Letters to Father Jacob

I got lucky. My second pick of HKIFF film was as good if not better than the first. As if by accident, it was also about religion. But it's a very different film. The first was French. The second was Finnish. Perhaps there really is something about "national" character, though I don't like to think so. There is a totally different "feel" about it. This 2009 colour feature was by Kaus Häro and starred Kaarina Hazard, Heikki Bousianen, Jukka Keinonen.  It is as laconic as the first ( 3.5 characters, 3 locations, 2 principal characters and one excellent story) but it managed to send  the audience sniffling sheepishly and blowing their muffled noses discreetly as they inched their way out the narrow exit of Times Square UA Cinema at the end of 74 minutes.

When the film opened, we see the face of a 50-ish man with balding hair sitting above a pair of sunglasses(!) talking to the impassive face of another 30-ish tough looking fat woman. He was telling her that for 12 years, she did not have any visitors and that she would be leaving the prison soon. She merely said:, "I didn't ask for it.". She was told that she had been pardoned and that her life sentence has been commuted to 12 years. But there was a condition. She must go to work as an assistant to an old priest. 

In the next scene, we see this tough fat woman trudging along a deserted wet mud path leading to what  looked like a fairly dilpadated stone hut. In the far background, we see a small church, its long narrow spire reaching towards the sky. In the foreground, there was a lake. She arrived, looked around, and entered gingerly. It was dark. She did not "holla". Nor did any one say anything. She explored a little. She had to go under some white underclothes hung inside the house for drying. Then she heard some noises. Someone in the shadows budged. He emerged. We see an old man, hair all white, walking slowly. He said she must be Leila Sten. She said yes. He asked if she was exhausted by the trip. She didn't reply. Then woman said: "No housework!". The old man said he used to have a lady neighbor to help him do household chores but she died the year before and since then he had to look after everything himself. Then we see a close up of a boiling kettle. He offered to make some tea for the lady. She didn't say anything. She just looked at the old man. She sat down but at the other end of the long table, facing the old man. Then we had a close up of a hand on some country brown bread with a knife. It was all knarled with veins. After a while, we see the woman approach the bread. She took the knife but did not cut any slice. She hesitated, then waved it in front of the old man. There was no reaction. There was a dull whitish sheen over his eyes.  She then used the sharp knife to cut a slice of bread for herself and drank the tea offered to her by the old priest.

In the third scene, we see the old man sitting on a tattered white garden chair very close to another small white garden table in front of him. The fat woman was sitting on the left of the table several steps away from its edge.  A postman arrived in a bicycle, The old man asked if the the bicycle was new. The postman asked how he knew. He did not reply. He delivered some letters. The woman took them but threw some of them into a small shed. A close up showed that it was a well. The old man asked to be read the letters. She did so. The first was from a teacher having trouble with his students who always tried to make fun of him and asked the priest to pray for him. He dictated a reply to ask God to give him courage. A second letter was from a grandfather who was worried that his son would not find a job and also asked the priest to pray for him. A third came from a woman who went to the north of the country and was better because her husband is now beating her less but that he took all her savings. But in the letter there was a lot of money. The old man told her to put the money in a little candy box at the top right drawer of his sideboard. She hesitated but put the money in but only half. The old man told the fat lady he had no use for the money. He gave everything to the woman whose cohabitee took all her money and now she gave him back the money.

In the evening, some one broke into the house. The fat woman heard and caught him and dragged him outside. We see that it was the postman who said he came to see how the old man was because he was worried about how the woman killer might treat him.

In the fifth scene, the postman came again. But once he saw the fat woman, he swerved to another path. In the next scene, the old man told the woman to set the table. He said his guests would be arriving. He had taken out his best silver and all his cups and saucers. He said there would a wedding. The fat woman told him that no one is arriving. Then the old man said he must hurry. He must never let the congregation wait. He walked as quickly as he could to the church. When he arrived, we see that it was empty. There weren't even any chairs! But he still went up to the altar his half-torn bible in his wrinkled hand against his breast, waiting for his congregation to arrive. It started to rain. He waited. No one came. He asked the fat woman to help him home. But the fat woman simply left. She went home, alone. She packed. She took half the money in the candy box. She called a taxi. The taxi arrived. The driver asked her where she wanted to go. She fell silent. In the next shot, we see the taxi leaving, the fat woman behind it with her suitcase still in her hand. In the meantime, the father felt very tired, lay down in front of the altar on a darkish slate shaped just like a coffin. Water was dripping at his side from the leaking roof. The old priest returned. She woke up. We see that she removed a noose from her neck. We see that the kettle was boiling. She was making tea. She brought a cup and walked into the old priest's room and offered it to him and asked if he wanted some tea. The old man, engaged in some deep thought on his bed, said he did not need it.

In the next final scene, The postman arrived again. She asked him where were the father's letters. He said there were none. She was furious, grabbed hold of the mail bag and rummaged through it. The postman was right. Then she grabbed hold of the postman and told him when he came next, he should yell as usual, "the postman is coming" and bring something. The following day, he came, with a magazine. He yelled. The old man asked whether he got any letters.  The father said that he wanted to help God by praying for those who needed his intercession but he was now not so sure if he himself needed the letters more than the letter writers needed him to intercede for them to God. He said perhaps that was God's way of giving him a purpose in life and keeping him going. The fat woman told him he got letters. Then he asked for them to be read to him. The old woman went to the shed where she previously threw the letters and tried to fish them out with a stick. But she failed. She then tore a page from the magazine, to make a noise as if she were opening a letter. The old man asked to be read the letter. She started. She said a boy had lost his dog and asked the father to pray for him. He asked if there was an address. She said yes but did not give any. Then the father asked him to read him the second. The woman started. She began telling the story of her life, how as a child, she was always beaten by his father and it was his sister who protected him from his rage. Later when her sister grew up, she was also married to a wife basher. One day, when she visited her sister, she saw her husband beating her again. She tried to run away. He pursued her and bashed her again and again. Now that she was strong. She protected her sister. She grabbed a knife and killed her husband. Instead, she brought her even more misery because she was now without a husband. Tears were streaming down her cheeks as she read the contents of that "letter" despite her calm and steady voice. The father knew instantly. He said, "It was your story"". He went to a shed and returned with some letters. They were written by her sister, Lisa Sten! He said, that was the reason why she was pardoned. The following day, we see a police car, followed by a hearse moving away from the old priest's house. the fat woman was looking at it, a suitcase in her hands. The postman came too on his bicycle. He waved his hands to the slowly passing hearse.

In this tale of loneliness, of conviction, of courage, of fortitude, of hostility, of greed, of selfishness, of abandonment, of the need for acceptance, of redemption and of hope, we see how two persons, each imprisioned by their own past, each abandoned by society in his/her own way, can finally come together through time, being physically close to each other, through patience and understanding. The fat woman was touched by the hopelessness of the old priest's hope which finally broke down her rejection of him. The moment she was asked by the taxi driver, she realized that her destiny fell in with that of the old blind priest with no weddings, and no baptism and not even a congregation. Hope always sprang in the most unlikely places! But it was a grim victory. The old priest died, having accomplished his last mission. It was a desperate mission. But he succeeded! He could die. He had no longer any need to live on, either esthetically or religiously. He could go in peace. He had finally restored peace to the heart of the fat woman, poisoned and numbed by hatred and hostility against the violence of this world. There were also a couple of images that I like and which may have some hidden meaning: the ordinary looking flat spouted water pot which remained serviceable in adding a little flavor to an otherwise tasteless life by providing steaming hot tea in the cold climate and the leaking house of the old priest and the image of the water dripping from the roof whilst the old priest lay down on the coffin like slab in front of the empty altar! The rain from heaven is the water of life, even man be dead. It was the dripping water which awoke the sleeping priest in the empty church.

It was an extremely simple film, told with skill and great economy.It demonstrates abundantly that very powerful emotional impact can be consistent with extreme economy of characters and locations.  Not every film has to be a multi-million dollar Hollywood film. The key to quality is thought and skill, a good script, intelligent use of camera angle, focus, play of light and shade, composition of the screen image, the sparing use of music at critical points, not a big-name cast and lavish sets. I like the music too, by Kirka Saninio. It's a bit like the sound of Arvo Paart: a few slow constantly repeated piano chords whose resonance is left hanging in the air before gradually dying down. Fits the spare photography of light and shadows perfectly. The characters are frequently filmed with side light on one side so that the relief of their faces stand out sharply against the shadow on the other side of the face. Is the director trying to suggest that there's a silver lining to every dark face and that rays of hope will always land on one whose heart is not yet dead? Will light burn the more brightly against the darkness of the night of the soul in utter desertion, desolation and abandonment? I like the subtle way the director hinted at what he might be trying to say: the old ordinary looking kettle which is always boiling with steam to make a cup of hot tea to give some taste to the monotony of the old priest's life, the water being turned into steam with heat, the water dripping from the roof of the church to wake up the old priest lying on the coffin like slate in front of the altar: the water of life from heaven?