Kaurismaki’s confident first solo feature already contains the hallmarks of his sober, deadpan style, in the guise of a loose adaptation of Dostoevsky’s famous text.
Review #2,731
Dir. Aki Kaurismaki
1983 | Finland | Crime, Drama | 93 min | 1.37:1 | Finnish
Not rated – likely to be PG13 for some violence
Cast: Markku Toikka, Aino Seppo, Esko Nikkari
Plot: In Helsinki, an ex-law student turned slaughterhouse worker commits a senseless crime that catapults him into loneliness. Only a woman who accidentally arrived at the crime scene wants to follow him, but guilt and the tightening net of the police throw a shadow over their desperate love affair.
Awards: –
Distributor: The Match Factory
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Crime & Justice; Morality & Ethics
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: Slightly Arthouse
Viewed: MUBI
Spoilers: No
Alfred Hitchcock once said in an interview with Francois Truffaut that any screen adaptation of Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’ was insurmountable.
Almost treating it like a self-inflicted ‘dare’, Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki decided to give the adaptation a go, making the famous literary text his first attempt at a solo feature.
While Kaurismaki would later admit it was indeed too difficult, what we have in his version, albeit a loose treatise set in early ‘80s Helsinki, is a confident piece of cinema that would lay the stylistic and tonal blueprint for his future films.
The raw quality of a first feature is there for all to see, but despite that, Crime and Punishment already contains the hallmarks of the would-be auteur’s deadpan style. Moreover, his penchant for using hip, at times tonally contrasting, songs, is also evident here.
“The description you gave us fits about 80,000 men.”
A man, Antti, working in a slaughterhouse kills someone but is seen by a woman, Eeva, at the site of his crime, sparking a story about morality, justice, deception and truth when they both inexplicably catch feelings for each other.
As the murder investigation goes on, and witnesses and suspects are called in for questioning, Kaurismaki blends a bit of suspense filmmaking with dark humour, moving away from the standard-fare genre film by operating in a unique space that he would later carve out as not particularly arthouse or mainstream, much like his contemporary Jim Jarmusch.
Kaurismaki’s detached approach does mean that emotions associated with the characters don’t quite bubble to the surface, which is just as well, as Antti and Eeva have more reserved personalities.
As such, Crime and Punishment is imbued with a quiet fatalism, of two persons with an unexpected connection trying to find meaning in their lives, in a world where hope and guilt are shaped as two sides of the same coin.
Grade: B+
Music:
Eternality Tan 
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