a blog by Peter Leonard
Saw Кукушка (The Cuckoo) yesterday at Lincoln Plaza. The film takes place in Lappland (Sápmi) during the last days of World War II -- the periphery of Europe at a time when war reached from the Sahara to Scandinavia.
Anni-Christina Juuso stars as a Sami woman who nurses back to health two soldiers on opposite sides of the conflict - a Russian and a Finn. None of the characters speak each other's language, so in a sense all dialog is a form of narrative voiceover directed at the audience.
(Most people have seen Russian films before, and some may have heard Finnish, but it's a safe bet that few American viewers will have ever heard Sami. It is in the same Finno-Ugric language family as Finnish, but is generally not mutually intelligible. The language has many dialects, including Inari, Lule, Northern, Skolt and Southern. It can be written in either Cyrillic or Latin alphabets, with a sample of the latter as follows:
Sámegiella lea njálmmalaš muitalusaid giella vieruiguin dološáiggis muhto lea maid ođđaáigasaš giella otná dihtoráiggis.
The fact that the three main protagonists are from different nations and cultures makes each one stand in for a larger group, which opens up both possibilities and pitfalls for this kind of film. Gender throws a wrench in the works as well: the Sami woman could easily end up as some sort of overdetermined counterpoint to the masculine, warring Finns and Russians. In fact, notions of the 'noble savage' often overwhelm any depictions of Sami culture in contemporary Scandinavian culture, much as they do for Native Americans in this country. Luckily, the strength of each actor's performance results in a sense of individuality that shines through each person's uniform (be it army trenchcoat or Sami amulet). And for a film edited in Moscow, it must be said that the Russian character is by far the least sympathetic.
Highly recommended - trailer available here.