Fallen Leaves (2023) as an epitome of Aki Kaurismäki's entire filmography
I come at this film from an unlikely perspective, as someone who speaks some Finnish, but isn't Finnish; as someone who has seen all of Kaurismäki's films many times, but not in many years.
Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet Lehdet, literally “Dead Leaves”) is simultaneously self-pastiche and self-growth for Aki Kaurismäki.
I’d almost suggest this, his eighteenth solo feature, as a jumping-off point for those new to Kaurismäki, as it encompasses almost all of the situations and themes in all of his filmography: Lonely man meets lonely woman in a stark, spare, chiaroscuro’d Helsinki that's technologically twenty years out-of-date. One swift glance will make a person fall in love, and one quick blow to the head will put them in a coma. Money is tight, but the beer always keeps flowing. Jobs are vital, but they're always disposable and immediately replaced. Work is mundane and corporeal; it’s at factories and at grocery stories; it's with loud machines at construction sites; it's for corrupt men who don't bother to file your tax papers, and then get locked up before they ever even pay you for your labor. Socializing is staring straight ahead as a live band plays at the local bar, sitting next to your closest friend who doesn't even know your name. Home is small and spartan: it's a studio apartment; it's a room in a hostel; it's a tight, disused railway car. Maybe home is even as small as just a knapsack on a park bench, but no matter where it is, it's always beautifully lit.
If you look at Kaurismäki's career, in my opinion it comprises five sometimes-overlapping periods:
The Cover-Art:
This phase encompasses Aki's direct adaptations (Crime and Punishment (1983), Hamlet Goes Business (1987), La Vie de Bohème (1992), Juha (1999)), but also his frequently-allusive early works, in which he finds his own footing by balancing atop his collected stacks of Cahiers du Cinema. This is the most inchoate Kaurismäki, his individual voice still unformed, trying on the mold of his favorite films to see how they fit. But this is also Kaurismäki at his most vulnerable, as sometimes you learn the most about a person in seeing what they take from things they love. Crime and Punishment is a Dostoevsky adaptation but also basically a love-letter to Bresson. The Liar (1981) has a literal baby carriage rolling across a shot to let us know the Kaurismäki brothers have seen Battleship Potemkin (and Aki's character is named "Ville Alfa," after the Godard film Alphaville). Contract Killer (1990) is in English seemingly just so that it can star non-Finnish-speaking Kaurismäki idol Jean-Pierre Léaud.
The Proletariat Spotlight:
This period comprises the official "proletariat trilogy" (Shadows in Paradise (1986), Ariel (1988), The Match Factory Girl (1990)) but also his many other shaggy portraits illuminating the working class, like Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989), basically a road trip through American poverty; I Hired a Contract Killer (1990), in which the entire plot is set off by Henri Boulanger being undervalued by his office job; La Vie de Bohème (1992), a tale of struggling to not get evicted… This phase is probably considered by most to be peak-Kaurismäki, as here the unshowiness of his camera and simplicity of his dialogue complement the modest people these simple stories uplift (though come on, his cinematography his always been plain but stunningly beautiful).
The Muse:
These are the Matti Pellonpää years, the screen lit up by, as Peter von Bagh described them, "the saddest eyes in Finland," set in the face of a performer who could in the very next instant, pull off the funniest non-verbal gag you've ever seen. Nobody could nor ever will compete with goddamn Matti Pellonpää. Pellonpää appears in all of Kaurismäki's eleven feature films from 1983 until his death in 1995 except for The Match Factory Girl and I Hired a Contract Killer (both 1990). (In 1990-1991, Pellonpää was fairly busy starring in other films, including Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth, and Räpsy ja Dolly, for which he won Best Actor at the Jussi Awards, the Finnish Oscars (most of the other 1991 Jussi Awards went to Match Factory or Contract Killer)).
Grieving the Muse:
In this phase, Kaurismäki attempts to grapple with the loss of his dependable leading man by writing Pellonpää roles but casting surrogates, none of whom stick around as his new by-default leading man (especially not Janne Hyytiäinen in the inert Lights in the Dusk (2006)). The most heartbreaking manifestation of this period is Kaurismäki's use of a framed photo of a young Pellonpää to represent a dead child in Drifting Clouds (1996).
Kaurismäki So White:
Kaurismäki tries to atone for the fact there are approximately zero non-white people in any of his films (there is briefly one black boy in Lights in the Dusk, but that's it), and that his career's renown has contributed greatly to exporting worldwide the false myth of an all-white Finland. He first does this in the cringiest manner possible with the ultimate White Savior film Le Havre (2011) (not even set in Finland!!), and then tries to rectify that with The Other Side of Hope (2017), to date his only film with a protagonist who is not white.
And then there is Fallen Leaves, which feels like both a turning point, and a returning for Kaurismäki. On a scene-by-scene basis, it is essentially just a rehashing of all of his proletariat films – we've seen this all before. But also, we haven't.
The protagonists are white, the usual surrogates for Pellonpää and Kati Outinen, but smaller parts and background actors are strikingly multiethnic. Holappa even says goodbye to his roommate (Sherwan Haji) in Arabic. The trademark Kaurismäki moment when a scene, essentially, grinds to a halt so a real band can perform a full musical number is here not headlined by Kauristmäki's staples of 1970s punk buddies or 1950s lounge act – no, he’s updated his playlist with contemporary girl pop duo Maustetytöt ("Spice Girls"), who do, admittedly, project some of the sardonic stillness of the Leningrad Cowboys in their stage presence.
However, the most striking signifier of growth to me is that, in Fallen Leaves, for the first time in Aki Kaurismäki's filmography, alcoholism matters. Hell, the signature "Kaurismäki push-in shot," reserved for the moment in his films when his characters have some big revelation, is given to Holappa realizing he needs to quit drinking. Alcohol is a more frequent presence in Kaurismäki's films than even Pellonpää or Outinen, but usually it is portrayed as just an inevitable, omnipresent, quotidian component of everyday life – everybody drinks, a lot, all the time. When alcoholism is (rarely) called out, it is a playful off-hand comment, or a visual gag like the beer cans in the coffin in Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989).
The only time drinking actually impacts anyone is by making them more susceptible to muggers (and thus a single sharp blow to the head), but these men could just as likely attack a character who's sober at the hamburger stand. But in Fallen Leaves, Holappa's alcoholism actually has consequences. Because of his drinking, he loses multiple jobs. He loses his girl. He's unhappy.
The ubiquitous alcohol in Kaurismäki's work has always had a dark, unexplored shadow. Alcohol abuse is a huge problem in Finland, but also in Kaurismäki's personal and professional life: notably, Matti Pellonpää died at age 44 in 1995, from health complications due to his lifelong heavy drinking. (In guidebooks of Finland, certain bars will be highlighted as, "Matti Pellonpää used to drink here"). Quitting drinking to "win the girl back" is a trope we've seen time and again in American romcoms (Knocked Up, Trainwreck, etc), but not in a Kaurismäki romcom. This is big. (The casting of lead Jussi Vatanen is interesting as he is best-known for starring in Lapland Odyssey, which is kind of like "Finland's The Hangover.")
But I do wonder, if rather than the beginning of a new phase in Kaurismäki's career, if this is an epilogue. I'm not an active Kaurismäki-phile anymore like I was in college, when I studied abroad in Finland and went to not only Aki-owned Corona and MOCKBA in Helsinki, but just bars I'd heard Kaurismäki had been spotted at. I'm not up on the Aki news anymore, but Fallen Leaves feels like a goodbye to me. This feels like, "Here is everything I've been trying to say throughout my career, and still clocking in at only a crisp 81 minutes."
I was really struck by the moment when Holappa asks his hostel neighbor (a cameo by erstwhile Kaurismäki leading man/Leningrad Cowboy Sakari Kuosmanen) if he could borrow a jacket. "Just take it, I have no more use for it," the old man tells Holappa. As though this is Kuosmanen as the Kaurismäki stand-in, casting off the themes he's explored in all his previous works, ready for a completely new chapter. Or, alternately, this is Kaurismäki passing the heavy crown to Jussi Vatanen and the new, vibrant Finnish cinema he represents. In the past few years, I've seen multiple new Finnish films in American theaters (Sisu, Girl Picture, Hatching). It's not just the Kaurismäki brothers and Renny Harlin anymore.