Shadows in Paradise (1986)

Wonderful character development!

Dreadfully Boring

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

One of reviewers has called this movie "a beautiful example of minimalism". By this I believe is meant minimalism of acting, as the two leads, Matti Pellonpää and Kati Outinen, spend the first forty minutes of this movie without any expression, until one breaks out in a sardonic smile. This does not look like minimalism to me, but depression. As I have remarked in other reviews, a low affect is typical of depression and accurate in its portrayal. It is not, however, interesting.It's a movie about two lower-class loners. He's a garbageman. She's been fired from three jobs in the last few months, for what she says is no reason. On their first date, he takes her to what appears to be a bingo game in a DMV office. She asks him what he wants. He says "nothing". I believe him. Eventually she stops showing up.She regrets it. So does he. He shows up to invite her to see his sister in a mental hospital.In the theater, in the dark, surrounded by other people who are paying attention, the bleached colors and the effort made to read emotion into the blank eyes of the players is an engrossing operation. It's clear that these two want the simplest and most human of things, a little sex and not to be alone. However, they demand too much from each other, to make the offer without indicating they want it. How can they expect anything? And, given the director's indifference to the audience, his "minimalism", how can he expect an audience to put in the work without more of an indication that there is an expectation of some reward?

A great look at Helsinki you'll never see in any travel brochure. I went into this movie blind--and found it fun in removing me from the here and now. The tone is noirish and deadpan---the actors perfect for the roles. All of it was sort of believable in a humorous way which is key to this movie.The movie was made in 1986 almost 30 years ago so it involves some time travel as well.I recommend it is the sort of thing I like although I would not probably rush to watch it again...7---RECOMMEND

I am attracted to ambitious films, ones that challenge and that have a lot of powerful layered machinery. It is how I build my life.They are work. Art is work if you intend to collect and use it as fuel. So when you refine your notions about which films are worth the effort, you implicitly also make decisions. There are the films that aren't worth the precious time you have left, of course. But along the way you also find those films and filmmakers you can relax with. Instead of putting your whole soul on the line, you can just find a groove and relax.I only knew this filmmaker from 'The Man with No Past,' and that had a little too much bitter in the bittersweet. This is apparently his first film in that form. It isn't something he invented, but because he is Finnish, it may be the most effective distillation of it.There are two characteristics. One is the very careful flattening into two cinematic worlds. One is very straightforward: things are as they seem. People are no more than what you encounter: their inner selves are worn on their faces. You see all the way to the bottom. The encounters are simple, here we have simple friendship: two guys meet in jail. They are friends before the first one even wakes up to an offered cigarette. (There is more smoking in this film than I think I have ever seen.) There is the simplest reduction of romance, or rather the cinematic romance of the date movie. This always runs the risk of being cartoonish, or cloying, or even just boring, no matter how genuine. The second world is one of cinematic dreams, of what you really dream when you awake and think it was of love. It is highly economical, and deeply symbolic. A best friend of 25 years dies suddenly, someone we have invested in, someone with plans that will have formed the basis of the movie to come, we expect. Ten seconds and he is gone. As soon as we get the minimum information, almost as sparse as a Rockwell painting, we have a shot of a black dog running away under a garbage-strewn elevated road. That also is only a few seconds, but it gives us the shadows, the dream foundation, and is so richly evocative we instantly collaborate by filling in what we know from our dreams, the fears, sadness, disorder of death.In most filmmakers, this second world is shoved in your face and delivers humor, or perhaps some delivered allegory. And that is where the power of detachment comes in. Nordic people are famously flat emotionally, but among them, Finns are extreme. And is seems that among Finns, Kaurismäki is extreme. Both of these layers are presented in an Anti-Hitchcock fashion. The camera has no identity, makes no judgement, has no dreams.Both worlds are delivered with no emotional content and an absolute minimum of structure. All you do is pour in your own, which you can do, but only because there is a shadow layer that affirms dreams. I am tempted to say that the love story is the same, folding the foreground of the garbage collector and the dreams he has as the woman he falls in love with as instantly and effortlessly as every other raindrop in this film.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

After a stunning debut, Crime and Punishment, and a bizarre, experimental second feature, Calamari Union, Aki Kaurismäki began doing what he's best at: telling the stories of Finnish underdogs'everyday experiences. And it all started with Shadows in Paradise, the first installment of the "workers trilogy" (continued with Ariel and The Match Factory Girl), and arguably Kaurismäki's finest film (at least until he made The Man Without a Past). It also marked his first collaboration with Kati Outinen, who has become the very symbol, alongside the late Matti Pellonpää, of Kaurismäki's cinema.Fittingly, Pellonpää and Outinen are the leading couple of shadows in Paradise. He reprises the role of Nikander he previously played in Crime and Punishment, with more English lessons (which originate his best line, at the end of the film) and trouble at work: his plans to start his own business get buried with his associate (Esko Nikkari), who commits suicide five minutes into the movie. While looking for a new job, he meets Ilona (Outinen), who works as a cashier in a Helsinki supermarket. The two start hanging out, eventually forming a sweet, if platonic, bond, occasionally threatened by Nikander's apparent cynicism.The film's magic resides entirely in its minimalism: little dialogue, sober settings, raw, Finnish humor, real, likable characters and no overacting, as Kaurismäki tells his simple, universal, incredibly touching love story. Pellonpää and Outinen's understated, affecting performances complete each other, with valuable support from Sakari Kuosmanen as Melartin, Nikander's best friend, who even steals from his own daughter to finance his buddy's dates. Not that his behavior is exemplary, but it shows how much these people care for each other, and that's where Kaurismäki succeeds: he makes us emphasize with these characters despite their many flaws, and delivers an astounding, memorable picture.A true masterpiece of Finnish film-making, from the best director that country has ever spawned.