Review of the movie Fallen Leaves Love always wins!

Aki Kurismaki's latest film is a continuation of the same path he followed years ago in filmmaking. A simple and yet magical path. This time, he narrates a love story with the same usual features; But with a different meaning than ever.

Finnish Kurismäki is one of the most popular filmmakers of contemporary cinema for me. Someone whose films have special features in script and direction that can be traced in almost all of his works; From his first feature film Crime and punishment (1983) until later in passing clouds (1996) and now in fallen leaves (2023). In the screenplay dimension, we always deal with straightforward and quiet stories. Solitude both in terms of the number of characters and in terms of the amount of dialogues and regardless of the usual external complications. Usually the main characters are not more than one or two people and the dialogues are generally few and written in the most concise way possible.

This solitude has penetrated the direction of the work as well. Mezzanines are always quiet. Kurismaki does not insist on using multi-layered mise-en-scènes – with foreground, background and background – and holds the scene in its simplest form. There is no news of designing complex scenes. The way the actors perform is always in such a way that it has a significant distance from the existing realism and creates a cold and numb atmosphere in the film. At first, these features seem to be only necessary and functions of independent filmmaking and, of course, distance measures, but they have a deeper and deeper meaning than these words, and this meaning can be clearly understood by examining this latest Kurismaki film.

In the continuation of the text, the story of the film is revealed.

The appearance of people, the way they talk, the scenes of the city and workplaces, houses, phones, cinemas and everything indicate that we are watching a movie from the past. A film that apparently has no relationship with the current advanced and technological era

fallen leaves It tells the story of two workers (Hulapa and Ansa) who meet each other in a bar one day and gradually a love story develops between them. This film is considered a sequel to Korismaki's “Proletaria” trilogy, which was previously associated with the films Shadows in Heaven (1986), Ariel (1988) and The daughter of the match factory (1990) was completed. But Kurismaki has returned to those old ideas with a fresh tale of working-class people.

The new film is presented to the audience in a strange mise-en-scène. In the sense that the appearance of people, the way they talk, the displayed manifestations of the city and work environments, houses, phones, cinemas and everything indicate that we are watching a movie from the past. A film that apparently has no relationship with the current advanced and technological era. But the radios, which are present in different places of the film and constantly broadcast news about the war between Russia and Ukraine, constantly remind us that the story takes place in the present time. Also, the “solitude” of the screenplay and mise-en-scène in fallen leaves It has been upgraded to an order beyond Kurismaki's previous films. He has deliberately narrated his story at times of the day and night when the streets are at their quietest. It is as if the people in this film are the only survivors of the earth and no one else lives in this vast planet. The exchanged dialogues between the characters also add to this strange situation. People who talk in a way that is not similar to the current times and the words we are used to hearing. This issue gives the film a hyperreal and surrealistic quality.

These things may cause the audience to distance themselves from the film in the first step or to consider it as a taffeta separated from the current time and context and therefore reject it. But the more important point is why Kurismaki decided to do such a thing in the design and execution of his latest film. That too in the situation that his previous film – The other side of hope (2017) – It was told in a completely realistic mise-en-scène with a story about illegal immigrants and the difficult situation of Syrian refugees. Why did this sudden turn happen and what does it mean?

Kurismaki explicitly places his film in a world of his own choice – with features completely opposite to the world we actually live in – to protest the existing reality. Is the duty of the artist nothing but to create and introduce the ideal world and protest the existing realities?

This deliberate decision of Kurismaki is actually his clear stance against the reality in the world. In this way, he explicitly places himself, his characters and his film in a world of his own choice – with features completely opposite to the world in which we actually live – to protest the existing reality. Is the duty of art and artist nothing but to create and introduce the ideal world and protest the existing realities? And does Kurismaki do anything else? A love story that takes place in a context separated from the war-torn and ugly world of today, and only occasionally the news on the radio reminds us of the hell we live in.

Kurismaki does another thing to emphasize this aspect. In one of their first romantic dates, Holapa and Ansa go to the cinema instead of the movie The dead do not die (2019), by Yejim Jarmush. First of all, this is a tribute to one of the most important icons of American independent cinema: Jarmusch; And it is a tribute to their long-term friendship. Jarmusch was also in the movie before Leningrad cowboys go to America (1989) had played a cameo role for Kurismaki. But this sequence also injects another meaning in the context of the story.

Just as at the end of Jarmusch's film (the same sequence that these two see in the cinema), the characters played by Driver and Murray are fighting the zombies of their world – Jarmusch was metaphorically criticizing his contemporary capitalist and consumerist society and comparing them to zombies. Kurismaki also depicts the two lovers in his film as the same two fighters who live among zombies and separate themselves from them because of this love. Besides, in the plan of leaving the cinema, we first see two men talking about what movies this movie reminded them of. One mentions a film by Bresson and the other mentions a film by Godard: two important artistic filmmakers in the history of cinema. In this way, apart from paying tribute to those two greats in the film, Kurismaki also puts forward the idea (by naming old films) that valuable and important films were made in the past and there is no news of them being made in the present time. Let's remember that Jarmoush's film is from five years ago.

This is a movie in praise of love and people who still respect and strive for important and meaningful things.

In continuation of this tribute to his favorite artists, Kurismaki has also done other interesting and funny things in the film. Apart from the mentioned case, some people's faces and clothes are designed in such a way that they look exactly like some famous artists in the world. Like someone sitting in a cafe who looks like Tom York (the famous singer of Radiohead) and one of the people coming out of the cinema looks like Bela Tarr, the famous Hungarian director. Movie poster Rocco and his brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960) – and of course the posters of other films that can be seen in cinema scenes – are also a tribute to other religions.

In continuation of the deliberate distance that the film takes from existing reality and realism, the script itself can also be examined. In this regard, the story structure of the screenplay remains similar to a fairy tale or a children's story (remember that somewhere in the movie, Holapa Ketab Children's storiesHe gives it to his colleague as a gift). The film's turning points are all very, very random and ironic. In this day and age, how likely is a girl to write her number on a piece of paper and give it to a guy, instead of him saving it in his phone? Or how likely is it that a person crossing the street will be hit by a train? All these choices further isolate the atmosphere of the film and emphasize that this is an ideal world that you can only see in a Kurismaki film. A world where only lovers survive, and no matter what adversity they face, they will eventually find each other. This is a movie in praise of love and people who still respect and strive for important and meaningful things. Ansa rescues a dog from a factory, Holapa gives up alcohol, and while the leaves are falling and autumn has arrived, the spring of love begins for these two people.