release
by Douglas Messerli
Aki Kurismäki (writer and director) Le Havre / 2011
Aki Kaurismäki’s 2011 film, Le Havre is an agreeable if slightly
sentimental tale about a former author (André Wilms), who inexplicably has given
up his bohemian life to become a shoeshiner in the famed French port. At one
point the character mutters something about his line of work as bringing him
closer to the people, but that does not sufficiently explain why this figure,
Marcel Marx, who was featured also in Kaurismäki’s La Vie de Bohème (see page ___ in this volume) was named after the
great Socialist thinker. But then the director also names several of his
characters after famed French film figures. Marcel’s wife (the wonderful Kati
Outinen) is named Arletty, after the music hall singer and actress in several
of another Marcel, Carné’s pictures, the director who also set his La Quai des brumes in La Havre. A doctor
in this movie, played by the French comic director Pierre Étaix, is named Becker
after French film director Jacques Becker. The film’s detective, Monet,
somewhat similar to the detective of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, also reminds us that the artist Monet painted
a series of Le Havre scenes, portraying the same foggy atmosphere of Carné’s.
While several of these references, accordingly, do play a role in this film, it
also appears that Kaurismäki simply enjoys the referential ricochets of these
names.
Strangely, while in the director’s earlier film Paris was portrayed as
foggy, shabby town akin to Carné’s view of Le Harvre, Kaurismäki’s Le Havre is
beautifully lit and, although a little shabby at the edges, is portrayed as a
basically friendly city where Marx and fellow shoeshiner Chang (Quoc Cung
Nguyen) stand placidly together as they greet train passengers who might desire
a shine. Although he certainly does not make much money, Marx is rewarded free
drinks by neighborhood bartender and the local grocer grudgingly allows him
open credit. Spending only a small amount of his earnings, Marx returns home to
the protective arms of Arletty and to his faithful dog, Laika (named presumably
after the famed Russian dog in orbit), where he hands over his daily wages to
his wife and is served up a restorative meal. When Arletty suffers what appears
to be a heart attack, all neighbors come together in support.

At film’s end, even Arletty returns home, miraculously cured from what
she has been previously told was an inoperable condition. As fleeting as joy
was in Carné’s world, here it is almost contagious. If neither Carné’s tragic
vision nor Kaurismäki’s primarily positive presentation of life is very
realistic, who cares? Such is the stuff of films and books!
Los
Angeles, February 14, 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment