But Fallen Leaves thinks of itself as a 2024 movie -- at least in terms of its characters' present tense.
As I was watching the movie Tuesday night on Kanopy, I noticed a curious detail, which is that there is a calendar hanging on the wall in one of the scenes that clearly shows the year as 2024. In fact, you'd almost say it was an intentional focal point of the scene. But even if it isn't intended as a focal point, no detail is accidental in a well-made movie.
And there's no doubt Fallen Leaves is emphasizing its setting as present-day Helsinki. The Helsinki part is obvious from regular mentions, and -- to anyone who lives in Helsinki -- probably from familiar landmarks. The present-day part is underscored by the fact that characters repeatedly listen to radio broadcasts discussing the latest developments in the war in Ukraine. (The rest of the production design is fairly timeless, though, as the cell phones look like they might be 20 years out of date.)
But why 2024 and not 2023?
The film debuted at Cannes in 2023, and had its release in many if not most countries before 2023 was out. Did Kaurismaki poorly estimate how long the post-production of his movie would take, thereby pushing the date on this calendar forward to the following release year to compensate? Surely not, as the sort of film he makes mustn't require much post.
The question then is, is there some purpose for setting the movie in 2024 rather than 2023?
In the U.S., we of course have a notable quadrennial occurrence in 2024, which is the presidential election. But no part of this movie references America, though you do see the effect of American culture in some of the songs Kaurismaki plays on the jukebox in the bar the characters frequent.
Internationally, 2024 is an Olympic year, but this movie has nothing to do with that either. It's about two lonely and broken characters who find and nearly lose each other, and I don't think it's the first Kaurismaki film that has that central theme.
So why 2024 and not 2023?
The people who watched this movie in 2023 would have been wondering this even more than I would have been wondering it Tuesday night in my living room. Was it just meant to mildly unnerve them, mildly knock them off balance in a way Kaurismaki is capable of doing with his eccentric narrative choices?
I often don't google these things, preferring to leave the question dangling in the air, unanswered. This time I did google, though, and on Wikipedia I found this interesting passage, which encapsulates other elements that I briefly touched on earlier that defy a definable chronology:
The time period of the film is unclear, and it has been said to be set in an alternate reality.[17] The wall calendar shown in the film shows autumn 2024, but the news narrated on the radio takes place in the early moments of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.[18] Tube radios, landline phones and old-fashioned trains are used in the world of the film, among other things.[17] It also contains several references to films, including Jim Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die, David Lean's Brief Encounter, and Charlie Chaplin's Limelight.[8]
The decision to make one of these time periods the future is interesting indeed, and more than a little eerie. However, I don't know that I ultimately find these choices crucial to the narrative, which is constructed of mostly simple things. That's not a criticism. In fact, I found this more profoundly sad, in a useful way, than the other Kaurismaki films I've seen, particularly a bleak song sung by a band at the bar near the climax.
Does the 2024 setting encourage me to rank it in the current year?
Alas, no, especially with that Wikipedia explanation.
They can't all by 2024 movies.
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