Such a frustrating disappointment

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

I watched Kaurismäki's Drifting Clouds (1996) and pretty much hated it. Then I saw that The Man Without a Past had been nominated for an Oscar so I thought I'd give Kaurismäki another chance. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. It's somehow even worse.There's some really bad acting (or directing) here: the nurse, the small kids, the guard, the soup lady and the band members for just a few examples. Completely stiff and wooden delivery of dialogue. The main characters aren't much better or even worse. Kati Outinen's acting especially is something so emotionless I have no idea why someone would like it. I realize it tries to caricature Finnish mannerisms but I didn't find it funny in the slightest. And it's not just the dialogue, the actors also move in a stiff and unnatural way. The only actor who seems to know what she's doing is Elina Salo who plays the part of the dock clerk. She was also the only good actor in Kaurismäki's Drifting Clouds. She acts and speaks like a normal Finnish person and has emotion behind her lines. I just don't understand this. Is she really the only decent actor in these films or is this some artistic choice by the director? If it was, I can't fathom what the point of it would be. I guess the movie is supposed to be a comedy, at least partly. But in order to find comedies funny you have to have some kind of engagement to the characters. To put it simply, either the character has to be sympathetic or they have to be completely repulsive. The movie completely failed to make me care about the main character in either way. Everything's also delivered completely deadpan. Deadpan comedy could obviously work but to do the whole movie in that style? Not for me. There were a couple of chuckles during the bank scene but otherwise not even that. There was nothing interesting going on with the cinematography either. Most shots were just completely still and extremely slow. I mean, a complete shot of a band playing a rock song which doesn't seem to have any relevance to anything? What is this? I watched most of the movie with a deep frown on my forehead wondering if someone actually seriously made this movie. I couldn't get anything meaningful from this movie. I guess if you really start to think about it, it was at least partly about how bureaucracy and the government can easily deny help based on a technicality and how friends are therefore important when you hit dire straits. This doesn't have any interest to me however because I don't care about the main character. It is an utterly boring film without any entertainment value. To the people wondering if there was something critical that was lost in the translation, I can assure you that there wasn't. I gave Drifting Clouds one extra star for a total of two because Elina Salo had a more prominent role in it. I can't do that here because she's in the film only for a minimally short time.

It is not typically easy for an American to make a comment on anything Finnish, and for this comment to possess any kind of depth or insight— the last time I can remember Finland coming up in anything remotely related to the American occident being accidentally nuked in an episode of the Simpsons. In many of the scenes of A Man Without a Past, it looks like Finland has been nuked, too. Or, at the very least, Helsignors, where the bulk of the movie takes place, looks to have taken a nasty beating. The movie follows the mysterious main character—only later named—through his adventures in Helsignors, which he arrives at by train at the very beginning of the movie. At the onset of his adventure, though, he suffers assault from three rascals who take all of his money and a deal of his possessions. They also take his memories, as he suffers memory loss. When the main character wakes up, he is washed up near a seaport, staring at two little boys whose family ends up taking him in for a while.Amnesia and memory loss are not in any way novel plot devices. In fact, they may be some of the most clichéd. What makes them fresh and interesting in A Man Without a Past is Aki Kaurismäki's method of storytelling. The audience experiences the main character's trials just as he does, as his life begins to unfold in Helsignors. The town feels as strange to him as it does the audience, creating a wonderfully convincing atmosphere, and adding to the general feeling of desultory drifting that pervades a good deal of the film. The main character is on a journey, but no-one, neither the character nor the audience, know where to. Another factor adding to the strange atmosphere is one of director Aki Kaurismäki's hallmark techniques: dialogue which is sparse, hypercorrect, and jarringly stilted. It is not that the acting is bad, or the delivery of the lines off. It is just the dialogue which is strange. Characters—even those whom are oddballs and would not necessarily speak like normal people—do not talk or interact in ways remotely organic. Often scenes are filled with awkward staring or looking away, the kind of gestures one would expect to see in soap operas, drama, plays, operas, or bad sitcoms—just not in a serious cinematic production. Though awkwardly reminiscent of 70s and 80s televisions programmes, the dialogue is also sometimes awkwardly charming. The interactions between the main character and his love interest are so infantile, banal, and earnest, it is easy to see why they could get together. The stiltedness of the dialogue is indicative of the overall style of the movie: it is minimalistic. It is not, however, focused or artistic in a sullen, European way. It is plainly simple. The plot is not meandering or plodding, but it develops at a measure pace. The movie is not long, clocking in at less than 90 minutes, so boredom and dragging are not likely to be any problem. The pacing of the plot is most appropriately described as life-like. Again, the movie is about the main character's (new) life eventually unfolding. He meets people, develops relationships, looks for a job, gets turned down at a government office, entertains dreams of becoming a rock'n'roll manager—a real life is made up of many little things, daily activities, and dreams. The main character himself is a minimalist and a realist, and it is his attitude (and his actor's portrayal) is one of the highlights of the movie. Again and again bad things happen to him. Despite whatever does befall him though, he remains constantly in relatively the same mood. Taking things in stride, he deals with the characters peopling his new life with a generally good nature, just as likely to banter with a drunk as he is with the pathetically corrupt policeman emptily threatens him. His interactions with these people leave one feeling light, happy, and amused, as well as frustrated when he lets himself be walked over without any truly heartfelt objection.Another highlight of this movie is the characters director Kaurismäki has come up with. Interesting, kitschy characters are practically a staple in his films, but the abundance of oddballs does not take detract from the delightfulness of a single one. In particular the formerly mentioned cop stood out. Typical of the corrupt cop archetype, he is "business minded", obviously operating against the law, taking bribes, and on and on. But he also has a ridiculously adorable dog named Hannibal, whom he feeds only raw meat and tries to threaten people with. He is so covered in keys, key rings, and pairs of handcuffs, that when he walks he sounds like a child shaking a piggy-bank full of pennies and nickels. But he is not a bad man, and he seems to get along just fine with the main character, even though he constantly is swindling the main character. There is also in this movie a kind of obtuse criticism of the welfare state, society, Salvation Army, and the whole lot, though it is not so biting that it either a) takes itself too seriously, or b) detracts from the overall movie. Rather, the system to help the downtrodden is portrayed in a way such that it is just another part of an absurd life. It is not an answer to the main character's problems, nor particularly helpful to anyone who does not have a name. The Salvation Army, as secular as it behaves despite the myriad of Jesus paintings hanging around, is infinitely more helpful than the Finnish state. As for the system overall, though, Irma sums it up eloquently when she tells the main character, "God's mercy reigns in heaven, but here on earth one must help himself."

The Man Without a Past is a painfully boring film that offers very little entertainment value to the viewer. It's supposed to be a comedy about a man who cannot remember anything about his past, but there isn't a funny line in the entire film. The director, Aki Kaurismaki, failed to get me to care about any of the characters in the film because of the complete lack of action or emotion. The always stoic and timid characters made each passing scene more and more painful to watch. The plot is actually not that bad, but the way it's presented it feels like nothing ever happened during the film. I assume that cultural differences and perhaps the translation from Finnish to English had something to do with me not enjoying the film, but I believe that it was more than that. This is the only Kaurismaki film I have seen, but based on The Man Without a Past, I am not a fan of his style. The story follows a man who was attacked and beaten in the park one night. After coming very close to death the man makes a full recovery with one exception: he can't remember anything about his past. After escaping from the hospital the man is later taken in and taken care of by a poor family that lives in an old shipping container. After being nursed back to health the man rents a shipping container of his own and starts his life over from scratch. After meeting and taking a liking to a woman while eating at a Salvation Army soup kitchen, the man goes to see her at the Salvation Army store where he gets new clothes and a new job. "The Man Without a Past" suddenly had himself a home, a job, a girlfriend, and even a dog. After learning that he has skills as a welder he tries to apply for a job, but he is unable to be paid until he opens a bank account. So, he heads to the bank to open an account, but unfortunately he gets caught up in a bank robbery and brought to jail. He is kept in jail for not giving the police any information about himself, which the police see as insubordination. He is eventually freed thanks to the help of a lawyer, but what he didn't realize is that the police posted fliers with his picture around town asking if anyone had recognized this mysterious man. A woman claiming to be his wife identified him, and he went to go visit her. He found out that he had been married and had just filed for divorce prior to his injuries. After learning that his past wasn't offering him any happiness the man heads back to his shipping container and his life with his new love Irma. Upon returning he finds that he is not really any different than the others that live in the area and that he is one of them. He may have been a man without a past but he had become a man with a future. One theme of this film seems to be homelessness. The only time we see a character living in a real house is when he goes to visit his ex-wife. The family that took him in, the man that lived in the dumpster, the other men that went to the Salvation Army soup kitchen, and even Irma (lived in a dorm room) were all people who were very poor and struggling to get by. However, these people all made the most of their situations and seemed to enjoy their lives. One way that people did this, and another theme from the film, was by listening to music. After finding and getting the jukebox fixed, the man with no past introduces Rock and Roll music to the Salvation Army's choir/band. The group of young men are instantly hooked on the new "movement" and there playing of music becomes an important event for the lives of the poor and homeless people in the area. Even the woman who was in charge of the Salvation Army store took to the new movement and became the singer for the group's band. Music was the one thing that was bringing the community together in a positive way, and the man with no past was responsible for it. Although I found the storyline of the film to be okay, I found the film itself to be very mediocre. A so called deadpan comedy gave us a cast of characters that brought zero emotion to the film. I cannot remember one person laughing at any point of the film, and I certainly wasn't laughing in the audience. There had to be a lot that was lost in translation here because the film was very awkward and uncomfortable to watch. I would imagine that without having to read the subtitles and being able to hear and understand how the characters were delivering their lines would have helped make it more entertaining. It could also simply be just a cultural difference that is the problem here. Either way, something was missing and it really hurt the film for us non Finnish speaking viewers. Overall I would say that the film is okay because the plot was decent, however I wouldn't recommend any English speaking viewers to expect this movie to be anything more than a drama, because it fails to deliver as a comedy.

The film is about a man who gets amnesia after being attacked by a group of thugs in Helsinki. He becomes part of a community of underprivileged workers who assist him in building his life together.I can't decide whether there was something wrong with the acting or it was an accurate interpretation of Finnish mannerisms. The acting appeared a bit stiff and silent, and there wasn't a single smile throughout the film - even in situations which were meant to be funny. Having said that, there is a warmth and humanity coming out of these austere characters - just not the way we're used to. The cinematography is great, with stunning visuals of the gritty Helsinki suburbs. It is not a masterpiece, but if you are a fan of international cinema you will enjoy watching it.