Watch Lights in the Dusk For Free

It is a performances centric movie

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Plot: A lonely security guard is manipulated by a femme fatale working for a gang of jewel thievesThis is a film that is so bleak that it actually becomes very funny, in a slightly hysterical sort of way. It was recently broadcast in the UK at 2am, which must have made for a surreal viewing experience. The plot is minimal, the characterisation light, and the script short. Much of the film is taken up with long silences (in which the characters smoke), songs being played in full, and lengthy shots (check out the one of a card game in the gangster's den, where the femme fatale vacuums the carpet). The protagonist never actually does anything, preferring to simply let events wash over him, and for a thriller there are no thrills. Nor is there any action, or humour, or human warmth (the final shot excepted). Nonetheless, the film is gripping in a curious way, its bleakness and underdog hero proving strangely compulsive viewing.

Lights in the Dusk is an odd little animal, a film that gives you archetypes of a genre and delivers a story it insists you find interesting before branching off into something else and then ending in a manner that, at least I, found abrupt. The title of the film is Laitakaupungin valot, Finnish for what I can only presume to be 'Lights in the Dusk'. The title suggests hope, it suggests something light or positive; something to map onto amidst the ever-growing darkness or 'dusk' around you as the light fades and the black creeps in. Given the final shot of the film, Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki seems to stay true to his word and the film's title but I felt short changed; as if there was something else that could've developed once the film had ended to do with a psychological study of absolute no hope, rather than giving us what we get (which is genre film-making) and then finishing on an ambiguous note to do with us asking 'what happens next'? It's a strange feeling when you come away wanting to know what happens next in a film but it's an even stranger one when you feel what might've happened next could have been better than what you were given. All sorts of questions open up, mostly to do with love and relations and one's true feelings for the everyday person you feel like you know but really don't and whether or not the immediate resolution would have been enough for the film's hapless protagonist or whether he'd been pushed so far over the edge that revenge now seemed obligatory to him.But hey, maybe that's the point or maybe Kaurismäki will revisit the cut off point in the future. The film as a whole is indeed an odd beast but an intriguing one, peeling off for long passages of scenes without dialogue before advancing the story at a relatively speedy pace, something that echoes life as a whole perhaps. The film is not shy of changing its pace as it places its noir infused, hapless protagonist at a dinner table waiting for his date as the minutes tick by. The next minute, he's showing her around where he works and this-is-this-and-that-is-that and the scene has finished.The hapless lead is Koistinen (Hyytiäinen), a security guard at a Helsinki jewellers doing the night rounds more often than not. He meets Mirja (Järvenhelmi); the smoking, mysterious, alluring and relatively quiet femme fatale of the genre piece who works for some crooks that have bigger fish to fry, notably the jewels at Koistinen's work, and he is the way in. The film's idea looks good on paper, in fact it looks and sounds like a cracking yarn with the sort of sneaky approach behind it revolving around it being a 'hiest' picture not entirely about the heist. Ever think about when you last watched a really iffy heist film like '3000 Miles to Graceland' and you see any number of security guards or police officers getting shot or taking some other flack during the robbery? Well Lights in the Dusk is the sort of film that follows those wounded peace keepers (either physically, psychologically or whether they're 'in' on it or not) and develops them in the aftermath rather than the thieves.The film's overall tone reminded me of another Scandinavian film of recent times, entitled 'The Bothersome Man' in its brooding and slow build up, a very quiet film; ominous at times as these strange places or people just exist – they do nothing much more but exist right there, doing and saying and expressing as little as possible. The editing and delivery in both films is very drab and downbeat but purposely so and thus gives off an odd atmosphere of the mysterious and uncertain. Koistinen and Mirja are not two of the most charismatic lead characters in a film ever but their relationship is never even 'so' in the first place so whatever communication or fondness there is will always be a result of Mirja's larger goal which is related to her employers larger goal.To say whether the heist happens and what happens next feels like a crude spoiler. Just to say, the study of loneliness and the parallels between the alienation at work twinned with the feeling of being left out resonates as to where Koistinen ends up at various intervals, following his 'cutting off of contact' with said female interest. I just felt sorry for the guy; someone who just keeps getting knocked down and, I feel, builds up such venom of which we never get to see the consequence of, something that I've already said might make for an interesting study, immediately post-ending of this picture. This is a man's 'prior tragedy' event in any Hollywood film you like stretched to 80 odd minutes and for pulling that off you have to commend the director. In a sense, anyone that watches this are playing a 'Koistinen' role themselves with the director as the seducer, leading you down a route of the noir and of the 'hesit' genre before branching off to look at the results of said event and then ending on a distorting note leaving you wanting more. Regardless, I look forward to seeing some of Kaurismäki's other work in the future.

I just didn't like this one, not a lot to be entertained by. It centers around a main character that is holding his balance between having bad luck and just being stupid. Most of the events are difficult to believe because there's no possible way this guy can't figure out the situation. But there you have it, he can't. The atmosphere tries to be grim, but it really steers more towards boring. Then we have the psychological approach, because our hero is usually alone. You usually get to know a movie character best when he's alone. Either way, all these scenes just seem really art-house, let's just film him doing some everyday thing and hopefully it will look smart. It's not about the plot, but the plot is so weak. And if you really want to make the viewer think he's intelligent you should just get rid of the story all together and randomly edit in shots of a wheelbarrow or whatever. Either way, this was pretty disappointing, whatever point it was trying to make. Worst thing probably is that I didn't care about the main character. I just didn't care, that made it difficult to watch.

"Lights in the Dusk" was an incredible experience visually. It was as if Kaurismaki stitched together a series of modernist masters of various genres--Hopper, Bauhaus, Mondrian, Brutalism. Every scene was carefully planned by a man with a painterly eye for color and form. The characters/actors were living versions of Georg Grosz caricatures. The femme fatale had one of the worst complexions I've ever seen powdered over on a leading lady; a metaphor, perhaps, for her soul.Unfortunately, the story did not have the holding power of the earlier "The Man Without A Past," one of my all-time favorite movies. The (anti) hero, a handsome loser, is just too wimpy. Ultimately he almost seems to deserve everything that happens to him, except for the enduring love of one good woman.I was intensely disappointed by this movie although I'm glad I experienced it.