Ariel

Synopsis: A good looking young guy inherits an old Cadillac convertible in Finland and the roof won't go up. He has no family or friends and has no work so he goes and looks for a better life or at least a way to survive. He is self sufficient and shows very little emotion in what life hands him. Luckily he isn't afraid to find work where he can but for some reason doesn't stand up for himself when wrongly accused of a crime.

Basically in my opinion it is about two people who are very lonely and find each other in a sad, cold,unfair world but you never hear them complain. The actors don't seem to be acting but are just every day folk. If you want to see something completely out of the ordinary then I highly recommend you see it. I recorded it off of TCM channel and watched it twice in the same day then I saved it.

This is the second Aki Kaurismäki film I have seen.The first one was 'The Man Without a Past. After enjoying that a lot, I decided to watch the other movies of Kaurismaki, because I believe he is very good in expressing the 'life' through the simple daily life events or talks. When I watched Ariel, the first thing I noticed was, as in the previous movie, the characters don't speak much, but when they speak they are concise and to the point. The relationships start very abruptly and different from what is normally expected, but all of them end up being loyal and caring. With the beginning of the journey of the miner (Kasurinen) to the south by a convertible car, the movie also starts to present its comedy, romance, action and drama. Kasurinen keeps his calmness through all that happens to him and in the end he achieves his goal. I can recommend this movie to those who like details .

When I first saw Ariel, at the beginning of the Nineties, maybe three years after it was first released, it blew me away. At the time I had gone through a long streak of awful "alternative" movies, the last one having been Atom Egoyan's "The Adjuster"; I was totally depressed and fed up with cinema in general since all the movies around seemed to be either generic Hollywood block busters or equally generic "intellectual" time wasters -- "The Adjuster" being a perfect example of the latter category. When I left the cinema after having seen Ariel, I had tears of joy in my eyes, thinking: "thank god, I do not have to give up going to the cinema after all". Ariel is exactly the movie I wish I had made, very cool, funny, stylish, engaging, romantic, hard core, subtle. I have seen it many times since, it has become my all - time favourite, desert - island movie. Of course there are other good movies around, but few which match its quality, and none of them changed my outlook on cinema the way Ariel did. Other Kaurismäkis movies I have seen and loved are "MacBeth", "I Hired A Contract Killer", "La vie de bohème", "Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö" ("The Match Factory Girl"), "Juha"; the Leningrad Cowboy flicks were OK, but not really my cup of tea.

Anyway, I have a small anecdote I want to get off my chest: shortly after seeing A I was talking with a couple of co - workers about movies, and one of them said: "the other day I saw the best movie ever, it's called Ariel, it blew me away, I haven't washed my eyes since", etc. I thought, wow, I would have never thought that she would like that movie, but there you go, truly good movies just have a universal appeal. Only years later did I find out that she had been talking about not Kaurismäkis' masterpiece but Disney's "Arielle -- The Little Mermaid". ;-)

I saw my first Kaurismäki movie (Man Without a Past) a year ago and have seen and now own most of them. I love them all and watch them over and over, but Ariel is one of my favorites. The dark humor and irony is great, with all the usual elements of suicide, big, old American cars and cool music throughout, ending with the very appropriate "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in Finnish. All of Kaurismäki's movies demand every second of your attention or you will not "get it" and every time I watch one again, I notice something else. As to the gloom and doom, my Finnish friends tell me not to believe that Finland is truly as depicted here. :-))) I love the relationships: not gushy or fake, but faithful and just plain sweet. It seems much is understood without words and that's the way this movie is.

This 1988 feature from Finland's answer to Jim Jarmusch is a deadpan shaggy dog comedy charting the downfall and redemption of an unemployed mine worker, over several tentative episodes constructed not unlike a series of false starts. It begins, initially, as something like a road film; begins again as a romance; then begins yet again as an underworld crime drama, before finally ending in what could be just another prologue (which would make the entire film one large, elaborate tease). Kaurismaki's wayward hero is, like the scenario itself, pleasantly reticent; there's something undeniably disarming about the way he simply drifts from one predicament to another, even if the total effect makes each scene difficult to recall in detail afterward. It may not amount to much, but after a summer full of over-hyped, mega-budget, wannabe blockbusters Kaurismaki's economical humor is hard to resist.