SYNOPSICS
Sügisball (2007) is a Estonian movie. Veiko Õunpuu has directed this movie. Rain Tolk,Taavi Eelmaa,Juhan Ulfsak,Sulevi Peltola are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2007. Sügisball (2007) is considered one of the best Drama movie in India and around the world.
A young writer called Mati is stalking his ex-wife, while also trying to make unsuccessful passes at other women. Augusti is a barber living a dreary bachelor life who forms a bond with little girl, but his approaches are misconstrued as pedophilia. Laura, a single mom, tears up over sappy soap operas, but refuses real-life advances from clueless men, because her ability to trust has been ruined by her violent drunk of an ex-husband. Maurer, the architect, worries about the wellbeing of humanity, but ignores his own wife Ulvi, who in turn looks for solace in the arms of a coatroom attendant named Theo. Women have always liked Theo, but due to his low social status, they don't take him seriously. All of these people might inhabit identical tower blocks, but they couldn't feel more alienated from each other if they tried.
Same Actors
Sügisball (2007) Reviews
love in the time of bloc houses
Finally an Estonian film that combines "international" know-how in film-making with a story that is at the same time embedded in the Estonian context and universal. The film describes the life of a series of characters in Lasnamäe, a rather grey bloc house area in Tallinn. And the good news: it avoids all the clichés that could come up when thinking about such depressing neighborhoods. Sügisball is deeply human and the characters are all very complex. The movie shows "the human condition" in autumn colours without abandoning all hope. Visually it is very impressive how Lasnamäe is shown. In some shots the audience is literally diving into this monster out of concrete. We see the daily fight of the protagonists to find love and human contact in an environment that "was created for the future". Full of warmth and depth the film depicts the Lasnamäe in all our minds. Very convincing work!
Nocturnal dance of Desperation
The human emotions are a tough gig. Many of us occasionally (if not always?) linger in self-doubt, or in doubt in a general sense. We rarely speak our mind and if we do, odds are it'll be considered a pretty tasteless thing to do. We are under various pressure points which correlate with relationships or society laws/expectations and mainly consist of getting hurt one way or another. Its a gargantuan path every human being has to take. In a way, Autumn Ball (Sügisball), based on the novel by one the far most best novelists and play writers of our time in Estonia - Mati Unt, is a story about walking that path. Its been said that in order to live a perfectly fulfilled life, one must find oneself. But its not without trials one must face before obtaining that. Honesty, the sincerest human emotion, is one of the ground ideas Autumn Ball is based on. As M.Unt used to live most of his life under Sovjet rule, he sure knew that saying something didn't always equal meaning it. Therefore his characters dwelled in belief that the life they were living was false in a sense of not being true to oneself. They were captured into an everlasting loop of figuring out the right move and thus, by acting on it, being able to gain redemption. Symbolically, each of the main characters (Mati, Theo, Maurer, and in a way, also the single mother) are able to obtain this aim. However, this doesn't happen quickly nor suddenly and more importantly, not without consequences to one's actions. Not by accident does my comment's subject mention "dance". Personally for me, Maurer's honest, pure, self-forgetting dance in the darkness of the discotheque, has all the metaphorism needed to unlock this whole cinematic experience. Its a dance about breaking free, forgetting oneself and eventually, through pain which one could only understand in a sub-conscious level, re-gaining oneself renewed and turning into a person. Without a doubt, its an action out of desperation. One's ultimate need to be someone. Or, as, paraphrasing the word of character Mati, being the opposite of 'just an automate'. The idea of "dance", however, shouldn't be taken literally and only based on this one situation I wrote about. In a way, it could also represent the most basic (and thus, something with most pain involved) human need - need for another human being by one's side. For me, its most beautifully illustrated by the short, albeit meaningful relationship between the little girl (daughter of the single mother) and an old man who lives alone, eating his cereal and the only thing which brings somewhat joy in his life is a little, black, monkey who dances to him when the old man winds it up. This dance of something lifeless, but yet of something so precious and important to someone, is perhaps one of the most beautiful scenes ever I have seen in a movie. Anyway, after one incident when the old man re-appears by the fence of the kindergarten yard and gives girl a candy, he's casted away and called pervert. A bit later, single mother and the girl are getting home in a bus or in a tram, and the girl asks whats a pervert, mother doesn't answer, only looks away and smiles just a little. Possibly next day, she is called to kindergarten because her daughter had went missing. While she shouts and cries out, we see the girl coming back, holding the same black, wind-up monkey the old man use to have. Few situations later, we can see the old man sitting on his bed, and laughing. A long and pure, honest laugh that makes him gasp for air later. This was his redemption - being able to interact with someone who might understand the simple joy he was having only to himself all this time. The most tragic-comical character is Mati, who in a way, could be interpreted as the novel's author himself. His girlfriend leaves him and he starts a continual rampage in local bars (where mainly young and/or middle-aged intelligence of Tallinn seems to hang out) trying to find himself his "second-part", the one which he lost. His redemption, however, is re-finding his girlfriend who, after being awhile with another man, comes back to him out of love she feels towards him. The deep hug they are having in the middle of dozens empty alcohol bottles is where the movie draws its last chord and stops. Maurer and Theo, while being shown as people one could possibly despise, each find their redemption as well. For one, its for once speaking his mind and for the other, unleashing all the rage upon symbolically something he has been hating all these years while being a desk clerk in some bar for intelligent, educated people, "upper side" of the food chain so to speak - the hate towards something that is "better" and "smarter" than he is. Also, battering to death the supposed great actor/playwright could be interpreted as "death of the author". As you can see, its hard to write about anything else but the story, but before finishing up, I'm trying communicate some of the cinematic perfection. Camera work, also the picture editing were extremely beautiful (the changing sets of late evening streets of Tallinn with only street lights burning and cars driving by was riverting). The actors, all of them, were top-notch. I have always believed that when a movie has extremely good main leads but also very good supporting cast, even in really short roles (incident in super market jumps to mind, also the boss of Theo's), the movie isn't just good, its perfection. I think its a piece of cinema which is transcendent in time and land borders and thus, in a way speaking to everyone of us dependant of our nationality. After all, there are everywhere "boxes, and in those boxes, there are people who want to be happy.". Thanks for reading this.
Autumn Ball
Autumn Ball (Sügisball) is first feature length film by young and talented film director Veiko Õunpuu. Autumn Ball is very surrealistically real. Pasteltones and sleepiness and soundtrack that created the mood and atmosphere. Autumn Ball is talking about different people who are all lost something and now trying to find it. It's full of complex characters. Autumn Ball is full of great cast also who make this all possible. Rain Tolk is definitely one of the most talented young male actors in Estonia at the moment. I can't wait Veiko Õunpuu's next film. He showed his talent in Autumn Ball. Let's hope he'll do it again.
A Kaurismäki story from Estonia
From those lands which have been in the stronghold of the former UdSSR and where any form of creativity has been strangulated systematically, there is normally not much to await regarding advanced culture. The few Estonian films that are at present (end of 2009) available of international DVDs, are thus practically worthless. But not so Sügisball (2007). It tells, partly serially and partly parallel, the actual stories of five or six couples living in the same typically Communist tower-block where the windows must have been recently substituted but the money was lacking in order to get the isolation material into the wall. Because, in Communist times, most apartments were not rented, but owned by their tenants, we also see how different they look: starting with the poor, booth-like interior of the hairdresser, passing the roomy private-library of the writer/drinker and arriving at the fancy penthouse-stylish flat of the architect. The people in this movie are basically potential suicides, drinkers, hopeless, betrayers and betrayed, desperate housewives, children without any clear future. We see pictures from one habitation-silo, but they are representing the basic atmosphere of a whole land at the geographical transit from East and West and at the temporal transit between Sowiet dictatorship and a boundless but insecure freedom. The style of the movie is practically a full-copy of that of Kaurismäkis films. I wonder, if the director made this decision deliberately or if there is something coming up like a "Fenno-Estonian movie-style Koine". Fact is: The Kaurismäki-style is so laconic and so light-less that by its means alone it is sufficient to describe despair and hopelessness. However, the director's decision was good. Film-style and story are "isomorphic". Finland has in the person of Aki Kaurismäki the "Finnish Fassbinder". Perhaps Estonia has gotten now in the person of Veiko Öunpuu the "Estonian Fassbinder". I would be happy for Estonia. Like all Fenno-Ugric lands, it has a grand potential of culture, history and metaphysics.
Real achievement by Estonian director!
My absolutely favorite Estonian film today and ever! It's about happiness and love (characters live life without love, very depressing and empty life). "Sügisball" is based on beautiful book by Mati Unt. Director said this film is for people with gentle soul and weak liver. Characters in this film are so real, they give foreign viewer very good idea about Estonia in post-Soviet timing. Beautiful music score, 10 star cinematography, final results strong and sophisticated. Best of all characters is probably architect Maurer (and not because I like him!) But all others are also deep and well-designed. May be director can be called Estonian Altman? I think so.