Hytti nro 6

Aah, the pleasures of traveling by long distance train! Admiring the scenery from the compartment window, enjoying nice meals in the restaurant car, and dozing off at night to the clickety-click sound of the wheels.

Everybody who once took a long distance sleeper knows the reality is different. Those people will enjoy this film. One of the drawbacks of international trains is the company in the compartment to which you have been assigned. Finnish student Laura has bad luck, having to share hers with a drunken Russian miner who asks without much ado if she is a prostitute.

During the long ride from Moscow to the northern city of Murmansk the two travel companions get to know each other better, and even learn to appreciate each other. This sounds a bit cheesy, but it isn't. Laura is dissapointed and lonely: her lover couldn't accompany her on the trip and reacts coolly to her phone calls. When, during a long stopover, she has to choose between the company of her rude but adventurous travel companion or no company at all, the choice is a no-brainer.

An extra attraction is that the movie takes place in the not-so distant past. It is the pre-internet era of pay phones and Walkmans. This is no major issue in the film, but it explains why Laura takes the train instead of flying.

There's a bit of 'Lost in Translation' in this film, a bit of 'Before Sunrise' and a bit of 'Ma nuit chez Maude'. Plus: it's Russia, so everything is nicely rough-edged and vodka-soaked. Na zdorovie!

A Finnish romance of sorts about a woman whose first negative impressions of her fellow train compartment passenger make way for warmer feelings as she gets to know him.

I think "Compartment No. 6" is a lot about the importance of being open to new experiences and the rashness inherent in instantly forming judgements about people. The female protagonist in this movie studies anthropology because she feels like knowing our history is important to understanding who we are now. But is it really? In a cultural and sociological sense, probably. But at the individual level, when does attachment to the past interfere with living in the present?

There's a great scene in this movie that takes place after a fellow Finn, a tall strapping guy with a guitar no less, is crooning songs to the woman as he crashes in their compartment for a bit, and she looks out the window to see the off-kilter Russian who has set her on edge standing out on the train platform punching and kicking snowballs. In that moment, we get what she's feeling, because we feel it to. Yeah, the Finnish guy is good looking and "safe," but he's also boring. The Russian guy is weird and maybe crazy, but he's different, and sometimes different is exactly what you need.

Grade: A-

Juho Kuosmanen, who made the agreeable HAPPIEST DAY IN THE LIFE OF OLLI MAKI (Finland's official Oscar submission that year as was this film), has made a sort of road trip picture with COMPARTMENT 6.

Laura (Seidi Haarla) is a Finnish archaeology student studying in Moscow who sets out to visit the historically significant rock paintings in the far reaches of Russia in Murmansk. When her lover is too busy to join her, she decides to go it alone by train. To her displeasure, Laura's compartment mate is Ljoha (Yuriy Borisov), a brusque drunken young Russian who is headed Murmansk for a temporary job. Laura makes the best of it by trying to avoid Ljoha at first. Against all odds, the pair end up forging a grudging friendship.

Along the way there is an overnight stay. Ljoha offers to take Laura along to visit an elderly female relative (the relationship is never made clear) rather to spend it on the cold parked train. It's in these moments that an unlikely bond develops between the two despite being from different sides of the tracks, as it were. Kuosmanen, who also co-wrote the screenplay based on Rosa Liksom's novel (the dialogue is mainly in Russian), does a good job building the relationship. It's never forced, nor rushed. Haarla and Borisov excel in the tiny moments, often unspoken, that reveal the most here.

COMPARTMENT NO.6 is very much a two person narrative, and there is a long epilogue in Murmansk, but, it's really the journey that makes it a gently affecting movie with a nice kicker at the very end.

It is about human connection.

Lead actors hit it out of the ball park.

If you ever rode trains OR grew up or lived in a cold country OR love Travel - you will LOVE this movie.

Direction and photography OUT of this world.

End is bitter sweet.

You will root for the male lead

He plays a guy that probably was an introvert growing up and didn't have (and or ) was able to feel much love .

When female lead starts connecting to his world he moves heaven and earth to get her to go where she wants to go.

Visuals are stunning.

Acting was amazing.

Background score / music perfect.

At the end you WILL have a tear or two

10/10 STARS.

I was curious to see 'Compartment no 6', the film by Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen, which became one of the most awarded movies on the festival circuit during this special year which is 2021. The film is a 'road movie' or if you wish a 'railroad movie' , whose story takes place most of the time in a train that runs through the Russian steppe from Moscow to Murmansk, in the far north, beyond the Arctic Circle. Two young people, a Finn woman and a Russian man, who have nothing in common except enough reasons not to be able to tolerate each other are forced to spend the three days and two nights of the trip together. The formula seems pretty rusty, especially as what almost everything viewers expect after the first ten minutes of watching the film happens, and yet, beyond the not very original story, the film manages to catch the attention through sincerity and the natural and empathetic way in which the characters and the reality around them are treated.

The film director and the lead heroine are Finnish, but the story takes place in Russia, sometime in the late '90s. Laura (Seidi Haarla), a student in Moscow, is planning a trip to Murmansk, in the far north of Russia, together with Irina, her Russian girlfriend. The friend gives up at the last moment and from what will follow we understand that the relationship was almost over from her point of view. Laura takes the trip alone, in a sleeping cars train, the purpose of the trip being to see some petroglyphs 10 thousand years old, which arouse her interest as a future archaeologist. In the train she is assigned to the same compartment with a young Russian man named Ljoha (Yuriy Borisov), a drunk and rude person. She tries to find a place in another compartment, but this proves to be impossible. The trip promises to become a nightmare, the communication between the two being hampered by differences in language (Laura speaks only elementary Russian), culture, and alcohol fumes. From here, however, things will evolve.

The interaction between the two works wonderfully, and even if the situations are not that original - we have already seen similar ones in too many romantic comedies - the subtlety of the script writing, the talent and the chemistry between the two actors manage to make the relationship credible and human, leaving room for multiple subtexts and interpretations. The romantic element appears late, and until then the communication between the two young people is based neither on language (which is a tool of misunderstanding rather than understanding) nor on sexual attraction. Cultural differences are subtly described, juggling around stereotypes. We can of course ask ourselves how true to realities is the image of Russia in the first decade after communism that is presented to us on screen. I know too little about Finnish cinema, except for a few films by Aki Kaurismaki, so I'm not sure if my assessment is correct, but it seemed to me that compared to what I saw, the focus is less on the comic and sarcastic dimensions and more on the human connection and communication between the heroes. In other words, 'Compartment no 6' looks more like a Russian film about a young Finnish woman directed by a Finn than like a Finnish film. Anyway and whatever shelf we lay it, it is a simple and good film, whose viewing has chances to please many spectators. The actors do an excellent job, and the camera work makes watching the scenes on the train, in Russian homes, or from the frozen steppe an immersive experience. The decisions of the juries of festivals such as Cannes or Jerusalem, I believe, will in this case be validated by the reception of the public.