The Poll Diaries (2010)

WWI is about to break out. Oda is a youngster goes to live with her father in Estonia. The father is a doctor who conducts suspicous  experiments (Oda's sweet gift to daddy: a two-headed foetus). The doctor represents the class of upper-class Germans living in Estonia, which was still a part of the Russian empire. We also sense a political movement growing stronger, pushing for independence. Oda wants to be a writer (but she also has scientific skills) and she feels alienated from the family's shielded-off life with many secrets boiling under the surface. In a barn, she encounters an anarchist hiding from the authorities. She decides not to tell anyone about him being there, instead set on helping him.

The problem with The Poll Diaries (dir. Chris Krause) is that it tries to be too many things at the same time in a way that we've seen - and suffered - so many times before. The director tries to manufacture a historical drama, but being very eager not to forget about the Human Part. So here we are, with a big story about a nation and change - and also a story about an adolescent living in a country she does not know, trying to find herself through helping an outsider. It gets too emotional, too tense, too elegiac. Too much everything. Still: a few good scenes, decent cinematography and yes, this film actually made me interested in learning more about the history of Estonia.

The Temptation of St Tony (2009)

I'm not familiar with the character of St Anthony. This might or might not have limited my understanding of The Temptation of St Tony, a surreal journey into the heart of darkness directed by Estonian Öunpuu (who has featured in this blog before). Yes, this is the story about temptation, but in a very twisted way (is it the good that tempts the evil?). Öunpuu knows how to use the medium, that is for sure. Even though the first scenes left me with an impression of exaggered darkness, the last hour of the film, with its abundance of warped images, was more appealing to me. Tony is a middle manager. His boss tells him that he has to fire some people. He submits. His girlfriend cheats on him. He accepts this, too. The character of Tony is a walking void. He is not evil in the same sense as most of the other character. He simply doesn't seem to act in the situation he is in. When he acts, his entire being is awkward. It is as if he never knows what he is saying and how he should say things. This is the most concrete part of the film. Then I have said nothing about a quasi-fascist club, munching on a corpse and skating in what seems to be the world of the dead.

As a film about raw capitalism, this is a film that focuses on the life of the ambiguity of figures and corporeality. In one scene, we see a "sophisticated" dinner party. Suddenly, the chat stops. A haggard man stands outside the enormous window. It is as if the room stops breathing. The man doesn't move. Nobody reacts. Tony is the only one to do something. He seems to assume that the man is an alcoholic, so he offers his bottle of wine. The man takes it, pours out the content, and puts it in the plastic bag in which we see other empty bottles.

If you are interested in this movie, expect the style to be more interesting than the content. This is a film about the visual. Even though many scenes are beguiling, everything does not work on all levels. The reason why I was not fully convinced by the film's aesthetic language is that it overstates it's references; you see Andersson here (an almost tender scene about Tony's confrontation with fence-makers, "You say we are not real??"), Tarkovsky (Stalker's dog!) there, and wait, here we have an ode to Béla Tarr (the drab, yet evocative, surroundings). And without David Lynch, some scenes would not be what they are now (the scene at the club echoes Fire Walk With Me).

But yet, somehow, this is a mesmerizing film.

Sügisball (2007)

Sügisball (Autumn ball) might be the only Estonian movie I have seen in my life. There are certainly some things that speak for this movie. The first thing is that a large part of the soundtrack consists of songs by one of my favorite bands, German doom-jazzers Bohren & der club of gore. I didn't know this when I sat down to watch it. The other major accomplishment of Sügisball is the use of urban wasteland. There are hazy images of nocturnal big city streets, and the settings consisting of endless rows of drab apartment blocks create a dramatic backdrop for what goes on in the movie.
The third strength is that it has one really funny joke. I won't spoil it for you. 
A single mother and her little girl who is addressed by men in gray overcoats / an architect who has doubts about his life / a drunken author who has doubts about his life / a doorman who finds his job demeaning. 
A big flaw of Öunpuu's movie is that it clings to a cliché that is employed in too many films that strive to be contender for the Arthouse movie of the year. "The characters long for close relationships but nobody understands them." Boo-hoo. The problem is not that this is too bleak or too depressing - the problem is that we've seen this before, many times, and even then, it was too one-dimensional, too stereotypical, too faux-existentialist. I mean, how many TIMES can you show a drunken man throwing some wine glasses on the floor because he is so FRUSTRATED with life and so filled with destructive ENERGY?
Why are these people so unhappy? We don't know.
Öunpuu sometimes manages to arrange a nice scene of an urban landscape or bright street lights - but in this movie, he is not a great interpreter of human relationships. And then I DON'T say that every movie should be about relationships. But Sügisball tries hard to be the kind of movie that provides stark images of alienation, fear, hopelessness. Etc.
And Please, directors, hear me out: SPARE ME from on-screen philosophizing about profound questions concerning the meaning of life and human happiness. Make a movie instead.