THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – NOT TO BE MISSED
Nowadays, the dominant narrative, in the cinema, is characterized by its complexity: multiplying the narrative arcs, merging the universes, increasing in continuations to extension, in short, describing a thousand detours to better catch its spectator in its nets. However, it is sometimes enough that a work, suddenly, prides itself on rehabilitating the straight line, relies on simplicity and sharpness of line, immediately put itself on the right track, to reach us straight to the heart.
This is what happens with Compartment n ° 6, second feature film by Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen, still little identified by cinephilic radars, and outsider of the last Cannes Film Festival, where he won the Grand Prix. A simple film, therefore, with an argument so light that it would fail at every moment to sink into the commonplace, if it did not preserve a constant and graceful accuracy.
Loosely inspired by a novel by Rosa Liksom, the film has no other program than that of accompanying two characters (“that everything opposes”, the cliché would like) during a long journey. Thus he dedicates himself exclusively to the relationship which, step by step, is formulated between them.
Glaciation of hearts
Laura (Seidi Haarla), a Finnish archeology student in Moscow, sets out to travel by train to Murmansk, beyond the Arctic Circle, to observe famous petroglyphs (symbolic drawings carved in stone) ten years old. a thousand years. An idea that, originally, was that of his girlfriend, Irina (Dinara Drukarova), a socialite intellectual who was to escort her there, but lets go of her just before leaving. Never mind: the young woman clings to this goal as a loving bond that she feels is loosening, without necessarily admitting it. So here she is on a journey of two thousand kilometers, having to share her sleeper compartment with a complete stranger. Fate wanted it to be Ljoha (Yuriy Borisov), a young man leaving to work in the mines of the Far North, with crude manners and soon, under the effect of vodka, uttering all kinds of insanity.
Scene after scene, the film examines how each one goes beyond their initial loathing
Between the artichoke-heart student and the bad-mouthed rascal, the physical distance of the journey, but also the moral one, is what will provide both of them the opportunity and the time to break out of their own stereotype, to escape his own cliché. Scene after scene, step by step, the film examines how each one goes beyond their initial loathing, perceives something else in the imposed presence of their cabin mate. Because it is indeed two displaced beings who are brought together, to split the Russian winter like a general glaciation of hearts. The straight line they walk, we recognize it: it is that of a certain classic cinema, that of New York-Miami (1934), by Frank Capra, where crossing a territory blurs social and cultural barriers between individuals – an old democratic ideal here reconverted on the borders of Europe.
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