Kukuschka - the cuckoo

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Movie
German title Kukuschka - the cuckoo
Original title Кукушка
Country of production Russia
original language Russian , Finnish , North Sami
Publishing year 2002
length 99 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Alexander Rogoshkin
script Alexander Rogoshkin
production Sergei Selyanov
music Dmitry Pavlov
camera Andrei Schegalow
cut Yulia Rumyantseva
occupation

Kukuschka is a Russian art-house film directed by Alexander Rogoschkin about two soldiers in Lapland during World War II who were both stranded on a young Sami woman's farm .

The Russian film title Kukuschka describes Finnish snipers who, despite poor equipment, inflicted heavy losses on the Red Army in the war winter of 1939/1940. Furthermore, the film title is the secret name of the title heroine.

The film received a total of 17 awards and five nominations at various film festivals. Three of these honors went to Anni-Kristiina Juuso for best actress, who made her film debut as "Anni" in Kukushka.

action

At the end of the Continuation War , the alliance between Germans and Finns ends. In the interests of a separate peace with the Soviet Union, the Finns are forced to fight the Germans stationed in Lapland. The Germans, for their part, resent the Finns and portray some Finns as traitors or deserters, including the Finnish main character Veikko. On the other hand, supposedly hostile elements are also identified within the Soviet army. This happens to the Russian main character Ivan, who is about to be handed over to a court martial, but is shot at by his own air force on the way there.

Samin Anni, who lives very originally , finds the injured Russian Iwan, who has been denounced by his own people. She decides to take care of him. Meanwhile the Finn Veikko, who was also denounced, arrives at the Annis farm. None of the three speaks a foreign language, so they all continue to speak their mother tongue: Iwan in Russian, Veikko in Finnish and Anni in Sami. This leads to tragicomic misunderstandings as well as situations of perfect understanding. The triangular relationship is made more difficult by the fact that Iwan thinks Veikko is a fascist, and the fact that Anni flirts with both of them.

The three of them live together on the farm for a while. Veikko builds a sauna in which the men wash themselves, Ivan cooks poisonous mushrooms and searches Anni's hut in vain for a pinch of salt. Anni does hard work every day, she looks after her reindeer and fish trap and feeds the men. When she sees them in the sauna, she is very impressed by the nakedness of both men. After a nursery rhyme she takes Veikko with her hut to get some fun with him, making Ivan very jealous because he hours endures outdoors until the two are done and at the end of the cold even Veikkos Waffen SS jacket tighten needs so as not to freeze. The tension between the two climaxes at the end when a plane crashes near the courtyard, which has distributed leaflets announcing the end of the war. Veikko wants to teach Iwan full of joyful enthusiasm that they are officially no longer enemies. Ivan interprets Veikko's violent demeanor as an attack and shoots him with a revolver. Only when Veikko is badly injured on the ground does Iwan see the leaflets and regretfully understand what he has done. He drags the Finn back to Anni, who can use a shamanic ritual to call Veikko back from the realm of the dead. While he is being nursed back to health, Anni now asks Ivan to come to her bed. When Veikko is back on his feet and the onset of winter is imminent, the two men decide to go back to their home countries.

At the end you see Anni with two sons, to whom she tells the story. They bear the names of Iwan and Veikko.

subjects

  • Language and communication are the central issue. So the joke and at the same time the tragedy that the film conveys only comes about because everyone speaks in their own language and no one really understands the other. Everyone interprets the statements of the others according to their own situation - sometimes completely wrong - but sometimes also amazingly apt. The film can only be understood with subtitles (unless you speak Finnish, Russian and North Sami); synchronized, Kukuschka would lose its effect completely.
  • Racism and fascism play an important role, especially since the framework of the film is World War II. Ivan has a very firm and deep-seated enemy image of the Germans and everyone who fought against the Soviet Union , including the Finns. It is unclear whether he made this point of view himself. It is very likely, however, that it was severely drummed into him by the Russian authorities; therefore he does not deviate from it until the end, when the war is over.
  • Pacifism is embodied in the person of Veikko. Although he fights in the Finnish army, he did not choose this lot himself. Before the war, he was a student in Sweden, where, as a Finn, he felt racism first-hand: He says that he bought glasses - not because he had bad eyes, but so that the Swedes take him seriously. Veikko only wants to make peace with Iwan from the start and goes to great lengths to convey this to him. He also uses literature citations to help, such as B. “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy or “A Farewell to Arms” by Ernest Hemingway

Reviews

Kinozeit.de praises the film as an “absurd basic situation of wanting to understand but not being able to understand” and believes that the film provides “plenty of tension and entertainment” . The film is "a warm-hearted and bizarre gem that you will not soon forget" . Der Spiegel considers the film to be “an enchanting erotic comedy about the language of love.” The lexicon of the international film says: “A poetic anti-war fairy tale that draws its humor from confused languages. The souls of the protagonists are reflected in impressive landscapes, which at first appear repellent, but on closer inspection reveal their inner beauty. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kukuschka - The Cuckoo. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used