(courtesy IMDb)
The translation of this Finnish language’s original title, Mielensäpahoittajan rakkaustarina, literally translates, so say the good folks at Wikipedia, as The Grump’s Love Story.
It’s a delightful grouping of words because it points to the central joy of this gorgeously delivered and emotionally nuanced film which is that the long hands of love and any variations of Cupid’s arrow can reach anyone, no matter how hardened their heart may be.
Based on the novel of the same name by Tuomas Kyrö, The Long Good Thursday as it is titled in English, is the sort of film you need to watch if you are of the opinion that life has passed you by and that there is nothing good left waiting for you in the rest of your life.
The film’s grumpy protagonist, Mielensäpahoittaja (Heikki Kinnunen), may well agree that life is done and dusted with him as he ambles through his days filled with needless wood chopping, and trips to the supermarket to pick up supplies for what look like fairly perfunctory meals.
He is lost in the depths of mourning the love of his life, who died from Alzheimer’s, and spends little time with anyone else save for his neighbour, Kolehmainen (Silu Seppala), whose yard is filled with junk and who aggravates Mielensäpahoittaja at just about every turn (not really Kolehmainen’s fault; more his grouchy neighbour’s disaffection with life in general).
It doesn’t help matters that his greedy, tone deaf sons, Pekka (Villa Tiihonen) and Hessu (Iikka Forss) are badgering him to go into a retirement home which looks like something out of a benignly dystopian nightmare (ugh the custard is a thing here!) and eyeing off his forets landholding which are worth a pretty penny.
They aren’t evil people, just extarordinarily unthinking and uncaring, and when they accuse their father of not really caring for them, he responds with what looks a reasonably fair assertion that they have never really talked to him about anything of import and so he doesn’t really know them.
But clearly Mielensäpahoittaja is tired of life, something that only unexpectedly changes when he smells wood and oil at a supermarket which he rather amusingly tracks down to a fellpw customer, Saimi (Jaana Saarinen) who handles his awkwardly amusing approach with grace and avuncular good humour.
She is as yang to Mielensäpahoittaja’s yin as you can get, a bubbly reservoir of garrulous carpe diem-ness who takes pretty everything in her stride and who happy to go on spur-of-the-moment camping trips or impulsively photograph subjects – she’s a respected photographer who exhibits regularly in the Finnish capital, Helsinki) – because life is clearly too short to second guess anything.
Surprising himself it seems, Mielensäpahoittaja finds himself drawn to her, paying for her groceries when she realises she left her purse at home, and after she drives him back to her place to repay home, sticking around to fix her broken heater and looking rather sweetly forelorn when he can’t any other practical things to do for her.
On the surface, The Long Good Thursday is a beautifully judged and near flawlessly educated love story of two people in their golden years who find that life is far from done with them yet.
One of its great strengths is the thoughtfully nuanced characterisation, with both Saimi and Mielensäpahoittaja not left as simple cardboard cutout, one-note characters who are endlessly bubbly and grumpily disaffected respectively.
As they grow closer, both in time spent together but emotionally, we get to see hidden layers with both of them, meaning that far from being some sort of surface rom-com with not to say about anything except “Isn’t love grand?”, The Long Good Thursday becomes something far richer and considerably more affecting.
A gently flowing film that is content to let its characters go about their lives, alone and together and let the various punctuation points of new love play out in ways unique to two people with a great deal of history, which includes pain and loss of varying kinds, The Long Good Thursday is an absolute joy to watch.
It reminds us at every turn that we might give up on life and decide that all of our hopes and dreams have been lost to the great dustbin of unfulfilled expectations, but that that doesn’t mean life is all over.
In fact, if we are willing to open ourselves, and surprisingly Mielensäpahoittaja is, his decision to give his heart over to Saimi represented by him, quietly and with whispered apology, turning the ever present photo of his wife around so she’s now facing the wall.
The fact that The Long Good Thursday doesn’t rush this scene, letting the central character effectively say his goodbyes, for now at least, to the woman he loved and who is now gone, in ways quietly sweet and yet intensely emotionally ways says all you know to about his remarkably lovely film.
It is content to let life play out, and while it does have its fair shares of benignly malevolent characters and some of the usual rom-com tropes and cliches including the final act argument which is handled in a beautifully moving original way that speaks volumes of the great journey his new love affair has taken Mielensäpahoittaja on, The Long Good Thursday never falls into tiredly expected territory.
It embraces the great breadth and truth of the human experience, acknowledging how darkly sad and exhausting life can be while embracing the idea that simply because the worst has happened, doesn’t mean some of the best is waiting ing the wings.
This might sounds like trite, bumper sticker stuff but The Long Good Thursday is too emotionally intelligent and thoughtful a film to fall into obvious narrative potholes, staying the course throughout and delivering up a film that is brutally honest about the human condition but also refreshingly and soul-comfortingly hopeful too in ways that leave you feeling good about the world and full of expectation that life, far from having fired its last shot, may have surprises left yet.