{"id":242,"date":"2004-01-13T22:32:02","date_gmt":"2004-01-14T02:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/?p=242"},"modified":"2004-01-13T22:32:02","modified_gmt":"2004-01-14T02:32:02","slug":"aki-kaurismaki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/?p=242","title":{"rendered":"Aki Kaurismaki"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Seattle&#8217;s Grand Illusion Theater is one of only four theaters in the country showing a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nwfilmforum.org\/grandillusion\/kaurismaki\/\">complete Aki Kaurismaki retrospective<\/a>. I&#8217;ve written about Kaurismaki <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/archives\/000199.html\">before<\/a>; I&#8217;ll just add that tonight&#8217;s entry, <em>Match Factory Girl<\/em> from 1989, is a well-nigh perfect film. Minimal, deadpan, it&#8217;s about a young woman (Kaurismaki regular Kati Outinen) who&#8217;s abused by her parents and lover, and takes appropriate revenge. Every shot is perfectly framed, and every shot is a surprise. The icy lighting is a wonder to behold. And the film somehow combines world-weary fatalism with (dare I call it?) a sense of justice, and Fassbinderian melodrama with Bressonian intensity. All this, and the film is modest and unpretentious as well. I&#8217;d seen <em>Match Factory Girl<\/em> before, but seeing it again reminded me of why I love Aki Kaurismaki. (And it&#8217;s purely as a compliment that I named my dog after him).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seattle&#8217;s Grand Illusion Theater is one of only four theaters in the country showing a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nwfilmforum.org\/grandillusion\/kaurismaki\/\">complete Aki Kaurismaki retrospective<\/a>. I&#8217;ve written about Kaurismaki <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/archives\/000199.html\">before<\/a>; I&#8217;ll just add that tonight&#8217;s entry, <em>Match Factory Girl<\/em> from 1989, is a well-nigh perfect film. Minimal, deadpan, it&#8217;s about a young woman (Kaurismaki regular Kati Outinen) who&#8217;s abused by her parents and lover, and takes appropriate revenge. Every shot is perfectly framed, and every shot is a surprise. The icy lighting is a wonder to behold. And the film somehow combines world-weary fatalism with (dare I call it?) a sense of justice, and Fassbinderian melodrama with Bressonian intensity. All this, and the film is modest and unpretentious as well. I&#8217;d seen <em>Match Factory Girl<\/em> before, but seeing it again reminded me of why I love Aki Kaurismaki. (And it&#8217;s purely as a compliment that I named my dog after him).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}