MOVIE REVIEW

Man Without a Past, The  (2003)

Starring: Markku Peltola, Juhani Niemelä, Kaija Pakarinen
Director: Aki Kaurismäki

Rating: PG-13

Studio: Sony Pictures Classics

Review Posted: 4.25.03

Spoilers: Minor/Major

By Sara Michelle Fetters

"Amnesia Bliss – The Man Without a Past Definitely Worth Remembering"

A lone man gets off the last evening train into Helsinki. Hungry, tired and not quite sure of where he’s heading, he’s viciously attacked. Left for dead the man, simply known as "M" (Markku Peltola), wakes to find himself bandaged, bruised, bloody, utterly alone and left for the mortician in an inner-city hospital. Worse, he has no memory of who he is or where he’s come from, a man without a clue as to what sort of human being he actually is.

Journeying out into the industrial sector, M is given assistance and aid by the downtrodden Nieminem (Juhani Niemelä and Kaija Pakarinen) family. They tend to his wounds and feed him a bit of their soup broth, all the while wondering where this mysterious stranger with no past has come. Living out of a beat up locomotive trailer and using other people’s discarded wears as their household goods; the Nieminem’s don’t have much, yet they are more than willing to share it with this nameless stranger.

Soon M is helping around the home, making friends with the children and fixing up broken bits of this and that. He even manages to find work at the local Salvation Army with the aid of the kindly clerk Irma (Kati Outinen), willing to give him a chance even without a social security number. Making a deal with the local security officer, M even manages to procure a locomotive trailer of his own to call home, using his wits to make it something a bit more than livable.

With memories not returning, M starts the down the road into romance anyhow with the lonely Irma, the duo finding a connection that manages to bring levity and light into their gray-colored world. M even convinces the Salvation Army to let their band begin to play 50’s style rock and roll, becoming a de facto manager for the surreal group of boppers. If not a great life, it’s certainly a good one, and when the opportunity arises for M to know more about his past, will he turn his back on the life of a man he’s not sure he’ll even like?

These are the questions raised by Finnish writer/director Aki Kaurismäki (La Vie de Bohéme, The Match Factory Girl) in his lyrically beautiful new film The Man Without a Past. After watching it, I wasn’t too sure myself if my choices would be any different than those M makes. He has no clue as to the life he’s led, only feelings that tell him he wasn’t the type of man he necessarily wanted to be. Now, M is becoming something of a local hero, quietly living out an existence based on good will and honesty.

This is a remarkable film. The Man Without a Past moves like a tome poem, granting opaque glimpses into the every day lives of people many of us would be more apt to just walk on by if we met them out on the street. He sees beauty in the smallest of details, infusing light and color into a world of the dingiest drab. From the sultry strains of a beaten up jukebox to the deep brown earth giving forth life in the form of baby potatoes, Kaurismaki points his lens into recesses I haven’t seen quite like this.  It’s truly remarkable, and I found myself realizing the sound could be turned clean off and M’s story would still be mesmerizing.

Always having been a gifted filmmaker, the director doesn’t quite take the chances of his last film, the black and white silent epic Juha. No matter, the risks here aren’t of the arty film school variety. Kaurismaki is more interested in telling a small, simple story with the passion of a timeless epic. The results are deeply affecting, M’s journey into a state of true humanity and love one of the most heartfelt explorations on those themes I’ve seen in years.

Granted, it’s still a bit too obtuse and stilted to manage a direct hit. Like all of the director’s films, some of the characters walking through the picture are just too cartoonish to be completely effective. The best example is the wacko marauders that leave M for dead. Hopped up and moving as if possessed by the spirit of Malcolm McDowell’s Clockwork Orange Droogs, these three thugs seem fit more for some sort of psychotic post-apocalyptic horror film than they do for this. In fact, they’re so jarring they took me completely out of the movie, Kaurismaki almost leaving me behind before The Man Without a Past even got a chance to get rolling.

Only almost, though, for once things do get rolling the filmmaker had me hooked. This is one of the most entertaining and interesting films of the year, going places most movies fear to tread. Kaurismaki makes the most of M’s tale, making The Man Without a Past a film worth remembering long after others have gone off into their own past of insignificance.

Rating: 3.5 out of 4

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