Valkaama review: poetry in cinematic (open-source) form

The basics: what is an open-source film?

Open-source is a concept that is familiar from software development: the program code, which in commercial software is something like the most sacred of grails or the most secret of company secrets, is made available to the public. Anyone can view or improve it. In practice, this means that open-source software can usually be used free of charge without any loss of performance, as it is constantly being further developed by the community.

Films like Valkaama transfer the open-source principle to film production. Director Tim Baumann wrote a thesis on the subject and implemented the idea in the project. This means that the license for using the film is a very liberal Creative Commons BY-SA, all components of the film are made available, and preliminary versions were discussed with the community. Tim provided a few answers on the topic to Markus from Netzpolitik.

The story: restless from place to place (and in life)

Valkaama is about traveling, dreaming, and growing up. Lasse has been traveling the world for years and puts his thoughts down on paper as poems. He meets his girlfriend Rune, with whom he spends some time, but then leaves her. He wants to go with his friend Ari to search for Valkaama, an ideal community in northern Finland, far away from civilization.

The third main character, Magnus, haunts the internet looking for people who are suicidal – in order to help them. Ari becomes his latest victim. Magnus joins Lasse on his journey to Valkaama to change his life. Meanwhile, Rune searches for Lasse, her lost love. When the three meet, their fates are decided – but not as anyone had predicted.

The aesthetics: Poetry Captured “on Celluloid”

Valkaama is a very poetic film. In keeping with its leading actor, Lasse, the film tells of the journey in long shots. The resulting landscape shots of Finland, which Tim Baumann lets stand for a long time, take the viewer on a journey into the promised future. The story itself also develops at a slow, poetic pace, with the chain of events involving the three main characters only gradually unfolding.

The whole thing is aesthetically realized through an inspired use of cinematic means. The director relies, especially at the beginning, on a color symbolism in which he expresses the differences in Lasse’s and Magnus’s lives. Later, when he brings the two stories together, he continues to play with color and saturation to visualize the feelings of his actors. I also remember the long fade-out in which he lets Magnus merge with Lake Inari – into oblivion, so to speak.

Conclusion

The term “Valkaama” is composed of the two Finnish words for home and polar night (valkama and kaamos), and thus nicely sums up the film’s theme between finding one’s purpose and a journey. The film’s weakness could also be its strength: When I first watched it, I had the impression that the climax came too quickly, that it was not worked out enough – which was reinforced by the rapid dissolves. After the slow pace of the narrative, I felt as if I had been steamrolled by the resolution and would have liked a longer climax. On the other hand, the brevity of the events left me in a kind of “state of shock”, so that I first had to swallow and visualize the story again. This is precisely where the film’s real strength lies: it forces the viewer to deal with what they have seen even after they have watched it. I am not sure which of the solutions I would prefer – as always, I would love to hear your opinions in the comments.

All in all, Valkaama is a well-made film that can be recommended to anyone who is open to a slow, poetic narrative pace – far removed from the usual Hollywood aesthetic.

Valkaama can be freely downloaded by everyone. Those who know how torrents work should access the Valkaama torrents, and thus reduce the server load. Otherwise, there is of course also a normal download version.

Update August 31, 2011: “Valkaama” is now also available in HD. Thanks to Robert Utnehmer for pointing this out.