Calamari Union

Aki's second personal feature film has a prototype of the late style, but it is not particularly clear. After thinking about it, I can't find a particularly accurate language to summarize the theme of the film. It seems that it can also make a psychological interpretation. It can even be said to be a cool "Finnish version of mind agents"? Everyone's name is frank, but everyone seems not to be frank. The ideal country they are looking for seems to be illusory. Maybe a lot of music is what AKI really wants to present.

Aki Kaurismäki's career began with the masterpiece Crime & Punishment. However, instead of making something similar immediately afterwards, he chose to follow it with an unconventional, black and white satire, Calamari Union.

The film begins in a bar, a pivotal place in Kaurismaki's movies. It is here we first meet our sixteen protagonists: fifteen men (including Matti Pellonpää, Kari Väänänen and Sakari Kuosmanen) all named Frank (apparently, the director was too lazy to come up with different names for everyone) and a guy named Pekka (Markku Toikka). These people represent the lowlife of Helsinki and, aware of this fact, they decide to go to Eira, the decent part of the city. The journey is described as if it were perilous, and in fact things will take unexpected turns.

Calamari Union is a strange film, as it doesn't follow the rules of conventional plotting. What we see is rather a series of separate, quite amusing incidents involving the Franks and Pekka, the dry, very Finnish humor being an anticipation of Kaurismäki's musical satire Leningrad Cowboys Go America (speaking of music, there's an interesting use of the song Stand By Me - a year ahead of Rob Reiner's eponymous movie).

This may not be the kind of movie people watch on a regular basis, but once it's been seen, it doesn't escape your memory. Perfect for a "different" cinema experience.

After seeing most of Aki Kaurismäki's films and then veering back to his second film, it almost felt like I was watching an all-star cast because most of the actors he collaborated throughout his career is here. And, boy, did I miss my favorite Finnish actor, Matti Pellonpää.

I'm just happy Kaurismäki didn't continue directing while drunk.

It also reminded me of Reservoir Dogs. Did Tarantino saw this movie?

Kaurismaki followed on the dour and heavy drama of his debut Crime and Punishment with the often funny, significantly more light-hearted, absurdist fare of Calamari Union. Fifteen guys named Frank and their retarded companion Pekka (who speaks English for some reason) decide to leave their seedy downtown neighborhood and dead-end lives behind and move to the suburb of Eira, on the other side of the city. Eira immediately acquires a quasi-mythic status, equal parts promised land and elysian fields, and their trip through the hostile, soulless city landscape is beset with hardships worthy to a trip filled with such religious allegories.

There's not much of a plot to speak of. The Franks make their way through the city and is every man out for himself. Once in a while they stop to comment on their surroundings, sleep in phone booths, trees and other strange places, offer nuggets of wisdom about vanity, inactivity, time and age, part scathing social critique and part insights into human nature; they also stop to hijack members of the parliament, a hearse, get free rides in a taxi or on top of a car, sleep in a beach or under a table and last but not least, die funny or just plain random deaths.

That is Calamari Union in a nutshell and there lie both its charms and failures. It has the improvised feeling of a freejazz piece - like them, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It can be inspired, infectiously cool and funny but it can also be meandering and aimless. You take the good with the bad I guess.

Finnish film "Calamari Union" is not at all a motion picture with a defined setting.It is more of a visual experience with surreal touches which must be seen many times to feel the plight of hapless rock musicians in an urban milieu.In "Calamari Union",there is also a minor battle of sexes to be witnessed as most of the women get their demands met by hapless,vulnerable men.Women are shown as strong willed individuals who would not stop at anything to humiliate, scorn confused men who are treated as mere caddish oafs.Rock music is also one of this film's leading element which reveals the hidden talent of some vagrant musicians.There are some mellifluous tunes which could easily be lapped up by music lovers.No talented film director in the history of modern cinema has come even remotely closer to Finnish author Aki Kaurismaki's vision of urban angst.This is a director who has made an absolutely wise use of his hometown Helsinki and its nocturnal atmosphere by shooting in pristine black and white.He shows why some people are not able to put any order in their utterly disorganized,messy lives.A unique film which is absolutely needed for those nihilists who believe that they are part of existential times.PS:A great film dedicated to Baudelaire,Michaux and Prévert who still hover on earth.Lalit Rao does not care if non Francophones are not aware of Baudelaire,Michaux and Prévert.