Kaurismäki: Laitakaupungin Valot (Lights in the Dusk) (2006)

Like the other two films in Aki Kaurismäki’s Finnish trilogy, Lights in the Dusk is about a loser – Koistinen (Janne Hyytiäinen) a security guard who finds himself swindled by nearly everyone he trusts, and ends up with nearly nothing. It sounds like a bleak story, and in some ways it is, so what’s most noticeable is the brightness of Kaurismäki’s vision – which is to say, the brightness of the Helsinki docklands and urban core, where most of the story takes place. On the one hand, it’s an industrialised, functional brightness – but, on the other hand, it does perform its function well, since it gives the film a certain optimism despite itself; the fact that it is a palpably plastic optimism doesn’t necessarily make it feel like a gesture of bad faith. Cheery as stainless steel, the entire city feels prefabricated, a series of preformed compositions and shots that Kaurismäki merely happens to capture – the film is already there, in the architecture of Helsinki, just as its loose narrative seems to tap into a series of free-floating cinematic tropes, characters and moments that are continually circulating around the city. As a security guard, Koistinen has a peculiar access to those shots – in effect, his job is to make sure the shots and compositions look right, as he patrols empty mall after empty mall, making sure every cubicle is organised and secure. At the same time, though, these spaces don’t quite make sense empty, since whoever or whatever has designed Helsiniki has well and truly factored in people as architectural accoutrements. As a result, virtually every character feels pressured to conform to a certain architectural, compositional optimism – a critical part of the design plan, they’re not exactly trapped, but they’re not exactly free either, and it’s in the brief beat between their prefabricated positions and their flickering autonomy that the film’s drollness lies. And it takes little more than changing the direction of their glances – momentarily snapping out of their off-camera stares – to unite Kaurismäki and Koistinen, director and security guard, in their efforts to out-monitor a city that threatens them with too much cinematic cheer.