A parable of brotherhood

The story of one good deed

Anthony Quinn
The Other Side Of Hope
Director: Aki Kaurismaki

The deadpan drollery of Aki Kaurismäki’s cinema is wondrous to behold, and tricky to explain. Is his sense of the absurd a folk signature of his native Finland or does it derive from a more personal appreciation of humankind’s struggle with conscience and duty? His new film does not really clear it up either way, but in style it is inimitably and definitively his own: a steady progression of tableaux vivants, hushed interiors of Hopper-esque gloom, characters who hold their poses just a second or two longer than is natural.

The Other Side of Hope presents a parable of brotherhood. A man, blackened head to toe, emerges from what looks like primordial ooze: in fact he is climbing from a slag heap in the port of Helsinki, having stowed away on board a freighter. This is Khaled (Sherwan Haji), a refugee from violent persecution in Syria; once cleaned up he turns himself in at a reception centre to await the pleasure of the immigration court. Meanwhile, across town, a disaffected, middle-aged shirt salesman has decided on a change of life. Splitting from his wife – in a typically compact Kaurismäkian scene he wordlessly hands her a key and his wedding ring – Wikström (Sakari Kuosmanen) flogs off his stock, takes his money to a high-stakes poker game, and wins big.