Kukushka

Since the movie was initially meant to be a staged drama, it is no wonder it rings some bells. In the 1950's Sartre wrote his famous play "Huis clos" whose essential point was how intolerable human presence can be when the commonness of language allows us to understand all the thoughts of the people we share the same space with. "The Hell, this is the Other", concluded Sartre.

In Kukushka, nobody of the three characters understands a word from what the other two have to say, yet they DO speak all the time. All the three, the Finn, the Saami, and the Russian, are well aware of the presence of the other two, but do not have to submit themselves to any common pattern of judgment. The other two are like objects which fit the world of the third in the way s/he would like them to. Thus, the lack of verbal communication, even if it caused some, almost fatal, misunderstandings, in the long term offered the three characters with a kind of bliss not one of them had ever expected. In short, this is a story about the beauty of life which is essentially impossible to share with others because it is purely contemplative.

'Kukushka' or 'The Cuckoo' is one of those movies that remind us so often that there is a lot of great cinema happening beyond the American or West-European circuit. Director Aleksandr Rogozhkin brings to screen a human story happening at the end of WW2. A Russian and a Finn soldier are being brought by fate together to the house and care of a young Lap woman. Each of them is far from the real soldier character - the Finn is a pacifist, the Russian is actually a prisoner brought to trial for writing some subversive poetry. Yet, the level of misunderstanding brought in each of us by the war machines they are part of is only accentuated by the lack of communication due to the barrier language. Each speaks only his own language, and none of them understands the other. The message of this simply filmed but yet rich movie is that human communication is beyond and above words.

The treatment reminds not only the traditional Russian cinema relying so much on the contrapunct of dialogs and silence and acting, but also draws from the Far East cinema (Korean especially) in its treatment of the landscape. Acting is superb, but of all three main actors I will give a special mention to Anni-Kristiina Juuso, an amateur, who takes the role of the Lap woman to heights of ingenuity combined with feminine wisdom reminding and not falling below similar roles played by Audrey Tautou and Emily Watson.

A touch of magic adds to the reality, and good camera work helps. It's only the ending that falls a little in the zone of the expected but overall this is a sensible and beautiful movie, very much worth watching.

1st watched 8/30/2003 - 7 out of 10(Dir-Aleksandr Rogozhkin): Strangely compelling movie about three people who can't understand each other's spoken words but somehow understand each other in the end. The movie is set at the end of World War II and begins with a prisoner of war being left and chained to a rock with very little in the amount of rations left for him. For about an hour, the viewers are treated to watching the prisoner meticulously putting together and executing a plan to remove the chains and be free. At the same time, we are introduced to a woman who is seen burying the dead in a war-torn area but keeping what is usable. One soldier wakes up while she's doing the burying and she basically takes him in and nurses him back to life. These are the three central characters in the rest of the film. They are thrown together by chance at a the woman's hut with nothing in the way of `modern conveniences.' The viewer gets to watch these characters `try' to interact with some humorous exchanges with the intent of helping each other survive. While watching you can't help but wonder how the exchanges would have been different if the characters would have stopped talking and used more sign language and object identification to explain themselves, but I guess the movie wouldn't have lasted very long and wouldn't have been as interesting. And at least this movie was definetly `interesting' and very thought provoking. This is yet another entry from another country that cares more about the story and the characters then special effects & action. Hooray for the filmmakers for giving us this gem!!

Saw this film at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival on September 9th and was pleasantly surprised. It is truly a thoroughly enjoyable film that easily merits the 9 out of 10 I voted herein. It is so regrettable that a wide release is likely to elude this little gem. I am certain that many film lovers throughout the world would delight in the results of its clearly creative, though not necessarily original, comedic plot's "communication barrier" underpinnings, which are effectively utilized to convey a sense of the profound absurdity of war in a way I found vastly more entertaining than the myriad of Hollywood fare that has plodded similar plot lines using copious brutal images. A refreshing surprise that I hope comes your way some day in a Festival or Foreign-film Television channel!

Somewhere in the forests of Northern Europe during the closing days of World War II, Finnish support for the Nazi cause is nearing an end. Veiko (Ville Haapsalo), a Finnish soldier has lost his will to fight. Forced to wear an SS uniform by his unit, he is chained to a rock and ordered to kill as many Russians as he can before one will eventually kill him. He is known as a "cuckoo", a sniper on a suicide mission. Set in an area rarely seen: Lapland, The Cuckoo (Kukushka), directed by Aleksandre Rogozhkin, is a touching Russian comedy about the failure to communicate. Its seamless mixture of earthy humor, anti-war sentiment, and otherworldly Lapp mysticism is enhanced by strong performances, especially from Anni-Kristina Juuso, who portrays a spunky but radiant young Reindeer farmer who has not seen a man in four years since her husband went to war and left her widowed.

Using his ingenuity and every resource at his command, Veiko manages to free himself after a protracted struggle that takes up a good half-hour of the film. Meanwhile, a few miles away, a Russian captain, Ivan (Viktor Bychkov) escapes while being taken by Soviet military police to be court-martialed for anti-Soviet sentiments. Circumstances bring all three together at a log outpost where Anni (Anni-Kristina Juuso) lives alone, sleeping in wooden tepees with log doorflaps. She gives them shelter and nurses them back to health but no one understands the other's language (the dialogue is in Finnish, Russian, and Saami, the language of Lapland). This leads to many confusing situations such as when Ivan tells them to "get lost" and they mistakenly think he is telling them that his name is Gerlost. Ivan wants to kill Veiko who tries to tell him that all he wants is peace, invoking the names of Tolstoy (War and Peace) and Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms).

In this Tower of Babel, the three can only reach each other through tone of voice, hand gestures, and body language, but Anni has no trouble convincing the men that she has "an aching below the tummy". Though Veiko is mistakenly thought to be a fascist since he still wears a German uniform, the three gradually form a bond based on mutual need and a common humanity. The Cuckoo is a gorgeously photographed and emotionally resonant film that is more than an anti-war fable; it is a film of transcendent beauty that directly touches the soul.