The Man Without a Past opens on its protagonist, named only M (Markku Petola), as he's savagely beaten in downtown Helsinki. From there it's to the hospital, where he flat-lines and then miraculously rises from the dead.
Thus begins amnesiac M's journey through Helsinki's lower class slums as he tries to discover who he really is.
This film, which was nominated for best foreign picture this year, is a subtle human comedy. Writer and filmmaker Aki Kaurismaeki eschews snappy dialog for simple and quiet stories of personal growth. His characters and their decisions are painted in broad strokes, and Kaurismaeki straddles the fine line between touching humor and cloying sentimentality.
For example, M's love interest Irma (Kati Outinen) is a chaste, conservative Salvation Army worker, who secretly listens to '60s rock music as she falls asleep. Or, when M's landlord threatens him with a dog named "Hannibal," the dog ends up falling in love with M.
But the minimalist plot meshes well with the simple sappiness, so the film's first half-hour holds up. Everything's a fairy tale, and everything's symbolic -- two facts bolstered by the film's quiet tone and achingly beautiful cinematography.
Soon, however, the film's political underpinnings are revealed. M represents the plebeian worker in a constant struggle with the upper-crust. Kaurismaeki symbolizes just about every player in a typical urban economic class war, from the criminals to the big money banks that sell out to Asia. At this point, The Man Without a Past loses its natural human element and becomes a preachy allegory.
There's a painfully trite sequence in a bank, which has a man rob the vault to pay back his old employees. In the first half-hour, scenes like this were occasionally charming, but after Kaurismaeki's forceful change in tone, they feel more like a hell-bent-for-equality Michael Moore documentary.
Kaurismaeki has no shame in broadcasting his political beliefs to the world -- he has boycotted the New York Film Festival, and this year he refused to attend the Oscars because of the Iraq invasion. (Well, at least he's sincere.) Since his native Finland is miles ahead of the United States in terms of economic development, the problems he illustrates in The Man Without a Past, however blunt and simplified, foreshadow our own. This alone makes Kaurismaeki's film more foreboding than The Core. But its staunch political agenda muddies whatever charm and depth it might have had, rendering The Man Without a Past a transparent soapbox and a humdrum dramedy.
