Concrete Night

By: Marty

Yes... this movie is beautifully filmed. And if you're a chicken hawk, the brief view of 2 naked teenage boys make this a worthwhile find. But I don't recommend this movie. Apocalyptic musings followed by gay bashing? Not my idea of a good time. The only redeeming feature of the plot was the suicide of the homophobic protagonist.

By: Amos Lassen

Simo, a fourteen-year-old boy living in a stifling Helsinki slum, takes some unwise advice from his soon-to-be-incarcerated older brother. The brothers love each other and we see the pain and joy of youth in the their outlooks on life. This was the official submission to the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film from Finland.
Simo (Johannes Brotherus) is 14 years old and at that stage in life when he needs to start taking on responsibility - the more so because his father is absent, his big brother Ilkka (Jari Virman) is about to go into prison and his mother has long struggled to cope. Simo has not yet forged an identity and seems to have no idea of how to find one. He lives in a long uncared-for Helsinki housing estate and Simo has no idea of his direction. He simply borrows ideas and ways of being from others to try to pass himself off as worldly and his world is full of bad advice.
The night before Ilkka's incarceration, the guys' mother is worried sick and afraid her older boy may harm himself because of what his future holds for him behind bars. She asks Simo to look after him and the two spend an evening together and they begin to bond as adults for the first time. But when Ilkka has to go, Simo sees that his brother is entangled in adult problems that show his capacity for cruelty and Simo emerges as the vulnerable one. He is bound up in ideas his brother might not have meant for him to take so seriously. As the night passes, he grows increasingly uneasy until events culminate in a shocking act of violence changes everything.
The film is based upon a 1980 cult novel by Pirkko Saisio and it could be set at any time in the past century. The city is also a character and it looms large. The film is stunningly shot in lucid black and white and everything of importance happens at night. The daytime is when civilization reasserts itself and the intensity if the night then seems small and exposed. In the daylight, it is more difficult to come to terms with the world of consequence and self-reflection. However, others make the shift easily and all Simo can do is watch wide-eyed, innocent and guilty. We are very aware that this is an intelligent film. Its story is simple but its themes are quite complex.
Pirjo Honkaselo directed and this is first narrative film in 15 years and it makes us feel claustrophobic. We sense that doom is not far away and it defines Simo's world.
We see men and boys in a sexual, objectified state for a reason. Simo gazes at his older brother, knowing that he's about to lose him as he goes to prison system on a charge and he is in awe of and filled with desire for his brother. When Simo is not staring across the street into the apartment of a neighboring homosexual, he looks at his own face, in a mirror that is perpetually obscured by steam (a rather obvious metaphor for introspection and distorted identity presentation).

He is trapped by the inevitability of the and is also a prisoner of his desires, terrified of the homosexual urges body language and his effeminate way of walking. He is self-conscious about these aspects of himself and he knows that this is not the norm that society expects of him. Ilkka tells him that it is absurd for humans to live for tomorrow when the animal kingdom evolves through a free, impulse-driven state. Simo's homosexual neighbor describes the world as something between fear and love, telling him that greed and indulgence are indicative of fear and fear is the result of ignorance.
Simo's reactions are fascinating to watch. While the story is tragic and often retreats into expressionistic territory to accentuate the feelings Simo is coping with, it never really takes on his experience as something contrary to the his surroundings where people urinate on public transportation and have sex in alleyways.
Honkasalo balances constant dreamlike imagery with raw, naturalistic performances and situations. The film opens with Simo dreaming he's trying to escape a cataclysmic train wreck. Through the use of shadows, smoke, and sometimes floating detritus throughout, Honkasalo suggests that Simo's nightmare might only be beginning.