Film “News from Lapland” in the cinema – New wind in the Lapland editorial team

In December 1984, in the middle of the Cold War, a Russian missile landed in Lake Inari in northern Finland, sparking great media interest and causing the world to pay some attention to the sparsely populated area – with a major impact on the local population. 40 years later, director Miia Tervo dedicated the film “News from Lapland” to the event.

Tervo is particularly interested in two aspects of the historical event: on the one hand, the comedy, which arises primarily from the fact that the few people in this region are torn from their extremely calm lives and suddenly find themselves in the middle of an event of global political importance. On the other hand, she wants to draw an analogy between political events and the living conditions of a young woman who is unable to draw private boundaries for herself. The rocket that penetrated Finnish territory becomes a metaphor for violated private borders. Unfortunately, the latter is too constructed, and so “News from Lapland” gets a bit lost in its own ambitions.

Tervo tells the story from the perspective of Niina, a young single mother of two small children, played brilliantly by Oona Airola. Niina’s husband Tapio, who we soon learn is in prison, was violent towards her, but she downplays the matter, blames herself for Tapio’s transgression and flirts with giving him a second chance after his release .

In December 1984, when the film begins, she drives into the forest with the children to cut down a Christmas tree, but she does not attach the trailer on which the tree is to be transported correctly to the car, and so the tree ends up in the panoramic window of the editorial office of the local newspaper “Lappland News”. Their grumpy editor-in-chief Esko, a man with an impressive stomach and no less impressive mullet, is correspondingly unenthusiastic and demands “10,000” from Niina. Of course she doesn’t have that, and so Esko grudgingly allows her to work off the debt to him by writing articles for the newspaper.

The problem: Practically nothing worth reporting happens in Lapland, which is why Esko asks Niina to think of something: “Nothing ever happens here. Last year the most popular article was about how Aimo Pirtikkola lost a sock while ice fishing.«

Of course, things change radically with the rocket strike that follows shortly afterwards, and Niina becomes a naive but persistent investigative journalist. The scenes in which the rather simple Esko, who actually only wants cheerful news in the newspaper, and Niina, who is not exactly spoiled by life, find each other, are among the strongest in the film. The two are a remarkable and comical duo. Esko is also very successful as a character. He may look like a cliché, but he isn’t, and this creates a wonderfully strange character.

Meanwhile, by having a task, something that awakens her passion, Niina begins to free herself from her oppressive living conditions and begins a love affair with Kai, an Air Force pilot who saw the unknown flying object during a flight and therefore her journalistic interest arouses interest.

But then Tapio shows up, her ex-husband and father of her children, who was released from prison early and is now demanding his place back. Niina falls back into her old patterns and habits, submits to the man and allows closeness again. Only when nuclear expert Mailis, who was summoned because of a possible nuclear warhead in the rocket, gives her the tip to practice “saying no” in front of the mirror, can she bring herself to throw Tapio out of her life, for which she of course pays with another beating.

With »News from Lapland« Miia Tervo succeeds in creating a precise filmic study of a woman struggling for liberation who has come to terms with everyday humiliations and inferiorities, mainly out of fear of the consequences that saying no can have. Niina knows that she will perish because of her kowtow to her family, her husband and the authorities at work, but she cannot initially free herself from these constraints. When Mailis asks her why it’s so difficult for her to set boundaries and say no when she doesn’t want something, Nina replies: “You kind of know… you’re afraid you’re going to start crying. Or that you freeze or that your heart stops beating and you get scared out of your mind. Or you’re afraid of dying.”

“News from Lapland” is not the comedy that the film is advertised as; the comic elements are peripheral. Rather, Tervo shows us rather dramatically the effects of hopelessness and hopelessness that women who are at the mercy of the social conventions and demands of patriarchal societies often have to struggle with, and how difficult it is to free themselves from such a situation.

“News from Lapland” is an impressive, worth seeing and occasionally funny film, although one would have wished that Tervo had used the “border violation” metaphor a little less.

»News from Lappland«: Finnland/Estland 2024. Director and book: Miia Tervo. Mit: Oona Airola, Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Tommi Korpela, Pyry Kähkönen. 119 Min. Cinema start: 14 November.