Kaurismaki’s Finland by Vijai Maheshwari

Jim Jarmusch’s Helsinki segment in his cult film, ‘Night Around the World,’ and spy movies from the Cold War tend to reinforce our perception of Finland as a dark cold nation doused in vodka and Nordic angst. The success of Nokia withstanding, the sparsely-populated nation of reindeers and the midnight sun is still fodder for our fascination with the ruminative silences and white snows of the North. The forty five year old Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki is the reigning King of Scandinavian film noir: a difficult auteur who captures the weirdness and stoicism of his Finno-Ugric people in a series of films that have won him high acclaim, including the recent Cannes nominee, The Man Without A Past.

He is also the part owner of several bars and restaurants in Helsinki—and a cult hotel in the middle of the Finnish countryside—which reflect an aesthetic forged from 80s alternative rock, Soviet glam, and the famous reticence of his people. The most famous of his establishments in downtown Helsinki is the tiny Moscow bar—a replica of an Intourist bar from Brezhnev’s Russia. An old Czech jukebox using vinyls is nudged up against the lacy, white curtains which shroud the place in a perpetual twilight. A Rigondo Bolshoi radio from the 1950s is tuned to Minsk, and a Russian Samovar boils water for black tea. “This is the last hard currency bar in the world,” jokes Kaurismaki’s business partner, Erkki Lahti, who also joined the director on several drinking binges in St. Petersburg during the mid 80s. These days, the bar is popular among local bohemians and tourists alike. “Sometimes fourteen Japanese guys in suits walk in, order a vodka, take a few pictures, and then leave,” says Erkki.

Next door to the Moscow is the Corona Bar, another Kaurismaki institution, opened in 1992 after the director tired of being denied admittance to clubs by the city’s arrogant doormen. “We started the trend against doormen,” says Lahti. “In Helsinki of the late 80s, the bar culture was quite stiff. Patrons were not even allowed to move from one place in the bar to another.” The 80s-style Corona Bar with its brass fittings and funnel-shaped columns is a popular watering hole for the city’s alternative scene; even Kaurismaki and his filmmaker brother Mikka can occasionally be spotted getting hammered on their favorite drink, Jaloviina, a mixture of vodka and cognac. With the rise of trendier bars and clubs like Kerma and Mbar in Helsinki’s downtown, Corona’s star has been on the wane though. “It’s quite old school,” complains Sanna Rinne, a young theatre critic.

Plans are underway though to transform the cinema downstairs into an oasis of East Bloc glamour. The Dubrovnik nightclub in the basement will be fitted out in 70s retro furniture—chairs with green felt padding and red leather couches—and will occasionally host acts by gypsy bands from the Balkans. “It should liven up the place,” promises Lahti. Although Kaurismaki also owns a stake in the hip, late 90s cafetaria in the Kiasma contemporary art museum, its stark interior and blueberry-colored plastic chairs don’t really jive with his aesthetic. The Rex bar in the lobby of the 1950s theater opposite the Kiasma is more his style: pumpkin-colored columns and chandeliors constructed from interconnected globes evoke an Edward Hopper landscape of post-war modernism. His nieces occasionally work behind the terrace bar which overlooks downtown Helsinki, large neon silhouhettes of REX in a 50s font dominating the view to the north.

For Kaurismaki’s version of Tolstoy’s Farm or Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram, fans must spend a night at his retro Oiva (it means 'excellent' in Finnish) hotel 100 km north of Helsinki. Getting there is an adventure in itself: we took an hour and a half bus ride along sleek roads (with almost naked men in skivvies roller skiing along the highway), disembarking in the sleepy village of Karkkilla, where Kaurismaki lives part of the year. He spends the other half in northern Portugal. From Karkkilla we took a short cab ride to the hotel itself, located outside the town. The taciturn cabbie was right out of Jim Jarmusch’s film. He spoke so slowly I thought I could hear the grass grow. “Nothing happens here,” he said in Finnish, as my Estonian photographer colleague translated. “There are three bars and one restaurant. Occasionally a fox rampages through town and there is some excitement.”

It turned out that we were the only guests at the hotel, even though it was the height of the Finnish summer and temperatures were in the high 20s. The staff whispered all the time and seemed as meditative as American Indians in a Clint Eastwood Western. The rooms and hallways were a retro freak’s paradise: white and black linoleum floors, classic Bosch fridges, TVs from the 70s, old East Bloc radios and black bakelite light fittings. Posters for 80s Finnish rock bands like Popeda (Pobeda is victory in Russian) and Freud, Marx, Engels & Jung hung in the entranceway. The taciturn cook at the 60s-style restaurant--with its checkered bread cloths and huge portions of baked Baltic herring--claimed to have met Kaurismaki a few times. “Did you talk to him?” I asked excited. “He doesn’t speak very much—most of the time he just sits there and watches other people,” he answered in snail-slow English. The cook added that he hated Helsinki and thought it too busy. His dream was to drive around Finland in a station wagon and camp at all of its 200 campsites. “We shouldn’t lose our culture and become like everyone else in Europe,” he warned darkly.

Even he admitted though that the Hotel Oiva was a bit slow. “Time stops here doesn’t it?” he asked. After a leisurely swim at a pristine lake nearby, the water so clean it is said to be drinkable, we proceeded to get drunk on Kaurismaki’s favorite Jallukola—Jaloviina mixed with Rio Coca Cola. Sitting on benches fashioned from birch wood with fir trees looming above us we felt insignificant and a bit scared. Wolves and foxes were said to roam the woods at night. At a certain point in the evening, the sculpture of a bison fashioned from hay, which decorated the front yard, seemed to speak to us. “You don’t belong here,” it said. “You are city slickers, not calm folks from the countryside.” By morning, I was ready for bustling Helsinki. My Estonian friend loved the place though, opting for a long walk through the woods. “This reminds me of Soviet Estonia in the 60s. I didn’t realise it was possible to step back into time like this.” He wasn’t so far from the truth: The Hotel Oiva was an old peoples’ home before Kaurismaki bought the place and turned it into a cult hotel. As we rode back to civilization, I felt like Woody Allen’s character in the Purple Rose of Cairo. I had stepped behind the screen into a Kaurismaki film, the Match Factory Girl perhaps, and experienced the raw material of his inspiration.

“What was the hotel like?” asked the taxi driver. “Quiet,” I said. “Too quiet.” He shook his head and exhaled slowly. “Nah, you have to go further north. To Lapland. Then you understand what quiet is.” I’ll save that for another time. The Lapland Midnight Sun Film Festival perhaps.