The Other Side of Hope
The deadpan irony and seemingly dispassionate air of Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s movies certainly aren’t for everyone, but they are a taste worth acquiring. His latest, “The Other Side of Hope,” expands his usual mordant vision of his homeland with a compelling look at Finland’s immigration issue.
The film tells two stories that eventually intersect. Wikström (Sakari Kuosmanen) is a disaffected middleaged salesman who abruptly leaves his wife, wins a pile of money in an illicit poker game and buys a comically shabby restaurant called the Golden Pint, which employs a small crew of misfits.
Khaled (Sherwan Haji) is a young Syrian who has arrived in Helsinki hiding in the coal bin of a ship. He’s a refugee of terrible Middle Eastern violence, and he hopes to stay in Finland, recounting his sad tale to a stone-faced female immigration official. He’s turned down, but goes underground before he is deported. Meanwhile, he has a run-in with right-wing bullies who fancy themselves the Finnish Liberation Army.
By chance, the two men meet, and, surprisingly, Wikström — who seems far from the bleeding-heart sort — offers Khaled a job and a storeroom in which to sleep. A friendship develops.
There’s no shortage of the filmmaker’s patented laconic humor, as the restaurant’s crew tries to boost the failing business by transforming it into a sushi restaurant. The staff decks itself out in Japanese costumes, and when they run out of fresh fish, begin substituting salted herring. Their chances of success? Nil. It’s one of Kaurismäki’s many gibes at what he views as the Finnish national character.
Kaurismäki fans will also relish his use, as in previous movies, of rock, blues and other popular music forms, sometimes with a political tinge, rendered with gusto by Finnish musicians who are the antithesis of conventional celebrities.
The filmmaker’s drollery sometimes has the feeling of silent comedies, in which slapstick and sight gags often have serious or even tragic undertones. It works well in a story that mixes social satire with a decidedly unfunny tale of an immigrant’s undoing.
What sticks with us in the end is something beyond the black humor and even Khaled’s sorrows — it’s the touching relationship between the two principals, and the Finnish man’s quiet commitment to doing what’s right.