Albert Camus’s novel of 1942, L’etranger (or “The
Outsider”), introduced the world to one of the first and most
memorable in a long line of alienated heroes. The French-Algerian
Meursault insisted on defining himself by the action — the killing
of an Arab — which led to his execution. In accepting the
responsibility for his own deed, he also asserted his freedom: he
had chosen his fate and not had it foisted upon him. That
self-assertion was also, naturally, a refusal to be a victim. But
alienation has changed a bit in the last 65 years. Lights in
the Dusk (Laitakaupungin valot), the third
installment in what the Finnish director, Aki Kaurismaki, calls his
“loser trilogy” (along with Drifting Clouds and The
Man Without a Past) is about a man whose existence is
virtually coterminous with his victimhood — and who seems to like
it that way. The earlier films dealt with unemployment and
homelessness, but this one is a bit more subtle. Its hero is not
obviously the victim of economic, social or political forces nearly
so much as he is of just not being very likable. At least not to
the other people in the movie.
Koistinen (Janne Hyytiainenis) is a security guard in Helsinki
who for some reason never revealed to us is held in contempt by his
fellow guards. They pretend not to know who he is, and when a group
of them go out for a beer they pointedly exclude him. He seems to
have no friends outside of work either. The only person who speaks
to him is a woman called Aila (Maria Heiskanen) who serves him hot
dogs from her wienie wagon. We get it. It’s a film about
loneliness. But the underlying problem with Lights in the
Dusk is that there is no apparent reason why Koistinen should
be so lonely. He seems to want the fellowship of those around him
but to be rebuffed for no reason. He is a loser only because Mr.
Kaurismaki needs him to be a loser.
And then he chooses to be an even bigger loser — in fact, a
spectacularly successful loser.
One day a striking blonde woman, Mirja (Maria Jarvenhelmi),
accosts Koistinen as if to strike up a relationship. They go out to
a movie, a meal and a disco together. Koistinen brags to Aila that
he’s got a girlfriend. Mirja visits him at work and persuades him
to take her, against regulations, on his rounds. She watches as he
types in a security code at a jewelry shop. Then she puts a Mickey
Finn in his coffee and steals his keys. Her accomplice, a gangster
called Lindstrom (Ilkka Koivula), robs the jewelry shop, and
Koistinen is fired. But he doesn’t tell the police anything about
Mirja — just that he woke up in a car on the other side of the
city with his keys missing. Even when Mirja visits him later and
plants some of the jewels in his apartment so as to get him
arrested for the robbery, he says nothing.
In other words, he chooses his fate as much as — or even more
than — Meursault does. Yet the film still wants us to see him as a
victim and not an existential hero. He in effect chooses to go to
prison for two years. Is it out of a sense of misplaced chivalry
towards the woman who has betrayed him? Is it love? Is it
stupidity? Oddly, Mr Kaurismäki appears to have no
interest in the answers to these questions. Rather, he presents
this distinctly odd behavior as being just his hero’s nature.
“Koistinen will never betray you,” Lindstrom tells Mirja. “He’s as
loyal as a dog, the sentimental fool. It’s my genius to understand
that.”
By the way, it’s also Lindstrom’s genius to understand Mirja’s
loyalty to himself. She whines to him about what she is being asked
to do to Koistinen by saying, “What do you want of him? He’s a
complete loser. Why am I doing this?”
“Because otherwise,” Lindstrom replies, “you’d have to
work.”
Subsequently Mr. Kaurismaki adds a witty scene in which Mirja is
seen doing the vacuuming in Lindstrom’s luxury apartment while he
plays cards and drinks with a group of his buddies. She may not be
a loser, but she’s got the loser’s — or the wife’s — masochistic
need to be taken advantage of.
Meanwhile, the almost forgotten Aila writes and offers to visit
Koistinen in prison. He tears the letter up unread. That makes him,
too, the recipient of undeserved loyalty and Aila, perhaps, the
champion of the victims because she’s the only one not victimizing
someone else. Is Koistinen’s canine loyalty, then, supposed to be
also distinctively feminine? Or is his spectacularly futile act of
passive-aggression intended as a kind of existential
self-assertion, like Meursault’s in going defiantly to his
execution? Is it possible to assert your own existence by
gratuitously sacrificing it? You be the judge, since the sacrifice
is obviously intended to impress the audience rather than Mirja
herself.
One thing an American will notice about this film is how much
smoking there is. Everybody seems to smoke all the time — except
for Mirja — and to look thoroughly miserable while doing it. Is
this another way of courting disease, suffering and unhappiness?
Koistinen’s early encounter with some drunken Russians, eagerly
talking about literature, may be meant to suggest that
passive-aggressive victimhood should be seen as a Finnish national
tradition. But there is also a logical conundrum in the portrayal
of Koistinen as a loser, since if he chooses victimhood, then he is
presumably getting what he wants — which makes him a winner! That
may be why Mr. Kaurismaki in the end suggests that Koistinen is
prepared to cede the crown of martyrdom to Aila — which would,
paradoxically, restore him to his place as biggest loser of all.
It’s potentially a Woody Allen type comedy, but I don’t think Aki
Kaurismaki is laughing.
