Juho Kuosmanen's _Compartment Number 6_ won the Grand Prix
(2nd prize) at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, and the Finnish
film set in Russia just after the fall of the Berlin Wall has
been universally praised. For once, the festival organizers
and critics get it right. The intimate chamber drama --
much of it shot inside a cramped, rundown 2nd class coach --
somehow manages to achieve cosmic importance and true
greatness. It is what cinema ought to feel like.

Laura (Seidi Haaria), a Finnish student living with glamorous
professor (Dinara Drukarova, a staple of French cinema), is
feted at a farewell party. She is heading to Murmansk to
see the famed petroglyths there. An aspiring archeologist,
she fervently believes that studying the past (exemplified
in the prehistoric stone etchings) is crucial to understanding
humanity. Her professor seems more attached to the trappings
of fame and comfort in Moscow; later we learn that she has
reneged on the trip at the last minute. The relation between
the lovers is one-sided; Laura would call from pay phones, and
her Pygmalion barely answers.

Instead of monopolizing the 2-person coach, Laura has to
share it with a young drunken Russian miner Ljoha who does
his best to drive her away. But she has nowhere else to go
and they are stuck with each other. Slowly she sees through
his defense mechanism, and intuits his soulfulness, shyness,
and attraction to her (he turns transparently jealous when
she entertains a fellow Finn who plays her love songs). She
bares her soul, and her passion for Moscow which seems to
fade with distance already; Ljoha reveals nothing of himself
except a can-do optimism about starting "a business," but
from their tender visit to his elderly woman friend in
one of the endless strings of desolate small towns along
the way we can guess he is an orphan who knows how to
protect himself. Just as they are getting intimate he
pushes her away -- no doubt wary of their class and
nationality difference -- leaving without a goodbye.

In Murmansk, she cannot find anyone to take her to the
island of petroglyths in the dead of winter. What follows
is astonishing Odyssey involving gruff, generous Russian
peasants, fishermen, miners, and Ljoha himself. (Even the
train conductor, initially hostile, bestows Laura with
compassion (albeit laconic) at the end.) She battles
through the ice storm and rough sea, finds her message
embedded in the 5000-year-old stone art, and learns
what it truly means to be human, and alive. She may
have lost her camcorder, but she will never forget this
journey.

Jessica Kiang, one of the few critics I read these days,
compares the film to _Before Sunrise_ (I think the Ljoha
character is much better realize that Ethan Hawke's).
In interviews, Finnish director Kuosmanen's touchstone
is said to be _Das Boot_. I find myself comparing her
work to Claire Denis', especially _L'Intrus_ and _High
Life_, which force us to take wild leaps of faith
between soulful close-ups of torsos and the infinitude
of our cosmos. As for the passage of time -- the axiom
that the past teaches us who we are -- the film harkens
back to an era not just before cell-phones and COVID,
but also before the Russian invasion of Ukraine and
other ex-Soviet states. A time when peace and
understanding among all nationalities at last seemed
possible. The next time I cheer a Ukrainian missile
hitting a Russian target, I will think of the Ljoha's
who might have been conscripted to take part in the
invasion, and mourn what has happened to us all.

(for A.)

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