Fantastic First Films #1: Aki Kaurismaki’s Crime and Punishment (1983)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s great novel Crime and Punishment has been adapted to the cinematic form well over 25 times, the most popular of which is perhaps the 1935 film of the same name by Josef von Sternberg. Elements from this great book have appeared in many more films as diverse as Kryztoff Kieslowski’s A Short Film about Killing and Woody Allen’s Match Point. Aki Kaurismaki’s version is set in Helsinki of the 1980s and exists in an air of urban unease and dead pan indifference.
Kaurismaki had been co-directing several projects of his elder brother Mika before he had embarked upon his first solo venture. His approach to the film is minimalist at heart, making use of “low-key” acting and dialogue that has a running undercurrent of dark humour. Really each of the characters in his film is somewhat lonely and may seem almost misanthropic at times but Kaurismaki manages to create a sense of empathy around them.
Markku Toikka plays the lead character of the film called Rahikanen, a worker at a slaughter-house who commits “the crime” at the beginning of the film. He walks into the apartment of the soon-to-be killed Kari Honkanen posing as a person from the courier service and shoots him. He then steals the victim’s watch and wallet and just sits next to his body quietly. A woman from the catering service walks through the door and sees Rahikanen sitting next to her client’s body. At this point one expects the woman to set off into a fit of screams and squeals while the killer tries to subdue her but it just won’t happen in a Kaurismaki film. Instead, she just asks:
“What’s the matter with him?”
“Nothing. He’s dead.” Rahikanen says.
Aino Seppo plays the woman from the catering service Eeva Laakso. Her brilliant performance takes its heart in her bullet-proofed stare that she puts on throughout the film. She lays the primer for future Kaurismaki-an women to build their characters upon. On the surface she is ice cold and indifferent to others but time and again she shows that she is capable of compassion towards the other person and if we’re lucky she might even let out a smile.
Kaurismaki had been compared heavily to the great Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The characters of both these great directors move about in a deliberate wooden manner and express themselves in very straightforward and dead-pan way. Perhaps where both Kaurismaki and Fassbinder succeed is the way in which they make their audience not only relate to their characters but also make them step into their shoes and empathize with them. While he shares so much in common with Fassbinder, Kaurismaki does not indulge in the theatrical melodrama that Fassbinder literally bathes in. His characters react in a cool and indifferent manner. Kaurismaki himself is known to have claimed that he never really watched any Fassbinder films until the time people started making comparisions to his work.
The Helsinki in which the Kaurismaki universe exists is bleak and heartlessly industrial. There are shots of block structures against an early evening light and very chemical looking neon signs and during the daytime there is always an air of quiet restlessness. A large part of the film is set inside the claustrophobic matchbox apartment of Rahikanen, apparently a hostel. He paces about in the room hiding his gun behind a sofa cushion. Then there are shots of Rahikanen smoking and pondering out of his window. Kaurismaki takes his time with these seemingly mundane shots and it is only after many years of the film’s original release that one realizes the importance of these shots.
These moments in the film are an important document of Helsinki of the 1980s although filtered through the slightly pessimistic medium that is Kaurismaki’s vision. It gives us a peek into the general disillusionment of the people and their constant need to escape the threshold of the city and perhaps even themselves. This is what one gets to thinking when Rahikanen says:
”I killed a louse and became one myself…I didn’t want to kill a man, I wanted to kill a principle.”
