Puhdistus

I've read Sofi Oksanen book before seeing the film and for me that's obvious that we have here a great film based on a great book. Usually the historic event crush individual lives and destinies, but sometimes is really amassing how peoples can react so different and how unexpected individual desires mixed up with historical event can generate dramas. This film also remembered me another one, a Romanian one, "Somewhere in the East", made after Augustin Buzura's novel "Fetele tacerii", part of the subject being related.

Saw this title for the name of purge, thinking that it has a purge night thriller plot, but movie is different. One girl who was forcefully thrown in flesh market, flees after killing her customer and takes shelter into a lonely house. Only old woman belongs to that house. But real drama is starting here that old lady is her aunt and later we realized a horrible past of their family while Russian war was going on. Movie is 2 hours long, but you will not bore any moment till the end. Acting of Laura Birn (looking like Uma Therma) (younger Aliide) and Liisi Tandefelt (older Aliide) is remarkable One can easily connect to those character. End is emotional. Overall movie is watchable at once but beware from nudity, female torture, brutal rape throughout the movie and some explicit scenes. Some of them may disturb you. Direction is different from typical Hollywood movies. 7 ratings are okay from me.

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.

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 .

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.