The Man without a Past

The original filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki has created a subtly life-affirming comedy that is more plot-driven than what one is otherwise used to seeing from the Finn. If you have not yet made the acquaintance of Kaurismäki's work, this is therefore no bad opportunity.

A man has just arrived in Helsinki by train when he is brutally beaten up. When he regains consciousness, he has lost his memory. The married couple Kaisa and Nieminen, who live in a dismal shanty town on the outskirts of Helsinki, nurse the man until he can fend for himself. Full of energy, he sets about finding somewhere to live and a job, but the bureaucratic and alienating society does not accept a person without an identity. Fortunately he meets kind and helpful people in the container town. One of them is Irma from the Salvation Army, with whom he falls in love.

M is slowly building a new and happy existence for himself when it is discovered who he is. Must he really give up Irma and his new friends for a life of which he has not the slightest memory?

It is a long way from the Mediterranean temperament to the stoic imperturbability and poker faces of the Finnish characters. Kaurismäki's bone-dry humour is also hard to resist. "Shall we go out for a meal?" Nieminen asks M. In the next scene the two are standing in the queue at the Salvation Army's outdoor soup kitchen.