Aki Kaurismäki and his carefully crafted public image
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By Esa Mäkinen
“The day that I get an invitation to the President’s Palace is when I will immediately commit suicide”, said the young film director Aki Kaurismäki in an interview with the popular magazine Seura in 1984.
“I mean that I don’t want to make a contract with society that would lead to me getting invited there.”
That kind of a contract is happening on Friday, when President Tarja Halonen appoints Kaurismäki as Academician of Art.
“Academician” is an honorary title without pay. It is a recognition from the state that as a film director, Kaurismäki is a genius before his death.
It befits the public image that Kaurismäki has created of himself that he might threaten to take his own life.
During his career of 30 years he has given hundreds of interviews, from the Finnair in-flight magazine to the communist Tiedonantaja. In spite of this, he is seen in people’s minds as someone who avoids publicity.
From one year to the next, Kaurismäki is depicted as a heavy smoker, who consumes unusually large amounts of alcohol. Above all he is trying to be the leftist intellectual, who has unusually honest truths to say about what he sees as the inferior people who are in power in Finland.
“If you start looking at others from above, then you might as well put a bullet in your skull. In the leading tiers there are only contemptible people”, he said in 1983 in Ylioppilaslehti, the newspaper of the Student Union of the University of Helsinki.
He took the same point of view in Aamulehti in 1994.
“Finns have not thought of anything other than money in the past decade.”
In public, Kaurismäki has created an image of himself as a friend of the poor and an enemy of the wealthy.
In reality, Kaurismäki himself is rich - or at least he could be. The film company Sputnik, which is in his wife’s name, had a bank balance of EUR 1.1 million in 2005. In the same way that doctors and lawyers have recently been taking tax-free income from their companies, Kaurismäki’s production company has paid its owners EUR 90,000 without tax.
Not all of the films have been hits, but, for instance, The Man Without a Past has been seen by three million viewers around the world.
Kaurismäki also owns all kinds of things: a part of the Corona and Kiasma restaurants, and a house in Karkkila. He spends his winters on a wine estate in Portugal, and has included among his hobbies “collecting old Cadillacs”. He has only one such car.
It would actually seem strange, if someone getting EUR 5 million in film subsidies and nearly uninterrupted artistic grants would have left his pockets completely empty.
But what is Kaurismäki like beneath his public image?
Those who know him give only positive characterisations: heartfelt, inquisitive, warm.
“At a late-night party when everyone else came in through the door, you never knew if Aki would come in through the window”, says his former roommate from the 1970s, Jarmo Lähteenmäki, ex-President of the Paperworkers’ Union.
Vesa Häkli, editor-in-chief of the entertainment magazine Oho, uses words like “staunch” and “straightforward” to describe Kaurismäki.
“When he is truly being himself, he is rather melancholy and even morose. It would seem that the soul of a sensitive artist feels angst that the whole world is such a crappy place”, Häkli says.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in the online version of the newspaper on 22.5.2008
“The day that I get an invitation to the President’s Palace is when I will immediately commit suicide”, said the young film director Aki Kaurismäki in an interview with the popular magazine Seura in 1984.
“I mean that I don’t want to make a contract with society that would lead to me getting invited there.”
That kind of a contract is happening on Friday, when President Tarja Halonen appoints Kaurismäki as Academician of Art.
“Academician” is an honorary title without pay. It is a recognition from the state that as a film director, Kaurismäki is a genius before his death.
It befits the public image that Kaurismäki has created of himself that he might threaten to take his own life.
During his career of 30 years he has given hundreds of interviews, from the Finnair in-flight magazine to the communist Tiedonantaja. In spite of this, he is seen in people’s minds as someone who avoids publicity.
From one year to the next, Kaurismäki is depicted as a heavy smoker, who consumes unusually large amounts of alcohol. Above all he is trying to be the leftist intellectual, who has unusually honest truths to say about what he sees as the inferior people who are in power in Finland.
“If you start looking at others from above, then you might as well put a bullet in your skull. In the leading tiers there are only contemptible people”, he said in 1983 in Ylioppilaslehti, the newspaper of the Student Union of the University of Helsinki.
He took the same point of view in Aamulehti in 1994.
“Finns have not thought of anything other than money in the past decade.”
In public, Kaurismäki has created an image of himself as a friend of the poor and an enemy of the wealthy.
In reality, Kaurismäki himself is rich - or at least he could be. The film company Sputnik, which is in his wife’s name, had a bank balance of EUR 1.1 million in 2005. In the same way that doctors and lawyers have recently been taking tax-free income from their companies, Kaurismäki’s production company has paid its owners EUR 90,000 without tax.
Not all of the films have been hits, but, for instance, The Man Without a Past has been seen by three million viewers around the world.
Kaurismäki also owns all kinds of things: a part of the Corona and Kiasma restaurants, and a house in Karkkila. He spends his winters on a wine estate in Portugal, and has included among his hobbies “collecting old Cadillacs”. He has only one such car.
It would actually seem strange, if someone getting EUR 5 million in film subsidies and nearly uninterrupted artistic grants would have left his pockets completely empty.
But what is Kaurismäki like beneath his public image?
Those who know him give only positive characterisations: heartfelt, inquisitive, warm.
“At a late-night party when everyone else came in through the door, you never knew if Aki would come in through the window”, says his former roommate from the 1970s, Jarmo Lähteenmäki, ex-President of the Paperworkers’ Union.
Vesa Häkli, editor-in-chief of the entertainment magazine Oho, uses words like “staunch” and “straightforward” to describe Kaurismäki.
“When he is truly being himself, he is rather melancholy and even morose. It would seem that the soul of a sensitive artist feels angst that the whole world is such a crappy place”, Häkli says.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in the online version of the newspaper on 22.5.2008
ESA MÄKINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
esa.makinen@hs.fi