Fallen Leaves

 Holappa, a courtly blue-collar alcoholic in Aki Kaurismaki's Fallen Leaves (2023), says that he is depressed.  He explains that he is depressed because he drinks too much.  "But why do you drink so much?" a friend asks.  "Because I am depressed," Holappa says.  Fallen Leaves advances, by implication, two theories for why many people are isolated, lonely, and hopeless:  first, blue collar workers are the victims of oppressive social systems that flatten their emotional affect and keep them in a perpetual state of impoverished unhappiness; second, coercive social systems make the proletariat particularly protective of their personal dignity -- in many cases, it's all they have -- but this very defense mechanism tends to make them suspicious, unduly reticent and reserved, and, further, aggravates their social isolation.  And, then, of course, there's alcohol.  This resume, I'm afraid, may deter my readers from watching Fallen Leaves.  This would be unfortunate because this little film (only 82 minutes long) is a charming dead-pan comedy and well worth your attention.  The movie exemplifies a certain romantic stoicism that exists in the comedies of Charlie Chaplin (who is referenced in the film) and the quieter parts of Buster Keaton's movies.  Fallen Leaves doesn't aspire to much, but it achieves it's modest objectives -- it's a low-key inconsequential movie invested with a palpable sense of silence and melancholy.  Kaurismaki is a modest filmmaker who makes highly stylized, poetic movies about everyday people -- his work stands at the antipodes to cartoon super-hero movies that dominate the market and, also, it should be said big self-important prestige pictures like Oppenheimer or Killers of the Flower Moon.  On this spectrum, I have to admit that I prefer pictures like Fallen Leaves to the big-budget movies that I have mentioned.  Fallen Leaves is made with so little money that it can't even afford, it seems, a license to shoot on public transportation in Helsinki, the place where the picture takes place.  After a couple of early shots, obviously made on an actual bus or subway train, the movie shows its heroine shuttling to and from work in what appears to be a waiting room of some bureaucratic office -- shadows rhythmically sweep by the unseen window and we hear rails rattling under the location, but the image looks nothing like actual public transportation: it's brighter, better lit, and much more spacious.  Kaurismaki is so assured as a film maker that we simply accept the convention that he establishes with these shots without really questioning it.

As Shakespeare reminds us in A Midsummer Night's Dream, the "course of true love never did run smooth."  This is comically obvious in Fallen Leaves.  Holappa, a laborer, lives in a storage container with some emigrants from an Arabic-speaking nation.  The boss lets his workers live in the storage container, about six guys to the little room, as part of their compensation.  Ansa, a middle-aged woman, works in a grocery store where she is under surveillance on suspicion of theft by a burly co-worker; he looks like the Golem and is less expressive.  The characters meet at a surreal karaoke bar (in keeping with Kaurismaki's aesthetic, the place looks nothing at all like an actual karaoke place).  This is Finland and no one speaks much.  Holappa's buddy, a vain older man, sings -- he thinks he's so good that he deserves a record contract.  He tries to flirt with Ansa's friend, a dishwater blonde, but she mocks him for his age.  (People are too polite to point out that Holappa's friend is a terrible singer.)  In this scene, Ansa and Holappa exchange glances and are obviously interested in one another, but neither acts on this attraction.  The Karaoke bar exemplifies Kaurismaki's expressive, yet completely impassive style of film-making.  We see the bar from only a couple of angles:  a bartender stands motionless in front of shelving where liquor bottles are stacked; the bartender looks like an elderly biker with long grey hair and he seems incapable of motion and doesn't even turn his head to look at the karaoke singers.  The performers stand on a tiny stage and sing in full-frontal shots under a little garland of Christmas tree lights:  Kaurismaki didn't bother to license rights to any sort of actual karaoke video and, so, we have to accept that this is a karaoke place simply because people call it that.  The singers perform rather eclectic selections -- there are show tunes, straight-ahead and infectious rock and roll, and, finally, someone sings a Lied by Schubert.  Holappa who drinks all the time -- he has booze stashed all over the place where he works sandblasting rusted parts so they can be sold as new --  runs into Ansa a little later and asks her to go to a movie with him.  (They see Jim Jarmusch's The Dead don't Die, a zombie picture -- during the picture Ansa says that there are too many zombies for the cops to defeat them; after the show, she tells her date that "(she) has never laughed so hard in her life" although Kaurismaki doesn't show her, or any one in the movie, ever laughing.)  Ansa gives Holappa her phone number but he loses the little sheet of paper on which she has written the information.  She wants him to call, but, of course, he can't because he has lost the number and neglected to ask for her name.  Ansa gets fired from the supermarket for taking home expired food that would otherwise have to be thrown in the dumpster.  She is very poor and has to shut off her lights to conserve electricity.  But she's resourceful and, after working as a "kitchen assistant", gets a job doing heavy labor in a foundry.  Holappa injures himself on the sandblasting job and, because he is drunk, gets fired.  He goes to work at a construction site and has to stay in a sort of homeless shelter -- the bed in his room is comically short given his lanky build (this is the kind of gag you would see in a Keaton or Chaplin movie but it's so understated that it doesn't register as funny.) He also drinks on this job and gets fired again.

When Ansa's job as a kitchen assistant ends -- the boss is fired for drug dealing -- Ansa and Holuppa meet -- offscreen we hear a brawl between the crooked boss and the cops who are arresting him; this is also characteristic of Kaurismaki's style -- dramatic events are implied but not shown.  Holappa goes to the Ritz Theater, a repertoire place, and spends hours chainsmoking and waiting for Ansa to appear.  Finally, she shows up and, after some guarded remarks, invites Holappa to come to  her house for supper.  (She has to buy two Dollar Store plates and a couple forks since she has been eating nothing but microwaved food from its store containers up to this point in the film.)  Holappa's jacket is wrecked and he has to borrow a coat from another homeless man.  At Ansa's house, Holappa wants to get drunk.  Ansa tells him that her father and brother died from alcoholism and she will not tolerate drinking in her home.  Holappa says that she can't boss him and stalks out of the house.  After awhile, Holappa gets sober and calls Ansa.  By this time, Ansa has acquired a dog, a mutt that was hanging around the foundry and half-starved.  Ansa agrees to see Holappa and he says he will come right over to her flat.  But on the way, he gets run over by a train.  (I kid you not.)  After being stood-up, Ansa learns that Holappa is in the hospital in a medically induced coma.  She visits him with her dog.  (Although I don't trust Kaurismaki's realism on this point, the film suggests that mutts are welcome in Finnish hospitals.)  Ansa reads to the unconscious Holappa.  When he revives after a few weeks, the two of them depart the hospital together.  She strides purposefully across a big park strewn with fallen leaves, walking very quickly so that poor Holappa, who is on crutches, can scarcely keep up with her.  The dog, named "Chaplin", trots alongside.  

Kaurismaki's touch is very light and his staging minimalist.  The film looks like a combination of Jim Jarmusch's Strangers in Paradise and some of Ozu's later pictures -- there is a stylistic disposition to film characters in full frontal shots and the movie has a ravishing sequence of so-called "empty frames" that is, shots of objects and landscapes without people that establish a sense of anomie and melancholy, lacrimae rerum, the tears of things.  The film features fragments of rapturous classical music, for instance, Tchaikovsky's Sixth symphony, pop songs including a Finnish version of a Gordon Lightfoot standard, that comment on the action.  The colors in the movie are precisely calibrated with Ansa's red garments a focal point.  The movie posters at the Ritz provide commentary on the action -- for instance, we see a poster advertising David Lean's Brief Encounter just before the couple are separated and can't re-connect.  (This is the kind of picture in which you suspect that the hangdog figures at the margins of the movie are all drinking buddies of Kaurismaki; at the Ritz, two dorky cinephiles comes out of theater and compare some unnamed picture to Godard  -- one guy says the movie reminds him of Pierrot le Fou, the other says "No, it was more like A Band a Parte.")  This is very precisely made, mindful and intentional movie in which every effect, or absence of effect, is exactly calibrated.  There's only one kiss in the movie; Ansa tries to kiss Holuppa but he's too tall and their lips miss one another.  (There are several production companies in the world of cinema that have appealing and distinctive names:  I like Spike Lee's Forty Acres and a Mule and Kaurismaki's Sputnik Oy.)