The Man Without a Past

Amazon.com

The spare and quirky comedy of Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismaki is in delightful form in The Man Without a Past. A man (Markku Peltola) awakens after a brutal mugging with no memory; he wanders into the outskirts of Helsinki with his face wrapped like an escapee from a classic horror film. A destitute family helps nurse him back to health and a Salvation Army worker named Irma (Kati Outinen) helps him get a job. Though bureaucrats and policemen who can't seem to cope with this amnesiac's lack of established identity, the amnesiac plants potatoes, manages a rock & roll band, and romances Irma as he builds a new self. Kaurismaki weaves his movies out of small details and careful, cautious steps forward--but by the end, The Man Without a Past has become a rich, engrossing, and very funny portrait of the possibilities of life. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews:

The Man Without a Past.......2007-07-25

Finnish auteur Kaurismaki puts a heartrendingly fresh twist on the amnesia theme with this entry, a superb mix of deadpan black humor and lower-class anguish that somehow lifts the spirits. It's impossible not to pity Peltola's stone-faced amnesiac, and Outinen's inexpressive Army savior, but Kaurismaki keeps his bleak twists of fate from sinking into hopelessness and futility. With the barest of dialogue and great generosity of spirit, "The Man Without a Past" earns every heartbreaking laugh, and makes spareness and scarcity seem almost virtuous.

Man Without A Past.......2007-06-06

While my Finnish film viewing experience has been quite limited to this film and The Cuckoo, so far I have to give two thumbs up to the Finnish film community. Sparse dialog often done in a rhetorical fashion delivers this film about a man who has forgotten his past and how he embraces his new life. Beautifully done with a very Modernist approach to representing life. Subplots: romantic relationship and rock-n-roll.

Kaurismaki's masterpiece.......2007-01-14

This movie excels with unconventional attributes unseen in Hollywood movies these days - superb acting, true, honest characters without glamour, attention to minute detail in screenplay, sets and careful selection of music. This is what real movies are all about.

I was disappointed after reading such high praise.......2006-02-19

This is a very quirky film, and I think it would have helped if I had understood Finland better than I do. I think there's a kind of political point to the movie that escaped me because I'm not aware of the situation in Finland that it appears to critique.

The characters are people on the margins, living a hand to mouth existence, where people are forced to live in shacks and abandoned shipping containers because there's no housing and they have little money. TO the extent that the authorities are there, they are indifferent or hostile to people who are basically good but victims of economic and social forces beyond their control.

The main character is assaulted by a group of thugs and loses his memory. He walks out of the hospital (?) and ends up in a desolate port area where the kindness of strangers helps him survive and start to build a marginal life for himself.

I found Finnish pop music not to my taste, and there's a lot of it in the movie -- be warned. Of course, you may like it. This is a very spare movie, very non-Hollywood. I thought it was kind of slow and perhaps too spare for my taste. But it's definitely the kind of movie you won 't immediately forget.

Wonderfully Simple and Gloriously Beautiful.......2005-09-28

This was a very enjoyable film, the characters are great, it just goes to show that sometimes a plot isn't what makes the greatest films, sometimes it's the dialouge and the way you use the plot to form a masterpiece, this film is full of simplicity and humor, I get excited over a lot of films but this one got me extra excited, a modern classic that everyone who's anyone should see.

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The Man Without A Past (DVD)

Manufacturer: Bavaria Film
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Product Features:

Cannes Film Festival 2002 Best Actress Kati Outinen
Cannes Film Festival 2002 Grand Prix Aki Kaurismaki

ASIN: B000MQ8NTW

Product Description

Hilarious!

The Man Without The Past [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Finland ]

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The Man Without The Past [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Finland ]
Director: Aki Kaurismaki
Manufacturer: Sandrew Metronome
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Product Description

Finland released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada. Languages: o English (subtitles) o Swedish (subtitles) o Finnish (Dolby Digital 5.1) Synopsis: Aki Kaurismaki's The Man Without a Past opens with the title character (Markku Peltola) being savagely beaten. At the hospital he is declared dead, but he sits up and walks out on his own power. He is taken in by a mother and her two sons, discovers an old jukebox that inspires local musicians, and discovers he has skills as a welder. When he becomes unwittingly involved in a bank robbery, and the man is unable to give the police his name, the cops send out feelers trying to figure out the man's identity. Soon his wife appears. The Man Without a Past was screened at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival where it was awarded the Grand Prix, the most storied prize after the Palme D'Or. Special Features: o Interactive Menu o Scene Access o Trailer(s)

The Man Without a Past / L' Homme sans passe (Original Finnish Subtitled in English)

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The Man Without a Past / L' Homme sans passe (Original Finnish Subtitled in English)

ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Product Description

The second part of Aki Kaurismäki's "Finland" trilogy, the film follows a man who arrives in Helsinki and gets beaten up so severely he develops amnesia. Unable to remember his name or anything from his past life, he cannot get a job or an apartment, so he starts living on the outskirts of the city and slowly starts putting his life back on track.

DVD:

DVD

DVD