The Man Without a Past

Aki Kaurismäki's beautiful, sad and very funny shaggy dog tale of a man who loses his memory.

Without any idea who he is or where he's come from, he quickly finds himself destitute. Falling for a Salvation Army woman at a soup canteen in Helsinki’s docklands, he slowly begins to assemble a new identity. Yet hanging over their happiness is the thorny question of his past.

Like Teuvo Tulio, Kaurismäki (who openly acknowledges his debt to the earlier Finnish master) is deeply concerned with all the glorious idiosyncracies of being human. As in his other masterworks, Drifting Clouds and Lights in the Dusk, Kaurismäki’s deep concern with social injustice permeates the film, which paints some of the tenderest character portraits to ever grace cinema.

In the words of Jim Jarmusch 'it's sad enough to make you laugh, and funny enough to make you cry'. Perfection.

The Man Without a Past, dir. Aki Kaurismäki, Finland 2002, Finnish with English subtitles, cert 12A, 97 mins