Betoniyö

Concrete Night was selected to represent its country at the Oscars and was seen by as few as 9 555 persons in the cinemas. A quite interesting combination. Didn't make it there.

The movie is all about visual language and soul. I recognize some elements of high value. Director Pirjo Honkasalo uses her actors like she played them as instruments and directs amazingly. The actors' task is to expose soul more than anything, but something keeps me from playing along and I don't warm up for this world. That part must connect when there isn't a mentionable plot to capture my interest.

It's like the movie is teaching its viewer to ignore intuition and surrender to concrete... and leaving it to the viewer to understand the educational value of this. Art in its deepest form, ladies and gentlemen.

Young Simo's (Johannes Brotherus) older brother Ilkka (Jari Virman) is to start a prison sentence for a minor crime the following day. We share their 24 hours together before Ilkka leaves for prison. Their mother is more focused on her social life than spending this last evening with her sons. Yet she instructs Simo to keep his older brother company. While rain intermittently sifts over grey Helsinki, the two brothers go to the city center for some fun, a drink or two. Back at their apartment a bored Simo goes out and starts chatting with the gay photographer living across the street. He invites Simo in, shows him some Wilhelm Von Gloeden prints and asks to photograph Simo. This would have serious consequences…

This black-and-white film has a nihilistic, despairing mood like few others. This is a film of no hope: "If you're free of hope, you're free of everything", we are informed. Another movie sharing this ambiance is Lars Von Trier's unsettling 'Antichrist'. The theme of hopelessness is also explored in the excellent Macedonian film 'Mirage' (also known as 'Iluzija', 'Eat or be Eaten' or 'Seasons of Hope') by Svetozar Ristovski.

It becomes more than just hopelessness. In a disconcerting misanthropic vision the extinction of man is predicted, with scorpions and other lower order animals taking our place.

This sombre theme of hopelessness is captured effectively in monochrome visuals, where the contrast between light and dark is accentuated, with little grey in-between. Some of the scenes are presented as nightmarish visions, without any chance of escape. Whether you are trapped in a train carriage after the train derailed and plunged into a deep river, or whether you caused serious and irreversible harm to somebody, there is no escape. The nightmare becomes real.

I found the acting quite good. Although Simo is not a very talkative fellow, his body language and facial expressions in particular, say a lot. Simo, an introvert, is a true outsider. The more vocal Ilkka and their mother, and the photographer, give fine performances too. The soundtrack, mostly of classical nature, effectively adds to the gloomy ambiance of the film. This film's strengths however, are the excellent, unusual narrative, and especially the outstanding cinematography. Credit to cinematographer Peter Flinckenberg. Several of the scenes are surreal, such as the footage of the train in the river, with jellyfish swimming past; also the scenes when downy feathers drop from the sky or of Simo wiping the misted-up mirror clean. What attention to detail!

'Concrete Night' offers a lot of food for thought and is a film I will watch again. I score it a very good 8/10.

It has to be admitted that it is not an easy cinematic experience. The effect of Haneke's discomfort in Russian cinema. Johannes Brotherus, who was only 16 at the time, performed very well. The cinematography of the film also deserves praise. I like Finnish cinema, but it still needs to be repeated, it is not an easily digestible cinema experience.

Even that I'm a big fan of unknown movies, this one couldn't convince me at all. This story about two brothers and their mother living in a city somewhere. One committed a crime and has to pay for it. The younger brother soon to be left alone with their mother, who lives in some sort of fantasy and has a drinking problem. The younger brother coming of age and wanting to have his brother's approval.

The biggest problem I had with this movie is the way the director wanted to make it look sad. The black and white filming, the sad buildings where they live, skies being dark all the time, sparse lighting at night. The lighting coming from aside instead of from above. A rabbit walking on the city streets at night. A toad being near one of the characters. Water or rain falling down nice visible in the light, like in slow motion. Very little talk. It was all too much for me. The story could have been told in a other way, making the same points.

Director & writer Pirjo Honkasalo has carefully crafted a timeless masterpiece here!

The movie opens with a surreal nightmare.

The setting is modern-day Helsinki in the 2010s, & supposedly, the film is about older brother Ilkka (Jari Virman) & his younger brother Simo (Johannes Brotherus). Ilkka has to report to prison the next day for a minor drug offense, & "Concrete Night" is purportedly about Ilkka's last 24 hours of Freedom. His younger brother, Simo, greatly admires Ilkka & spends the final 24 hours with him.

The film is based on a novel, & the black-and-white cinematography is breathtakingly beautiful! And yet, Mr. Honkasalo winks at us & hints that the film may truly be about other things. Why? Well, the night unfolds suspiciously slowly; if it were truly about Ilkka & his brother "celebrating" Ilkka's last night of Freedom, one would expect whooping; some joking; trying to make light of the upcoming prison time; and perhaps, the two young men making love to two young women. Instead, Ilkka & Simo sit at a table in a bar in a morose mood talking about the inevitability of humankind's eventual extinction! (In this film, there are at least 5 separate instances where the extinction of humankind is discussed.) Sitting in the bar, Illka tells his little brother, "There's nothing stronger than someone who's free of Hope!" Hmmmmm.

The viewer wonders, "Is the entire movie a giant allegory of some sort?"

Now filmmaker & screenwriter Pirjo Honkasalo knows exactly what he's doing. He inserts a scene into "Concrete Night" which has to be seen to be appreciated. Young Simo & a slightly older friend go skinny-dipping in a deserted, municipal pool & then hang out together afterwards among the diving boards & ladders - completely nude. They don't talk much - they are at peace. It is utterly, undeniably Beautiful, especially because Honkasalo is shooting the extended scene in black-and-white. This radiant scene begins at the 19:29 mark in the movie & concludes at the 21:45 mark in the movie. Amazing!

It should be noted that Simo (Johannes Brotherus) is Beautiful - not handsome - Beautiful!

So if "Concrete Night" isn't about what it seems to be about, what then?

Here are my best, educated theories concerning what Pirjo Honkasalo's true intentions were for "Concrete Night": 1) The film is an intentional re-framing of Homer's "The Odyssey", with Ilkka being Odysseus transmuted into an anti-hero, with the setting transported from Ancient Greece, Ancient Troy, & the Ancient Mediterranean Sea to modern-day Finland. And with bold action muted into non-action. This is precisely the sort of endeavor that Irish novelist James Joyce would have excelled at. 2) Honkasalo intended the entire film to be confusing & experimental - paralleling Federico Fellini's "8-1/2". 3) The film is a homage to the great Fine-Art photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden, a German who discovered & carefully documented youthful male Beauty on the island of Sicily, starting in the late 1800s & ending in the early 1900s; his nudes & portraits are celebrated to this day, & hang in art galleries around the world. Honkasalo merely changed the Beauty from Sicilian to Finnish - Simo being the Beautiful one.

There is solid evidence for this interpretation right within the film itself. In one scene, a gay Fine-Art photographer invites Simo to his studio, & what does he show Simo? Authentic portraits taken by Wilhelm von Gloeden! In a tragic misunderstanding, when the photographer asks Simo to take his shirt off, Simo misinterprets this as a sexual advance, instead of an opportunity to take test-shots of Simo, to determine if he would be a suitable model. Simo physically attacks the photographer in a vicious manner, & the viewer is never certain whether the Fine-Art photographer lives or dies.

This reviewer will stop talking about the plot now, because he doesn't want to reveal spoilers.

I must mention one more important occurrence. In the very final moments of the film, there is a sudden sea-change in the cinematography, which obviously indicates that filmmaker Pirjo Honkasalo is suggesting something of importance to the viewer. This reviewer is 99% certain what Honkasalo is suggesting, but I can't reveal it to readers, because that would be a spoiler.

Dear readers, please watch "Concrete Night" for yourselves, & see if you can figure out what the filmmaker is suggesting!

"Concrete Night" will be especially appealing to movie enthusiasts who love abstruse, multi-layered, ambiguous films!

10 out of 10 stars! A Modern masterpiece!