Dead Leaves
For the sixth year running, Finland is top of the UN’s Happiness Report. Talking to happiness-hungry foreigners, Finns will tend to nuance the nomination. How do they address the question among themselves? Go and see Aki Kaurismäki’s film Fallen Leaves. I did this week. I loved it. I wasn’t the only one. At the end, the audience clapped. The setting is contemporary. At regular intervals, people switch on the radio. The talk is unfailingly of Russian atrocities in Ukraine. Finland shares a boundary with Russia that is 1340 km long. One is reminded of the precariousness of things. Interiors and costumes might as well be from the 70s. Technical advances, we are left to surmise, do not change deep sensibilities. Authority is largely presented as callous. There is no idealisation of structures. Finns aren’t happy just because their country works well. Kaurismäki points to the source of wellbeing in the tenderness with which he portrays individuals, their vulnerabilities, foibles, and mad hopes. There are moments of great beauty. Also, the film is brimming with liberating self-irony. The point is not trivial. I find it to be a rule that the happiest people I know are are the ones best able to laugh at themselves.
