Puhdistus

Puhdistus (aka Purge) is a well executed drama based on a book by Sofi Oksanen. It pictures the torments of the people of Estonia in the soviet era without being a historical drama. It tells a story of two sisters, of their love to a same man which leads to a deception and ultimate disappointment. A young woman who is brought back by a coincidence is also connected to their past in the beginning.

For a finnish movie with a limited budget this is absolutely the film of the year or maybe a film of the few decades. There'd been nothing like this coming out from the finnish cinema until now. Finnish movies consists of mainly farce comedies, dull historical movies, war movies and that's just about all. Antti J. Jokinen breaks this eternal line of just average ordinary movies by bringing us a film with a beautiful cinematography, fantastic camera work, strong actor performance and an interesting plot. It is loyal to the book but it wouldn't be fair to judge the film and book against each other as with films it has to be consistent and quite solid up until the end and the book can go deeper.

The movie itself is very straight forward film with nothing left to question. That may be one drawback among a few others that kept me from giving this movie full ten stars. The other issue is that the movie doesn't engage as much as it should. Scenes just roll from one to another quite fast and things just happen and that feeling may not be avoided just after the first hour. I guessed what was going to happen but still after the film i felt entertained and not at all disappointed.

I also thought that presenting only one dimensional good vs. evil doesn't do the movie any good. These three three things just made me take a few stars off. It's still an enjoyable strong film that makes an impression but it's good for one time viewing only.

Jokinen has succeeded with this film and i sure hope he has many other interesting films to direct in the future.

A young woman forced into a prostitution ring in Estonia escapes and seeks refuge with an old lady whose horrific past is revealed through a series of flashbacks, and although I am not fan of a non linear style of filmmaking, it works well for this particular movie.The two main actresses are terrific and the World War Two history lesson regarding Estonia and Stalin's communist Russia is quite compelling. Both the current theme of white slavery and the past one of atrocities committed in the name of patriotism and honor are portrayed in a brutal and honest way. Purge runs a bit too long at two hours and five minutes, but even with that small criticism, I would rank it as one of my favorite foreign language films.

This film has wonderful photography and staging. I had already read the book, but I still found the film very hard to follow because of the brutal editing. Moreover, the young Aliide is so different in appearance (much too glamorous) from the old one we see at the beginning, that it is hard to connect them.

It is also unclear that Linda (Aliide's niece) has been trafficked from Siberia to sex-slavery in Berlin by a pair of thugs. Her escape from their clutches in an Estonian town south of Tallinn is very muddled.

Aliide saves her own skin by sacrificing her sister and niece (Linda) to the soviet Russians, while harbouring a Nazi sympathiser. It is poetic justice that she ends up protecting her niece from the new kind of Russian threat: sex-slave traffickers.

I'm sure that just an extra 5-10 minutes could have elucidated the plot.

It is such a pity that the script does not match the indoor photography that recalls Tarkovsky and early Bergman .

Puhdistus is a Finnish film directed by Antti J. Jokinen, based on a play and a book of the same name by Sofi Oksanen. It tells about Estonia and more specifically about two women joined by blood and the horrors that they both have had to go through in their respective timelines.

And that last word is really the key to this movie. It's quite frankly two different stories, sharing screen time in a single movie. Sure, both stories are about the same family line and even feature characters that are present in both. But they're still joined together more by theme and motive than by anything more substantial. Aliide (Liisi Tandefelt as an elder, and Laura Birn when she was younger) is the one character around whom these two stories revolve, but her elder self doesn't bear all that much resemblance to her past self. Which is kind of the point, admittedly, but it also means that the two stories feel rather separate.

It doesn't help that of the two stories I vastly preferred the one taking place in the 30s. Estonia is a new nation, but already it has come under heavy strain from its mighty neighbor to the east. The bells of war are tolling and it's impossible to remain neutral. And now it's up to two sisters to live their lives as best as they can.

Contrast this to the other story taking place in the 90s. And not just any 90s. The most vitriolically shaded 90s possible, where most everyone seems to abuse drugs, everything is either falling apart or already broken, all men hate and abuse women, and where the only thing of beauty is snow falling on a justly murdered adversary.

Sofi Oksanen has opinions about the recent past, is all I'm saying. I'm sure from her point of view they are justified opinions, but I find her to be a bit much, honestly.

Puhdistus has its fans and the story has depth. It's just not told overly well, at least in this form.

I'll admit that this isn't the kind of film I would have watched had I known more about it. What got me interested was a review in Empire magazine's Video Dungeon column, written by Kim 'Nightmare Movies' Newman which said that this contained a Frightfest (UK horror festival) full of exploitation all in one film. He did however go on to qualify this.

Yes, there are several very uncomfortable scenes which could have been exploitative, but they were all in context over a two hour running time, and I certainly didn't expect to be almost crying by the end. The acting was superb (particularly Laura Birn in a brave role I'd imagine most actresses would kill for), and I really felt for the female characters.

Maybe 'enjoyable' or 'entertaining' are not the right words to describe such a bleak film. But it will keep you gripped, and you would have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by it. I voted it 7/10 at first, but I'll have to check whether you can change your rating, as it's now an 8 in my book.