Since streaming platforms came into our lives and endangered the hegemony of projection rooms as the main option to enjoy a premiere film, the expression “movie experience” It became an indispensable part of the cinephile dictionary. Although, honestly, It has little to do with the size of the screen or the layout of the sound system.
In my humble opinion, what gives meaning to the fashionable term associated with the most purist viewers is not related to the technical ins and outs of projection, but to what turns cinema in theaters into a collective experience. That experience in which the public shares —and, on occasions, spreads— its most visceral reactions, being able to transform the stalls into a real party.
The latter, which goes beyond the complicated, and can even be labeled a miracle, is precisely what he achieved. ‘Sisu’ in the recently concluded edition of the Sitges Festival; breaking the darkness and silence with cheers, applause and cackling laughter with his dazzling and hilarious exercise in ultraviolent action, halfway between western and pulp-spirited war.
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wild simplicity
The case of ‘Sisu’ is tremendously convenient for illustrate the enormous difference that exists between the words “simplicity” and “simplicity”, and that continues to lead to confusion in cases like the one at hand. This is mainly due to a narrative foundation that is limited to pitting a one-man army—practically a Finnish Rambo—against a small Nazi squad in a round-trip in the purest ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ style.
However, this journey to life or death with episodic structure and the form of a number of ‘War Feats’ run amok and spent laps, contains in its tight 91-minute footage a dramatic development as precise as it is exemplary. Something that is reflected in your impeccable conflict management that makes causality a great virtue and that raises the meaning of the word to a new level crescendo until it ends in an electrifying third act.
In the same way, it is surprising that ‘Sisu’ so easily overcomes the limits that, a priori, should mark its status as actioner carefree and self-aware, achieving involve the respectable to unsuspected limits through action and strictly visual language while channeling the story through a silent, charismatic character who generates empathy almost instantly.
Beyond the unexpected brilliance in the narration and staging of a Jalmari Helander who already triumphed in Sitges 2010 with his refreshing ‘Rare Exports’, if anything elevates this great little rarity it is his sense of spectacle and the treatment of some set pieces that follow each other incessantly since the tape hits the accelerator; delighting with his explicit character, his impeccable technical execution – fantastic photography by Kjell Lagerroos – and with a hilarious implausibility that does not endanger the suspension of disbelief at any time.
With ‘Sisu’, European genre cinema once again proves its worth in a world apparently dominated by the American industry, leaving some of its recent achievements in its infancy. And it is that, if Godard only needed a woman and a gun to tell a story, Helander has only required a legendary soldier and a handful of Nazis to set up a movie theater and remind us what that “cinematic experience” that many preach mistakenly.