You know that bit at the start of There Will Be Blood (2007), where a silent, grizzled man is digging into the earth – eventually striking oil? Okay, good. Now, let’s shift things to WWII-era Finland; here’s another grizzled, silent prospector, wandering the landscape alone – only this guy is looking for gold, not oil, and he finds plenty. With me so far? Now imagine someone, director and writer Jalmari Helander perhaps, who lingered on that title – There Will Be Blood – and thought to himself, ‘Imagine If There Really Was Lots and Lots of Blood? That would be amazing.’ From prospecting, to war, to ultraviolence, in one balletic move.
That’s Sisu (2022), essentially, and it’s completely marvellous. The year is 1944 and, after the signing of the Moscow Armistice, the country’s Nazi occupiers are being expelled. They are withdrawing extremely begrudgingly, operating a scorched earth policy as they go. Finland was at this point extremely fatigued by its role in the War, fighting defensively first against the Soviets, then against the Nazis. Our prospector (Jorma Tommila) has all the appearance, on a personal level, of that fatigue, and he is not minded to engage with the retreating Nazis he passes on his travels. He, his horse and his dog simply pass by a small company, who are by now on the road towards Norway. However, these Nazis, not quite drunk with power but still in the bravado stage of the hangover that goes with it, have other ideas. And, when they discover that he is carrying a not insubstantial amount of gold, they decide to relieve him of it, and to kill him. It will provide absolutely no spoilers to say, that doesn’t quite go to plan.
What ensues is a blistering, brilliantly choreographed run of pursuit and vengeance; it turns out that the prospector is far more than just that, and that his time in the wilds panning for gold was something of a career change (Tommila looks like an authentically tough bastard, by the by, which helps the whole thing to land so successfully). The remaining Nazis, led by the equally savage Commander Bruno – though not, unless I’m mistaken, called by his name during the film – now want the man’s scalp. Bruno (Aksel Hennie), who is slightly less thick-as-pigshit than his men, and a strangely calm sadist, has some innovative ideas to catch his prey.
When it’s not a cascade of flying limbs and ripping flesh, Sisu resembles something from the old Wild West, and clearly channels this genre with some glee; as in those particular films, too, the baddie(s) get put through their paces until their calm demeanour gets picked apart. One of the film’s greatest pleasures is watching Bruno getting steadily unnerved. He goes from strangely mesmerising gestures, as he calmly directs his men to their certain deaths, to rising, self-serving panic. Bravo, incidentally, to Hennie, who is a superb lead antagonist here, and a worthy quarry for ‘Aatami’. Hennie does enough to build his character, but keeps himself straightforwardly easy to hate. The back story, of course, is history overlaid with fantasy, but it’s still a fantasy homage to some of the WWII Finns more than capable of superhuman feats; hell hath no fury like Simo Häyhä, for example, who killed hundreds of Soviets single-handedly, and may be the greatest sniper of all time. No wonder the Finns need the untranslatable word ‘sisu’ for such people. (It’s also worth pointing out that Aatami kills hundreds of Soviets, too, even if that happens beyond the bounds of Sisu: acquisitive political systems which seek to swallow up independent nations are all monstrous. For all the fantasy, there’s a kind of defiant catharsis here.)
Sisu is adeptly paced, with incredible SFX and a wide range of inventive scenes (one scene, let’s just codename it ‘the water scene’, made both me and a total stranger at the cinema double with disbelieving laughter at exactly the same point). It has enough historical grounding to keep the right balance of grit and gore, and no matter how gritty/gory it gets, it resonates with a weird kind of …joie de vivre; it’s hard to describe it any other way. It’s also hard to conceive of a film as purely, gratuitously enjoyable as this one; even if you don’t particularly like grisly cinema, it feels like Sisu could win you over. From the director of Rare Exports (2010), it’s another imaginative piece of work but, when I saw Rare Exports, I felt that it lacked a truly convincing, punchy conclusion. No such concerns here; Helander has utterly nailed it. It was nice, by the way, to see Rare Exports actors and real life father and son Jorma Tomilla and Onni Tomilla back on screen together; little Pietari is all grown up! Now go and see Sisu; it’s an absolute tonic, and certain to be a favourite film of this year.
Sisu (2022) is on limited theatrical release in the UK now.