An unidentified man gets severely beaten by a trio of thugs and ends up in the hospital, where he dies--but suddenly reawakens without knowing who he is. He wanders into a small, poverty-stricken community where families live in small containers and a night out means dinner at the Salvation Army. It is there that M meets Irma, another poor soul looking for a better life--and maybe love. Aki Kaurismäki's THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST begins with horrible violence, but after that it becomes a longing, beautiful study of love and loneliness, of pain and poverty, of faith and fragility. Markku Peltola stars as the amnesiac known only as M; Kati Outinen plays Irma with great care and tenderness for which she won the Best Actress Award at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. Finnish writer-director-producer Kaurismäki's film won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes; it is wonderfully satiric, sweet and innocent, and brutally honest, following in the footsteps of such other Kaurismäki triumphs as JUHA and THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL.
This film screened in October 2002 as part of the 40th New York Film Festival organized by The Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City.
Review 1:
"...One of the funniest pictures the disarming director [has made]..."
Source: Premiere
p.22 12/01/2002
Review 2:
"...[Outinen] gives a pitch-perfect performance, as do all the cast..."
Source: Sight and Sound
p.53 02/01/2003
Review 3:
"...Kaurismaki's originality makes his MAN both extremely affecting and engaging. He shows sensitivity to his characters and their resilience without sentimentalizing them..."
Source: Box Office
p.94 04/01/2003
Review 4:
"...Full of bright color, exquisitely strange dialogue and music....It is at once artful and unpretentious, sophisticated and completely accessible, sure of its own authority and generous toward characters and audience alike..."
Source: New York Times
p.E11 04/04/2003
Review 5:
"...The message, if there must be one, of this marvelous, stubbornly personal movie is that there is a spark in every soul..."
Source: Entertainment Weekly
p.57 04/11/2003
Review 6:
"...It's the pleasures of the unexpected that make THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST such a delicious blend of hilarity and heartbreak..."
Source: Rolling Stone
p.111 04/17/2003
Review 7:
"Relying heavily on atmospheric silence and stoic stillness, the film is wholly and completely involving. The soundtrack is superb..."
Source: Uncut
p.105 02/01/2003
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