Aki Kaurismaki Collection Vol.2

Most helpful review Aki Kaurismaki Collection Vol.2

• A film for ironic introverts

   

  By a customer from Buckfastleigh , 30 Oct 2008

  [Highly rated reviewer]

  This is a review of Take Care of Your Scarf...
  
  I have to like Kaurismaki films.
  
  Even tho i don't like to like them.
  
  Don't like retro rockabilly chic at all.
  
  I can imagine Kaurismaki sitting around drinking pots and bottles of coffee and vodka, listening to 1950's rockers and Finnish tango, with a fag on, picking at chips and burgers, getting slowly sozzled.
  
  And then quietly belching and burping. Or letting out a gentle quiet f--t.
  
  And you have to smile. Cus he's naff. And doing it on purpose. Without meaning to (cause offence that is)
  
  If there were a Deadpan Olympics, Kaurismaki and Jarmusch would be favourites to lose at everything. Deliberately come last in the Low Jump. Get disqualified doing the 6 Foot Slouch (on the sofa)
  
  Like 'Man without a Past' this film seems to be moulded out of the same melancholy. Nobody is getting anywhere much. Nobody is doing anything much. It's all about putting up with being a Nobody. You can't help but be the Nobody you are, and were always meant to be. You squeeze out dry farts of droll humour like you were passing wind. Has to be done. But hopefully nobody is noticing.
  
  You're an Underdog. Nobody is bothering about you. So don't bother them. Or be bothered by them. Or be bothering.
  
  The Art of Lugubriousness. You either have to like it, or you have to switch off.
  
  I didn't switch off.
  
  So I'm watching Valto guzzling down potfuls of coffee and Reino cracking open (with his elbow) and quickly emptying yet another bottle of vodka. They're a couple of boy-men who don't know how to talk to girls. Or maybe they don't want to talk to girls. Even tho they've got 2 of them in tow, as traveling companions.
  
  Valto takes the creases out of his jacket with a blowtorch. He's got his car coffee maker bubbling. He's a big blokey seamstress with a rocker quiff. He locks his cigar smoking, face-slapping mother in the cupboard so he can go get more coffee. Reino is a dodgy mechanic who brylcreems his mustache and looks a bit diddy alongside his lumbering lump of a mate Valto.
  
  You get how absurd this is right?! Affable absurdism. Like watching a gentle black and white silent movie. Only the characters keep forgetting to be silent. Or rather they keep remembering they can speak. So they say something. Occasionally. For old times sake.
  
  It's only about an hour long - which is long enough. I don't understand why films have to be an hour and a half long. Let's have more films that find their natural length rather than go on for longer than they should.
  
  Kaurismaki's films are for ironic introverts
  
  with lugubrious faces.
  
  And I'm one of them.

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