Land of the Midnight Sauna, Part Two: Mikko Niskanen's Devastating Eight Deadly Shots

EIGHT DEADLY SHOTS / Kahdeksan Surmanluotia
(Mikko Niskanen, 1972, Finland, 35mm, 145 minutes)

Click here for part one

"Eight Deadly Shots is perhaps the most nuanced picture of the working of the economic system in the history of our cinema: a close-up of a man up against the wall, at the most basic level of breathing."
--Peter von Bagh, Kansan Uutiset

While Mikko Niskanen's Skin, Skin is light, Eight Deadly Shots is the essence of dark. Born in 1929, the actor and director made 14 features before his death in 1990. The British Film Institute, in 1972's New Cinema in Finland, describes this B&W effort as his "most important film so far." One of filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki's favorites, it remains Niskanen's most important--even if it isn't really a "film" (more on that below). A powerful work of social protest, it's among the finest Finnish pictures ever produced.

Originally commissioned for television, Eight Deadly Shots was broadcast in four installments totaling five hours and 16 minutes. Like the abridged edition of Ingmar Bergman's 1973 small-screen series Scenes from a Marriage, this theatrical version plays as if it was always meant to be a movie. The BFI proclaimed it "a triumph" and a "minor masterpiece."

By way of comparison, the BFI proclaimed 1966's Skin, Skin as "smooth, lively, and unpretentious"--qualifying that it's a "somewhat overrated youth picture"--while 1971's Song of the Scarlet Flower (which screens on Saturday) is "a disaster." The BFI also raved about Niskanen's first feature, 1962's Boys, made after two years of study at Moscow's State Institute of Cinematography, but it isn't screening as part of the Northwest Film Forum's Sisu Cinema: Nine from the Finnish New Wave.

To judge by the first week of screenings, including Jörn Donner's charmingly titled Fuck Off! Images of Finland (1971), the series has been an unqualified success, and those who missed the opening week still have two left during which to get caught up. Summer Rebellion, Diary of a Worker, and Poor Maria brings things to a close next weekend.

Inspired by a 1969 incident concerning Tauno Veikko Pasanen (with whom Niskanen consulted), Eight Deadly Shots examines the rigors of rural life from the inside out. It's one thing to live off the fat of the land, but it's another when that land ceases to yield produce of any value, especially when there are no other income-generating options available.

Farmer Pasi (Niskanen looking every inch the Bressonian anti-hero) lives with his wife (Tarja-Tuulikki Tarsala) and children in Konginkangas, an isolated mountain village. There's plenty of love to go around, but times are tight. To supplement their income, Pasi distills liquor stronger than the stuff the government provides. After a hard day's work, he gathers with his buddies, brews up a batch, sells a few bottles, and drinks himself into oblivion.

His perceptive, unnamed wife understands the situation all too clearly. The money is a boon, but the operation represents a serious liability. The authorities have been keeping tabs on the community, and the penalties for bootlegging are stiff. Worse yet, Pasi's drinking is taking its toll by destroying his family and, through distribution, the entire town.

The BFI: "The illegal distilling of spirits, an important part of the film's action, becomes a social protest, the last trial of strength for a powerless small farmer, an illusory flame of freedom and life but which, according to the class laws of society, irrevocably destroys the protester himself."

Like Shohei Imamura's 1966 The Pornographers, which blames a repressive regime for stunted sexual maturity, Eight Deadly Shots eschews speechifying to make its point. The focus is always on the farmer, but where are the government programs that could help re-train workers for non-agricultural trades? Where are the substance abuse counselors?

Eventually, the police catch the distillers in the act, and Pasi's downward spiral accelerates until an act of violence seals his fate. Nobody makes him pull the trigger, but nor does anyone help him when he's down. 

About the neo-realist thriller, the BFI adds, "One of the great achievements of Niskanen is that he is able to portray the basic positiveness of the leading character of this grim story--also his belief in the possibilities of nature and work--and all this without the wrong kind of romanticism, without traditional poetic clichés of film humanism--and without pity, since pity would have meant placing oneself outside the situation."

Aside from the carefully observed writing, Niskanen's deeply felt performance makes Eight Deadly Shots hard to deny. It may not sound like a fun night at the movies, but the film is so attentive to time and place that it feels universal (Niskanen grew up in the same part of Finland).

Whether or not there's a history of alcoholism in his family, Pasi's reasons for drinking are always understandable. And his efforts to deny it recall Ray Milland's prevaricator in The Lost Weekend. As in Billy Wilder's 1945 feature, Niskanen doesn't waste time with Freudian psychobabble--dad was withholding, mom was controlling--but gets in under Pasi's skin, allowing the audience access to his feelings of hopelessness and despair.

In the annals of film criticism, there are three words that serve as disincentives like no others. Those words are: long, slow, and dark (bad and boring don't count as they're so subjective as to be meaningless). At 145 minutes, Eight Deadly Shots may take a walk on the long side, but it's hardly epic, and compared to the cinema of, say, Andrei Tarkovsky, the pace is practically brisk. The darkness, however, is undeniable. And Niskanen doesn't use comedy to brighten the corners. Like Charles Burnett's 1977 Killer of Sheep, which also depicts decency under trying conditions, the director uses the humanity of his characters and the pitiless beauty of their surroundings to craft a timeless work of controlled rage.

Sisu Cinema: Nine From the Finnish New Wave continues at the Northwest Film Forum through 2/17. Eight Deadly Shots plays on 2/10. The NWFF is located at 1515 12th Ave. on Capitol Hill between Pike and Pine. For more information, please call 206-329-2629. Images: Midnight Sun Film Festival, Film at Lincoln Center, and Doclisboa Film Festival, and The New York Times (Niskanen via Finnish Film Foundation / YLE).

Land of the Midnight Sauna, Part One: Mikko Niskanen's Sensual Pastoral Skin, Skin

SKIN, SKIN / Käpy Selän Alla
(Mikko Niskanen, 1966, Finland, 35mm, 89 minutes)

"The Finnish word sisu means resilience and survival under difficult circumstances. In shorthand, it's often translated as 'guts,' and is regarded as a characteristic Finnish trait."
--From the introduction to Sisu Cinema: Nine from the Finnish New Wave

In regarding the Finnish New Wave, it's tempting to look for antecedents to Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki's pitch-black comic style. On the basis of Mikko Niskanen's 1966 Skin, Skin and 1972 Eight Deadly Shots, however--I've also seen Jörn Donner's Sixtynine 69 and Anna--Kaurismäki's miserablist masterworks, like 1996's Drifting Clouds and 2002's The Man Without a Past, seem more idiosyncratic than ever.

To be sure, humor abounds in Skin, Skin, aka Skin to Skin, but it isn't brushed with blackness, while Eight Deadly Shots is downright Bressonian in its tragic trajectory; humor isn't part of the equation at all. Only six years separate the two, but they couldn't have less in common, and almost feel like the products of separate sensibilities. (The NWFF will also be screening Niskanen's Song of the Scarlet Flower from 1971.)

In the director's first entry, two college-age couples set up camp by the seaside in order to get to know each other--and themselves--better. (Anna, starring Donner's Swedish wife, Harriet Andersson, also takes place by the shore; unfortunately, there are no more screenings of Anna and Sixtynine 69.) Based on their skittish behavior, Skin, Skin's female protagonists would appear to be virgins, while their boyish suitors are more experienced--about sex that is, not the ways of the world.

Boisterous brunette Riita (Kristiina Halkola) reminds her companions of Tunisian-Italian beauty Claudia Cardinale--an understandable observation--while circumspect blonde Leena (Kirsti Wallasvaara) evokes Brigitte Bardot, particularly once she dons her newsboy cap.

The men also seem familiar, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Spontaneous Jean-Pierre Leaud type Timo (Pekka Autiovuori), a medic whose skills will come in handy, wears spectacles. His brooding companion, Santtu (Eero Melasniemi, Halkola's spouse), cops a Rebel without a Cause attitude and shaggy hairstyle, indicating a less conformist outlook--either that or he's just more attuned to 1960s fashions.

As Finnish historian Sakari Toiviiainen notes in "New Finnish Cinema," "The main characters...corresponded to the image youth had of itself, but equally to the image the parents had: their characterization was so general that they were like products of the advertising and debate being directed towards them, that is, they behaved more like 'young' than individuals." He adds that the film was "an enormous success."

During the picture, the women sing a few songs, which all sound like Finnish variations on the French chanson--there's also a chic singer-actress on holiday (Anneli Sauli), who performs a number during the pivotal dance hall sequence--but Skin, Skin isn't a musical. It's more like a sex comedy, an introspective pastoral miles removed from the urban insanity of Donner's Sixtynine 69 with its human-and canine-coupling.

Despite a few jump cuts, the results more closely resemble a pre-Vietnam American independent rather than a Scandinavian nouvelle vague entry. These pretty young people have carnal relations on their minds rather than politics. They're also concerned about their futures, but only in the most general sense, i.e. Riita wants to settle down, Santtu doesn't.

If Skin, Skin sounds light, that's because it is, but it's also entertaining, erotic, and well worth seeing on the big screen (home video isn't an option at presnt). Maybe Finland's "sauna culture" helps to explain the phenomenon, but there's as much casual nudity in these movies--naked bathing figures in Sixtynine 69, while abundant skinny-dipping decorates Anna--as hard alcohol. Which is to say: a bountiful bevy of both.

Next: Eight Deadly Shots

   

Sisu Cinema: Nine from the Finnish New Wave runs at the Northwest Film Forum from 2/1-17. Curated by Adam Sekuler, Seattle is the only North American city to host the series. Skin, Skin plays on Fri. 2/8. The NWFF is located at 1515 12th Ave. on Capitol Hill between Pike and Pine. For more information, please call 206-329-2629. Images: Close-up and MUBI.