The Other Side of Hope is a Finnish film with surprisingly less subtitles than I expected about two men at big turning points in their lives: a Finnish salesman who decides to embark on something new and Khaled, a Syrian refugee, played by Sherwan Haji, looking for safety. It is a film with a good heart and acts like a grenade in its initial emotionless, lackluster impression that explodes later into a movie that haunts you and won’t go away.
While The Other Side of Hope clearly has an overall humane message, it does not feel as if the message dominates the story. The characters feel like real people albeit as an American viewer, I experienced culture shock in the counterintuitive ways that these people interact with each other and the world. I am unfamiliar with Finland and specifically Finnish films so I have no point of reference to start in my analysis of this film. I think that I saw my first Finnish film earlier this year, Tom of Finland, which is very different in tone, and I loved it. The Other Side of Hope’s Finland felt more like a Wes Anderson film in terms of composition and flat, emotionless delivery of lines. Unlike an Anderson film, it is predominantly the Finnish people who are like this, but as they get exposed to different cultures and different people, they start to become lively.
The Other Side of Hope seems to be specifically criticizing Finnish society as dying. Marriages are ended wordlessly. Employers cheat employees. Businesses regularly misrepresent themselves as successful. Employees stop caring about the quality of service. It is almost as if Finish people are broken I some fundamental way and have forgotten to have functional, healthy relationships. People are trying to escape Finland to live-one character does, and another character is preparing to retire and leave forever. The only aspect of Finnish society that has any vigor is immigration enforcement as they check people’s identification on the street while a begging woman is ignored. Priorities are twisted.
In contrast, the refugees are lively albeit in mourning. They readily help each other. They create impromptu communities in kitchens, common rooms and sleeping areas. They may be mourning, but even a dead country is better than one where people are literally trying to kill you. I mean the following as a compliment, but Haji’s physical acting style reminds me of Ryan Gosling. He is on the verge of emotionless, but has not completely given up yet.
The intersection between the refugees and the official Finnish society is absurd. I was surprised at how refugees are expected to get to certain locations without any knowledge of the language or the landscape, specifically public transportation, without any money, which I suppose is applicable here too, but I never really considered it before. Also authority seems to be absent when protection is needed, but present to eject them. The authority relies on other authorities’ reassurances of a lack of conflict, but the truth is completely different and easily accessible. Death sentences are acceptable if they are done according to the book and are not classified in that way.
The Other Side of Hope suggests that the Finnish people aren’t dead yet. There is music everywhere. While their laconic manner does not change, some unexpectedly and suddenly leap into action with little forethought when confronted with horror. A woman who is supposed to be working for the immigration center rushes to help someone escape and does not seem flustered. A group of older men, many disabled, suddenly band together to fight against a group of racists trying to kill a refugee. The emotionless tone acts as camouflage-they still care, but they must hide it so the authorities do not discover them. People become more than they superficially appear to be. It creates a ripple effect-people stop medicating themselves with alcohol and are willing to feel again. Is this an indictment of Finnish society-that it has a fascist nature post WWII that makes people hide their humanity at best or suppress it at worst?
This rediscovery of their humanity reinvigorates them and restores their beneficial positions in society. While it is slightly problematic that in order to live life fully and successfully, Finnish people must adopt (some would say appropriate and probably would not be entirely wrong) other cultures and embrace the strangers in their midst, I think The Other Side of Hope is saved from the magical other trope because the refugees have full lives and don’t exist solely to make their Good Samaritans’ lives better. Food is a nexus point for cultures to blend together and meet safely.
The Other Side of Hope is an evocative title. It can mean many things: the point where hope dies or after it is fulfilled. There is an implication that both men are trying to escape the gravity of hopelessness whether because of external or internal crises. The implication that their problems could be equated even accidentally is troublesome, but they appear to be coming from opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of human experience. One is extremely fortunate and succeeds even when he fails whereas Khaled faces obstacles even when he succeeds.
The movie’s denouement has a magical realistic element that makes you question what unfolds earlier.
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Is The Other Side of Hope actually a ghost story like A Christmas Carol? Was Khaled dead the entire time, a restless spectre not allowed to rest until his sister was safe? The first time that we see Khaled is an arresting image. He emerges from a pile of coal in a freighter ship without getting smothered or having any clear way to breathe. Earlier the movie shows how enormous mechanical devices that could crush him transport the coal from the ship to the port. By the end of the film, he is stabbed, but even though there is blood, there isn’t a trail yet he shows up somewhere else, and the blood does not seep through his clothes. The siblings have a conversation at a restaurant, which almost sounds like his sister is the only survivor in their family. There are practical reasons that he can’t accompany his sister into the police station-they are looking for him and want to deport him, but like in a vampire movie, he sits by the water to watch the sun and appears to be happily giving in to his wounds.
The Other Side of Hope is a brilliant movie, but I would not say that I enjoyed it. To a Philistine such as myself, it could remind me of a Saturday Night Live Mike Myers’ sketch called Sprockets, which ridiculed artsy fartsy German cinema so consider yourself warned, but if you allow yourself to be uncomfortable and truly consider the movie, I think that it is insightful, meaningful and moving. I would not mind becoming familiar with Aki Kaurismaki’s films because he clearly has a good heart and is using art to encourage people to be best without being pedantic, schmaltzy or predictable.