Cinema
Eight Deadly Shots
Kahdeksan surmanluotia
Mikko Niskanen · 1972
Synopsis
Gunshots ring out in a snowy landscape; then the film goes back at length. Pasi, a small farmer in a village in central Finland, lives with his wife and their children on land that cannot feed them: unemployment, debts, unpaid taxes, and the bootleg spirits he distils with his friend Reiska. The family's joys and sorrows are intertwined with the rural exodus that is emptying the country, and the gap widens between those who decide and ordinary people.
Context
The film starts from a real event: at Pihtipudas, in March 1969, a drunken small farmer shot four policemen who had come to arrest him. Niskanen, who knew this milieu, wanted to show its causes without moralising, by filming in his own village of Konginkangas. Planned at eighty minutes, the project became a four-part television film of three hundred and sixteen minutes, broadcast from 29 March to 5 April 1972; a hundred-and-five-minute version was released in cinemas. With no actor available, Niskanen played Pasi himself. Restored with the foundation of Martin Scorsese, it was revived in 2022.
Who it is for
More than five hours in its full version, in Finnish; the pace is slow and the drama is never explained by speeches.
Prizes and reception
Two Jussi awards, for direction and for acting; voted joint best Finnish film of all time by sixty critics in 1992.