Review of The Man Without a Past (2002) by Christopher C — 12 Apr 2011

Aki Kaurismaki's 2002 film MIES VAILLA MENEISYTTA (The Man without a Past) has become the director's most successful film internationally. It's easy to see why. This story of a man who gets hit on the head in a violent mugging, loses his memory, and must survive in a cold world is fairly universal in its themes. While set in Helsinki, references to concrete places there are exceedingly few, and the movie's action could be unfolding almost anywhere. The visuals of the film, such as the charmingly incongrous set design blending the 1950s and the digital era, and the preference for sky blue among the colors will certainly please a wide audience.

What does keep the film exceedingly Finnish, however, is the deadpan humour. Foreign audiences are likely to laugh at some lines that are typical communication between Finns and miss some of the more subtle Finnish humour. There's also an attack on the Finnish welfare state, and it is for this that the film has always left me uneasy. In my years of living in Finland, I've never encountered cold, uncaring civil servants like Kaurismaki depicts. Police and city bureaucrats are, though slighly stoic in the Finnish manner, friendly and approchable enough. As Kaurismaki depicts a man reduced utterly by the uncaring State, I started wondering what exactly his agenda is. At times, MIES VAILLA MENEISYTTA seems to approach some kind of neo-liberal propaganda film, and without this the film would have been much stronger.