After graduating in media studies from the University of Tampere, Kaurismäki worked as a bricklayer, postman, and dish-washer, long before pursuing his interest in cinema, first as a critic, and later as a screenwriter & director.[2] He started his career as a co-screenwriter and actor in films made by his older brother, Mika Kaurismäki. He played the main role in Mika's film The Liar (1981). Together they founded the production company Villealfa Filmproductions and later the Midnight Sun Film Festival. His debut as an independent director was Crime and Punishment (1983), an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's novel set in modern Helsinki. He gained worldwide attention with Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989). In 1992, the New York Times film critic Vincent Canby declared Kaurismäki "an original ... one of cinema's most distinctive and idiosyncratic new artists, and possibly one of the most serious.... [He] could well turn out to be the seminal European filmmaker of the '90s."[3]
Personal life
In 1989 he emigrated with his wife, Paula Oinonen, to Portugal, saying "in all of Helsinki there is no place left where I could place my camera".[4] As of 2023, he is still based in Portugal.[5]
In Helsinki, Kaurismäki is the co-owner of a complex, Andorra, that incorporates a cinema, several bars and a pool hall featuring a giant poster for Robert Bresson's L’Argent. It also features the jukebox from Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses.[6]
Style
Aki Kaurismäki on Calamari Union's first night in 1985Aki Kaurismäki in 1990Aki Kaurismäki in 2012
Kaurismäki is known for his extremely minimalistic style. He has been called an auteur,[7][8] since he writes, directs, produces and usually edits the films himself, and thus introduces his personal "drollery and deadpan"[9] style. The camera is usually still.[10] Events are shown in a plain manner and characters are usually left alone facing the consequences. However, despite their tragedies and setbacks, the characters do not give up and eventually survive.[8]
Much of Kaurismäki's work is centred on Helsinki, such as the film Calamari Union, the proletariat trilogy (Shadows in Paradise, Ariel and The Match Factory Girl) and the Finland trilogy (Drifting Clouds, The Man Without a Past and Lights in the Dusk). His vision of Helsinki is critical and singularly unromantic. Indeed, his characters often speak about how they wish to get away from Helsinki. Some end up in Mexico (Ariel), others in Estonia (Shadows in Paradise, Calamari Union, and Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana). Kaurismäki also uses, on purpose, characters, elements and settings that hark back to the 1960s and 1970s.[8]
Kaurismäki has been influenced by the French directors Jean-Pierre Melville, Jacques Becker, and Robert Bresson, the Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu, the American director John Cassavetes, and some critics have also inferred the influence of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. His movies have a humorous side that can also be seen in the films of Jim Jarmusch, who has a cameo in Kaurismäki's film Leningrad Cowboys Go America. Jarmusch used actors who have appeared frequently in Kaurismäki's films in his own film Night on Earth, part of which takes place in Helsinki.
Kaurismäki has been a vocal critic of digital cinematography, calling it "a devil's invention"[11] and saying he "won't make a digital film in this life".[12] In March 2014, however, he reconciled, saying that "in order to maintain my humble film oeuvre accessible to a potential audience, I have ended up in rendering it to digital in all its present and several of its as yet unknown forms".[11]
Political views
The political context of Kaurismäki's work is very much influenced by his attitude to Finland's treatment of the working class. In his view, the social and political ramifications of class structures and lack of economic parity render lower-class workers replaceable cogs in an outdated machine.[13]
In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, Kaurismäki signed a letter endorsing the UK Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 UK general election. The letter stated that "Labour's election manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership offers a transformative plan that prioritises the needs of people and the planet over private profit and the vested interests of a few."[14][15]
Kaurismäki has been a critic of Finland's immigration policy. When Iraqi refugees arrived in Finland, Kaurismäki said many people in the country "perceived that as an attack, like a war." He was alarmed by their reaction and decided to make a film, The Other Side of Hope, in an effort to "change the Finns' attitude." "I respect Mrs. Merkel," he said, referring to the German chancellor's open-door refugee policy, "She is the only politician who seems to be at least interested in the problem."[16] In a 2007 interview with the film scholar Andrew Nestingen, Kaurismäki said: "The real disgrace here is Finland's refugee policy, which is shameful. We refuse refugee status on the flimsiest of grounds and send people back to secure places like Darfur, Iraq, and Somalia. It's perfectly safe, go ahead. Our policy is a stain among the Nordic nations. Shameful."[17]
In 2023, he said he was against Finland's entry into NATO.[5]
In December 2023, alongside 50 other filmmakers, Kaurismäki signed an open letter published in Libération demanding a ceasefire and an end to the killing of civilians amid the 2023 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, and for a humanitarian corridor into Gaza to be established for humanitarian aid, and the release of hostages.[18][19][20]
Kaurismäki's most acclaimed film has been The Man Without a Past, which won the Grand Prix and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival[25] and was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category in 2003. However, Kaurismäki refused to attend the Oscar ceremony, asserting that he did not feel like partying in a country that was in a state of war. Kaurismäki's next film Lights in the Dusk was also chosen to be Finland's nominee for best foreign-language film, but Kaurismäki again boycotted the awards and refused the nomination, as a protest against U.S. President George W. Bush's foreign policy. In 2002 Kaurismäki also boycotted the 40th New York Film Festival in a show of solidarity with the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, who was not given a US visa in time for the festival.[26]
