A YOUNG BOY MUST SAVE HIS VILLAGE FROM SANTA CLAUS
★★★★★ (A Must-See)
Director: Jalmari Helander
2010
“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”
This D.H. Lawrence quote may remind you of a Demi Moore film, but I kept going back to it as I watched Finland’s Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale—one of the most moving and well-crafted holiday movies I've ever seen. I know there are people out there trying to make a living in a snowy wilderness, but I’m fascinated by the grit they have by simply existing. All the characters in Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale are male, are hardened by their surroundings, and find heart and soul in an act or a look. None of them feel sorry for themselves or their friends. They struggle without complaining because they know no other life. Mountains not only cage them in, but give them the meat and resources needed to make it to next year.
And young Pietari is the wild thing in this movie. Imagination in this world is as wasteful as a Tesla, but he clings to it because it’s the only thing left from a childhood that is rapidly dwindling to nothing. He will soon be expected to haul in reindeer with the village men during Christmas but for now, he worries a construction company on the cliffs has found something wicked during their digging—something that had eaten over four-hundred reindeer, leaving the village without money or food.
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale begins when Pietari (Onni Tommila) and his friend Jusso spy on the construction workers excavating high up on a lonely mountain bordering Russia (out here, kids run around on snowmobiles instead of bikes). Something the English-speaking man in charge says makes our protagonist believe he is looking for Santa Claus, so the boy runs home and does his research, only to find that the Santa the workers are looking for may be more Krampus than holly jolly. In fact, he just might be the evil entity frozen at the bottom of a lake decades ago and buried by locals. Deciding it’s up to him to protect the village, Pietari puts on hockey pads for armor and tries to enlist Jusso, but his comrade has unfortunately gone over the hump of childhood, instead helping his father with daily chores. This means Pietari is now alone in his imagination, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to set up traps around his house, just in case.
Though this is not a children’s Christmas movie (there’s a lot of old man penis, so beware), it has all the beats of one. I love how we see the incoming threat and this winter wonderland from a child’s point of view, but the most interesting part of Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is how fathers relate to their sons in the rugged terrain. There is not one woman in this film (my friend JJ swears he saw a lady in a crowd scene), so we get bullets, explosions, helicopters, and men who swallow their feelings. There is no softness unless you count freshly fallen snow, or the sadness in Pietari’s father’s face when his dead wife is brought up. Even then, the man gruffly demands his son go to bed. Jorma Tommila does a phenomenal job playing a grizzled widower who must keep moving to put food on the table.
And like every children’s movie with high stakes, when Pietari alerts the adults to danger, no one listens to him. At least not until children go missing.
But that ending. While every single scene captivated me, our finale is something out of Die Hard or The Thing. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale gives us a cast of heroes Christmas didn’t know it was looking for. All our tough guys are unique, but I want to give a shout out to Piiparinen (Rauno Juvonen), a Lebowski-looking dude who refuses to take off his aviators at night. Anyone who likes action, not just horror, will revel in the testosterone-fueled antics of the small crew of villagers fighting to save the world from evil Santa’s reign. The CGI is good, the dialogue is excellent. Up to a point in the film, we’re not sure what year we’re in, so it’s a little jarring when the final act brings us into the modern age, shocks us with hilarious violence. It’s easy to worry about characters who are this likable, but you’ll be wasting your time. Because they don’t feel sorry for themselves, they can find a way out of any situation. Pietari is learning just that.
GENRES: Atmospheric, Funny, Monster/Creature
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