{"id":12372,"date":"2017-12-30T19:00:02","date_gmt":"2017-12-31T01:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=12372"},"modified":"2017-12-30T14:19:14","modified_gmt":"2017-12-30T20:19:14","slug":"the-other-side-of-hope-2017-aki-kaurismaki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/12372","title":{"rendered":"The Other Side of Hope (2017, Aki Kaurism\u00e4ki)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another magical drama about a refugee in hiding with a carefully balanced comic tone, this was inevitably going to be compared to Le Havre<\/a><\/em>, my favorite movie of a few years back<\/a>, and fall slightly short. But it’s nice to have more of refugee Khaled’s story in this one, as opposed to near-mute Idrissa in Le Havre<\/em>, and the acknowledgement of the racism and xenophobia within the country’s citizens fueling the policies that are making it so difficult for him to gain asylum in Finland.<\/p>\n

Syrian Khaled has bounced through ten countries on his way to Finland and is desperate to locate his one surviving relative, his sister Miriam, and bring her to a safer place. His Iraqi friend Mazdak offers communications help to look for the girl while Khaled finds work with Wikstr\u00f6m (Leningrad Cowboy<\/a> Sakari Kuosmanen), who has left his wife for reasons unknown and purchased a dumpy restaurant. Wikstr\u00f6m and Khaled are given too little shared screen time for us to watch them bond (alongside a cute dog and three bedraggled employees who came with the building), but Wikstr\u00f6m proves to be big-hearted, protecting his newest employee from the elements and the authorities.<\/p>\n

Kaurism\u00e4ki won best director in Berlin (A Fantastic Woman<\/em>, F\u00e9licit\u00e9<\/em>, On the Beach at Night Alone<\/em>). My moviegoing companions were surprised and appalled that Finland would not offer Khaled asylum and try to have him deported, but now that I’ve seen Stranger in Paradise<\/a><\/em>, nothing is surprising. Others were dismayed by all the screen time given to amateur performances of rockabilly songs, but I preferred those to the half hour of backstory showing how Wikstr\u00f6m came to run a restaurant. I recognized Kati Outinen (the wife in Le Havre<\/em>) in one scene, and restaurant doorman Ilkka Koivula (probably also from Le Havre<\/em>), but that apparently was not Carel Struycken<\/a> as a bartender.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another magical drama about a refugee in hiding with a carefully balanced comic tone, this was inevitably going to be compared to Le Havre, my favorite movie of a few years back, and fall slightly short. But it’s nice to have more of refugee Khaled’s story in this one, as opposed to near-mute Idrissa in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1049,523,390,2220,2238],"class_list":["post-12372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-2010s","tag-aki-kaurismaki","tag-finland","tag-refugee","tag-syria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12372"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12418,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12372\/revisions\/12418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}