Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19928 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-08-25
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: Finnish
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 96 minutes

Special Features
Region 0

Synopsis
An unidentified man gets severely beaten by a trio of thugs and ends up in the hospital, where he dies--but suddenly reawakens without knowing who he is. He wanders into a small, poverty-stricken community where families live in small containers and a night out means dinner at the Salvation Army. It is there that M meets Irma, another poor soul looking for a better life--and maybe love. Aki Kaurismaki's THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST begins with horrible violence, but after that it becomes a longing, beautiful study of love and loneliness, of pain and poverty, of faith and fragility. Markku Peltola stars as the amnesiac known only as M; Kati Outinen plays Irma with great care and tenderness for which she won the Best Actress Award at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. Finnish writer-director-producer Kaurismaki's film won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes; it is wonderfully satiric, sweet and innocent, and brutally honest, following in the footsteps of such other Kaurismaki triumphs as JUHA and THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL.

From the Back Cover
A delirious mixture of black comedy, film noir and love story, acclaimed Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki’s (Leningrad Cowboys Go America, Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana) rapturously received The Man Without a Past triumphed at the 2002 Cannes film festival, carrying off multiple awards including Best Actress and the Grand Jury Prize.

Markku Peltola (Juha) plays ‘M’, who arrives in Helsinki only to be viciously set upon by thugs and pronounced dead by medics. By some miracle he revives but with no memory of his past or his identity. Rebuilding his life from scratch, ‘M’ acquires a melancholy dog (a recurring Kaurismaki motif) named Hannibal and falls in love with a Salvation Army soup kitchen volunteer (the muse-like Kati Outinen, Drifting Clouds). But the past inevitably catches up with him, forcing him to confront his future.

Customer Reviews

Humanist comedy from Kaurismaki
One of Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki's minimalist humanist-mannerist comedy dramas. Here, a man arrives to Helsinki by train from the interior of Finland, and is soon beaten senselessly by some thugs in a public park. He wakes up at the hospital, with bandages round his head (a homage to James Whale's version of The Invisible Man, as some critics suggested?) and with a case of complete amnesia. He is soon called M (another homage to a 30s movie?). He goes on to live in a ramshackle house on the outskirts of Helsinki (I didn't know there was such poverty in rich Finland), working at odd jobs, meeting quirky people and trying to slowly remember his past. Among the friends he makes is a woman working for the Salvation Army (Kaurismaki's regular Kati Outinen, showing here a bit of age). The movie has a lot of the mannerisms of Kaurismaki's movies, but also its humanism. It is quirky, but compelling. Among the best work in Kaurismaki's already long career as a film director.

Quirky but disappointing
Whilst I have a rather soft spot for most things Finnish, having spent a lot of time up there in the past 15 years, I found this film rather amateurish & insubstantial in style. Quirky yes .. but I cannot recommend it!

Quiet, quirky and a little sly
This Finnish film may not be for everyone. Though nominated in 2002 for an Oscar for best foreign film, I don't think it got much play here. It's a quiet movie about a guy who is beaten in a park in Helsinki right after getting off a train. The hospital thinks he's dead, but he staggers out, gradually recovers, and can't remember a thing. He meets a number of people, most of whom help him in some way or another. He meets a Salvation Army woman and a relationship developes.

It's hard to describe this movie. The dialoque is often funny, but delivered absolutely deadpan. There is no excitement, but a rich development of story and relationships through incidents that happen to the lead character or that he causes to happen. The two leads, Markku Peltoa and Kati Outinen, are adults and look it. There's no Hollywood handsomeness about either of them. The structure of the movie is a gem of economy. One scene ends and the film moves briskly on to the next scene. No extended, unnecessary character development. No superfluous dialoque. It may sound pompous, but this movie creates at the end a nice feeling of mature contentment.

The DVD of the film is crisp and strong; an excellent transfer. There are no significant extras.