Sisu

The Myth of the Immortal Earth

Cinema often treats the action hero as a master of noise—an endless generator of quips, gunfire, and explosions. But in Jalmari Helander’s *Sisu*, the hero is defined by a terrifying, geological silence. Set against the scorched backdrop of the Lapland War in 1944, this film is not merely a "Finnish John Wick" or a nostalgic nod to American grindhouse; it is a violent folktale about the land itself waking up to reject an invader. Helander, who previously subverted Christmas mythology in *Rare Exports*, here takes the "holy" solemnity of Finland’s war history and injects it with the adrenaline of a Spaghetti Western, creating a work that feels less like a historical drama and more like a fever dream of national catharsis.

Visually, Helander and cinematographer Kjell Lagerroos strip the screen down to its elemental bones. The film is dominated by mud, grey skies, and the unending flatlands of Northern Finland. There is a tactile nastiness to the image; you can almost feel the grit in your teeth. The dialogue is famously sparse—our protagonist, Aatami Korpi (played by the director’s longtime collaborator Jorma Tommila), utters almost nothing until the final moments. Instead, the storytelling is purely kinetic. The camera lingers on the textures of survival: the panning for gold in icy water, the stitching of wounds with fishing wire, the trembling of the earth under tank treads. This is visual filmmaking at its most primal, where a close-up of a man’s weathered face communicates more history than pages of exposition ever could.

At the heart of this carnage is Jorma Tommila’s Aatami Korpi, a performance of granite stoicism. Korpi is not a soldier in the traditional sense; he is presented as a relic, a man who has already walked away from the war, only to have it follow him into the wilderness. The Nazis, led by the brutally desperate Bruno (Aksel Hennie), are not just fighting a man; they are fighting a force of nature. When they steal his gold, they violate a sacred contract with the earth, and the retribution that follows is mythic in scale.

There is a specific scene that encapsulates the film’s grotesque beauty: Aatami, trapped underwater, slits the throat of an enemy not just to kill him, but to inhale the escaping air bubbles from his open neck. It is a moment of horrific ingenuity that transcends the "cool factor" of typical action cinema. It suggests that Aatami will consume the very life force of his enemies to survive. He represents the concept of *sisu*—not just courage, but a white-knuckled refusal to die when dying would be easier. He is the immortal earth, chewing up the machinery of war and spitting it out.

Ultimately, *Sisu* succeeds because it understands that the best action cinema is actually physical comedy played straight. The violence is so extreme, so inventive (using a landmine as a projectile weapon, for instance), that it loops back around to being absurdly joyful. Yet, Helander never mocks his hero. He reveres him. In an era of sanitized, weightless CGI spectacles, *Sisu* offers something heavy, tactile, and delightfully cruel. It is a reminder that while empires fall and wars end, the land—and the hard men who dig it—remains.