragedy, and further proof of Kaurismäki's high rank among Scandinavian film-makers.