Scandinavian Film Fest 2024 Review - The Missile
Images courtesy of The Scandinavian Film Festival.
In the cold, winter region of Lapland on December 28, 1984, a Soviet missile, at the time thought to be possibly nuclear, strayed over the Finnish border during a target test, landing beneath the ice of the frozen Lake Inari. A reindeer herder soon found a piece of plastic debris confirming that the large bang heard across the sparsely-populated towns of Lapland was indeed a Soviet missile, and inadvertently started a media circus, with journalists flocking in from all over the world to investigate and document the incident. Occurring at the eve of an international conference on cruise missiles, the incident raised concerns over nuclear warfare in a climate already at the brink of nuclear paranoia.
This is the incident that sets the backdrop for Miia Tervo’s Ohjus (The Missile). Following a single mother of two boys, Niina (Oona Airola) strives to find the truth behind the incident amidst an attempted hush-hush policy from military operatives, all the while grappling with her journalist instincts, and family and relationship strife. At best, the film has this earnest tone of mundanity, which I whole-heartedly mean in a complementary manner. A major crux of the story is the effect the missile story has on this small town - “Nothing ever happens here” says Niina's insanely mullet-clad editor Esko (Hannu-Pekka Björkman), who prefers she write about the missile-themed cookies and other assorted touristy schemes the town concocts in the wake of the influx of visitors to the town. The camerawork reflects this unending tone of mundanity in a way that is often remarkably visually-pleasing: utilising an interesting wide-angle lens during many of the interior scenes akin to Hideaki Anno's live-action works, it lends it a messy sense of intimacy, and it’s in this unglamorous depiction of Scandinavian mundanity that the film shines. Critics have compared the few, brief fighter jet scenes to those in Top Gun: Maverick, but this is a comparison I simply can’t agree with. The Missile’s depiction of military operation is dry and monotonous - in a good way - characteristic of Scandinavian drama. Far removed from the hallmarks of Hollywood comedy-dramas, there’s such a pleasing and personable approach to the initial banal wonder of what befalls the people of this town.
Where the film falters is its second half, venturing into more confronting topics with such little finesse that it undercuts whatever else it was trying to put down. Featuring uncharacteristicly cheesy use of slow-motion, and hollow exploration of topics of abuse and government surveillance, the more the film went on the more I wanted it to either end or simply get back on track formally. There's these excellent black comedy allusions in the first half that seem to vanish completely once the film abruptly tries to delve into things it simply isn’t equipped for. I'd be remiss to not acknowledge that these topics are intrinsically fundamental to the story - Niina's turbulent personal struggles with her abusive ex-husband (Tommi Eronen), romantic relationship with soldier Kai (Pyry Kähkönen) and her clashes with her family over her career and relationships mark her desire to prove herself as a journalist who strives to find the truth and stake a claim for the town's freedom of press and knowledge. However, the long stretches of time dedicated to these topics often feel quite underwritten and are shot in an uninteresting manner, far removed from the uniquely layered Scandinavian emotional humour and commentary of the first half.
Nevertheless I think it has a reasonably strong ending, the stylistic demands of the film return in full force and it comes to a satisfyingly mundane end. Whilst it sags down momentarily on account of forcing itself into a conventionally-structured drama, this doesn't do much to make me dislike it completely, and ultimately its shining moments of bleak mundanity are what have stuck in my mind the most! Certainly Finnish cinema is a blind spot for me in any case, there’s an idiosyncratic emotional core to this that is hopefully indicative of its other entries - I hear Tervo’s feature debut Aurora is quite good. If nothing else, The Missile is worth a watch if you like Björk lookalikes - Niina's sister Kaisa (Emma Klipimaa) is a dead-ringer for her.
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The Riot screened as part of the 2024 Scandinavian Film Festival. The Melbourne festival ran from the 19th of July-7th of August. For more info, click here.