![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
Jan. 5th, 2011 09:36 amI can't believe I actually forgot all about this one, when tallying up the holidays! Perhaps because I saw it so comparatively early on in the process...
Based on a couple of shorts by Finnish writer/director Jalmari Hellander and his co-writer/brother Juuso which re-imagined kindly old Saint Nick as an entire race of ancient, feral, naked men with Christmas-based superpowers--"naughtiness" drives them into a berserker frenzy, they can smell children from miles away, gingerbread acts on them like heroin, etc.--who have to be run down, fitted with Santa suits and stringently re-trained to hug kids rather than eat them before being shipped 'round the globe in time for Advent, Rare Exports is like the anti-Polar Express. It begins with Pietari, the son of a local hunter, spying on a mysterious archaeological dig being conducted by some large American company on Korvartunturi Mountain. The professor who's driving the whole thing claims that the mountain itself is "the world's single biggest burial mound", a tomb for some creature that's half-Krampus and half-Erl King.
"Is Santa dead?" He asks his older, tougher friend, also named Juuso, who scoffs at the entire notion. But after doing a bit of research, Pietari realizes that if the original version of Santa turns out to not be dead once the drilling hits bottom, they'd better all start figuring out how to kill him.
Add in on top of this Pietari and Juuso's insanely tough, practical fathers, all hunters, whose livelihood is threatened by a sudden wholesale reindeer slaughter (perpetrated by the same naked, feral old men as in the shorts, who turn out to be Santa's "elves"/little helpers). After capturing one of the elves in a wolf-trap, they at first think he's some company muckety-muck they can ransom for the money they would have made on culling the reindeer themselves and butchering them for meat--but after the old man bites off one father's ear, they then not-so-quickly realize they have something entirely different on their hands. Surely someone will pay $65,000 (plus VAT) for a well-caged, cleaned up and properly dressed version of Santa Claus himself!
It's a nutty little film, haphazardly juggling Guillermo del Toro-style lashings of grue and sentimentality throughout , but it's worth your time and attention for so many reasons--not least the evolving relationship/steadfast bedrock love between Pietari, who has to grow up in a hurry, and his dad, who's forced to acknowledge that the world may not be as simple as he'd like to think it is. Plus: Creepy pre-Christian Yule imagery, horrid wicker dolls, kids in sacks and a gigantic frozen Santa with horns the size of buicks. A definite rental, and possibly even a buy.
Based on a couple of shorts by Finnish writer/director Jalmari Hellander and his co-writer/brother Juuso which re-imagined kindly old Saint Nick as an entire race of ancient, feral, naked men with Christmas-based superpowers--"naughtiness" drives them into a berserker frenzy, they can smell children from miles away, gingerbread acts on them like heroin, etc.--who have to be run down, fitted with Santa suits and stringently re-trained to hug kids rather than eat them before being shipped 'round the globe in time for Advent, Rare Exports is like the anti-Polar Express. It begins with Pietari, the son of a local hunter, spying on a mysterious archaeological dig being conducted by some large American company on Korvartunturi Mountain. The professor who's driving the whole thing claims that the mountain itself is "the world's single biggest burial mound", a tomb for some creature that's half-Krampus and half-Erl King.
"Is Santa dead?" He asks his older, tougher friend, also named Juuso, who scoffs at the entire notion. But after doing a bit of research, Pietari realizes that if the original version of Santa turns out to not be dead once the drilling hits bottom, they'd better all start figuring out how to kill him.
Add in on top of this Pietari and Juuso's insanely tough, practical fathers, all hunters, whose livelihood is threatened by a sudden wholesale reindeer slaughter (perpetrated by the same naked, feral old men as in the shorts, who turn out to be Santa's "elves"/little helpers). After capturing one of the elves in a wolf-trap, they at first think he's some company muckety-muck they can ransom for the money they would have made on culling the reindeer themselves and butchering them for meat--but after the old man bites off one father's ear, they then not-so-quickly realize they have something entirely different on their hands. Surely someone will pay $65,000 (plus VAT) for a well-caged, cleaned up and properly dressed version of Santa Claus himself!
It's a nutty little film, haphazardly juggling Guillermo del Toro-style lashings of grue and sentimentality throughout , but it's worth your time and attention for so many reasons--not least the evolving relationship/steadfast bedrock love between Pietari, who has to grow up in a hurry, and his dad, who's forced to acknowledge that the world may not be as simple as he'd like to think it is. Plus: Creepy pre-Christian Yule imagery, horrid wicker dolls, kids in sacks and a gigantic frozen Santa with horns the size of buicks. A definite rental, and possibly even a buy.
