Paha maa

I saw this film at the 2006 Palm Springs International Film Festival and Director Aku Louhimies introduced his film and was on hand for Q&A after. For some reason this movie is titled Frozen Land in English so I don't know how the distributors got frozen out of Paha. This is a very good film. It doesn't for me have enough that I would knock it up a notch to the excellent category but I did talk to some viewers who felt that it was an excellent film. Louhimies said that back in Finland people either loved this movie or hated it and said a lot of people in theaters walked out on it. I'm sure some objected to some of the violence, swearing, drug and alcohol abuse and sexual explicate scenes. It's a very clever story of how these different lives are woven together because of a trickle down effect. This film has very interesting and strong characters. I would rate it a 7.0 out of a possible 10 and would see it again and recommend it with caution.

Frozen land, frozen feelings. Desires, suffering, grief, depression.And all of this in little over two hours. Our daily routines and quirks, our pains and grievances, our passion and tragedies never stay our own. They spill, expand and enter other lives , the ones we touch upon on the streets. Strange movie , contained and violent in the same time. Full of mixed messages, and overflowing with heartaches. The school teacher gets fired, and the whole world runs amok. The characters in this movie are like the puppets in some macabre puppet theater. Someone is pulling the strings, but who is it, that is the question.As time time goes by, some recover and some just vanish into oblivion. The world is coming to an end, as one character repeated few times. And it surely seems it is...

This film came as a gift - a late-night offering out of the blue - so unlike other reviewers I had no preconceptions whatsoever. I found myself glued to my seat as the film slowly dictated its own rhythm, its own unfolding. I was drawn to acknowledge my own deep love and humanity as I willed for "good" to prevail - but also forced to wryly acknowledge that sometimes I was on the side of the "bad" guys. The film is quite quite beautiful - the word "elegiac" comes to mind, and this more than because the film begins and ends in an elegy. Far from being depressing or confronting, to me, the film acknowledges deep suffering - and then, by its cyclic nature - with the births and re-births as well as the deaths - the film celebrates the fact that to quote an Aussie poet, there is "sometimes gladness." Oh gods, I feel as tho I've just written a love letter to this film - but there it is. Hola!

The problem I have as a Finn is that most of the actors in this movie are in every Finnish movie. I have a feeling that Finland has only like five actors. I think that if you're not from Finland you really like this movie as a refreshing novelty.

This movie is about a dreadful chain of events that affects a few people quite harshly. Alcoholism, cold climate and darkness may all be clichés but they're still very real in todays Finnish society. A lot of people in Finland have depression, especially during winter.

The tone of the movie is very melancholic. I enjoyed it and Louhimes' directing was again very solid. I liked this movie a lot, only negative thing is that you see the same faces that you've seen over and over again.

Before I'd seen this movie I've heard a lot of praise about it and quite many exclamations about how "horrific" it was. Not to take any credit away from this movie, I think it wasn't all that horrible or even shocking. It's just a movie about people living in the darker side of the town. And a good one at portraying the point.

There's some great acting here and a well-thought of manuscript. Paavo Westerberg is a renowned writer in the Finnish movie scene and he's the best in what comes to describing the contemporary Finnish culture (albeit he's not the only one writer for this movie, but I dare say he's the main-writer anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong).

The casting is excellent, except for Jasper Pääkkönen (the pseudo-main character, who in my opinion should have stayed in the soap opera scene), and the sets, the cuts and sounds are very well done as well and give great atmosphere to this movie.

This movie is a story about loosely interconnected sad destinies that according to a famous Finnish band's very well known song (Eppu Normaali's "Tuhansien Murheellisten Laulujen Maa", which VERY roughly translated to "Paha Maa") throughout the whole Finnish society lead to a sad, dark end accompanied with booze, lonesomeness and the bad choices. And it's the side of everyday Finnish life about 80% of the population have no awareness of, unless movies like this are made.