The man at the centre of The Woodcutter Story either knows something the rest of us do not or he’s the most hapless man anyone has ever seen on a screen. In one scene towards the end of the film, his offspring performs a gut-wrenching act and yet all Pepe does in response is gaze in stupefaction. His response is entirely in keeping with his hopeful, passive character. As one of his colleagues says, he has always been a half-full kind of man.
When we first meet him, he has a job and a family. By the end of the film’s first part, the job has gone, as has the wife. And by the time we get to watch his offspring in the aforementioned scene, we have seen him go through so many tribulations that Job might consider his own biblical travails mild. Naturally, the question then, is what does this all mean?
That question is also at the heart of Mikko Myllylahti’s film. The Finnish director inserts the question not into Pepe’s mouth but that of a supporting character who grapples with meaning. That grappling leads him to seek out spirituality with a so-called “psychic singer”, a weird man claiming to be able to communicate with the dead. After initially falling under the spell of this psychic, a volte-face from his mentor changes his mind and soon enough he’s drawn to violence. It’s a tribute to Myllylahti’s screenplay that this sidebar is as engrossing as the main story. But it is also with this sidebar that the film nearly ends up in cliché territory in a film that strenuously resists convention so much so that some scenes add nothing to the narrative, and yet have been left in, perhaps for atmosphere.
Cinema, of course, is filled with sceptics of spirituality both onscreen and behind the camera and here Myllylahti approaches novelty in combining scepticism and belief. While the behaviour (or misbehaviour) of one of his characters and the statement of another seem to insist on the nonexistence of a spiritual element to man’s habitation of earth, his film’s aesthetics, its very fabric, suggests otherwise. Certain choices of movement and of mood evoke something beyond the pleasure of seeing an artist work his medium away from the tedium of convention. Perplexity is part of the game but so is a touch of the metaphysical.
From the start, it seems clear that what is being presented to the viewer is a cosmic parable of existence. Again: What does it all mean? Nobody can say for sure, which, perhaps, is why the director, whose background in poetry is palpable in almost every shot and pan, has offered uncertainty itself, rather than a narrative that, in its own way, describes uncertainty. A more literal-minded director would opt for clarity. What we get instead is the real thing—and, as though by a miracle that would hardly be out of place in the story, there is some cohesion. This is Myllylahti’s first feature film as a director. It will be interesting to see where he goes from this thoroughly intriguing debut.
Cast: Jarkko Lahti, HP Bj?rkman, Livo Tuuri, Marc Gassot, Katja K?ttner
Director, Screenplay: Mikko Myllylahti
Cinematographer: Arsen Sarkisiants
Editor: Jussi Rautaniemi
Music: Jonas Struck
Set designer Milja Aho
Sound: Jorma Kaulanen, Peter Albrectsen
Costume Designer: Minke Lunter
Production company: Aamu Films (Finland, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany)
Venue: Cannes (Semaine de la Critique)
In Finnish
98 minutes
