A Recommendation: Watch Sisu
This 2022 Finnish film asks “What happens if you throw a landmine at a Nazi?" The answer is not hard to guess.
The best way to explain the 2022 World War II carnage fest Sisu is to start where the movie starts – by defining this uniquely Finnish word.
JUST FEEL THAT ENERGY. Do you know how amazing you must be as a people if your language has a word that’s too badass for translation? Like we cannot even wrap our limited and clearly-less-badass minds around the enormity of the Finnish’s people’s will to survive. What a delight. I’m cheering for them in all future Winter Olympic events.
This is the game of Sisu, written and directed by Jalmari Helander. Aatami, Sisu’s stoic hero played by Jorma Tommila, will not be stopped. He will not be killed. He will not be contained. And the bloody exuberance with which the movie shows off his preternatural determination to keep trucking dudes to kingdom come is what sets it apart.
“You see, it’s not about who’s the strongest. This is about not giving up. And he won’t. Ever.”
Set in the waning days of WW2, Sisu begins with Aatami trying to get a backpack full of gold to a bank. He has apparently laid down his sword and shield after years of being a one-man commando unit for Finland, and this gold that he has mined is his way to escape that life.
All he wants to do is live in peace and solitude with his adorable dog, his horse, and the beauty of the Finnish countryside. It’s a good thing that no evil group of people is going to stand in his…
Well, shit. Time to show off that Sisu, my dude.
Our villains are a company of defeated Nazis who are going scorched earth across Finland as they retreat from Russia. Certainly, their status as scorched earth Nazis would be sufficient for most movies, but because our hero needs to fight against THE LITERAL WORST PEOPLE TO EVER EXIST, here’s an incomplete list of what our villains also do.
Repeatedly shoot at Aatami’s adorable dog.
Kidnap a bunch of Finnish women and use them to test out an unmarked minefield.
Explode Aatami’s horse with a landmine.
Strap dynamite to Aatami’s dog in an attempt to kill both Aatami and the pup.
As you can see from this Venn diagram, our villains are definitively the worst. Top to bottom, they all have real Group W Bench mother-rapin’-father-stabbin’ energy.
I feel strangely okay with him throwing that landmine
Why is all that necessary? Why add “horse exploder” to “Nazi” and “town burner?” Because when our hero does stuff like throwing a landmine at someone….
…we need to feel okay with it. As in, “yes, that seemed like the reasonable thing to do. This man is both a Nazi and someone who attaches dynamite to dogs. Any thrown explosives are justifiable in this case.”
As our hirsute Laplander goes full murder bear on every Nazi he comes across, Sisu never takes its foot off the gas. What began with face stabbing and landmine throwing escalates to hooking the Nazi leader up to a bomb and dropping him from a plane.
Somehow, this feels proportional?
“You’ll see what happens when you take everything from him.“
There’s a very Johns-Rambo-and-Wick vibe to this whole “you made me come back and I’ll bury you all” energy that flows through Sisu. But unlike his action hero counterparts, Aatami’s strength is not in his training or cunning or tactical skills. He’s not setting booby traps or outmuscling the bad guys.
No, it’s his inevitability that makes him who he is. He will win—it’s only a matter of time. And because of that, Aatimi feels deeply connected to the brutal, unforgiving landscape where the movie takes place.
As they burned through the countryside, our villains had plenty of opportunities to ignore Aatami, to turn back, to allow him to go on his way. Just as they did with the land and the people within it. But in their hubris, they chose to fight something they did not understand and could not reckon with. And as they progress, our villains begin to understand that there is no escape.
It’s as if every whip of wind, glowing sunrise and chunk of mud thrown into the air is having its vengeance upon them for fighting the inevitability of this man and this place.
This is said best when Aino, one of the kidnapped women played by Mimosa Willamo, laughs in the face of her captors. She explains why:
“We all know the story,” Aino says. “You’ll see what happens when you take everything from him. He won’t give up. He’ll just keep coming back.”
One of the soldiers asks her if she believes he’s immortal.
“No. He just refuses to die.”
Sisu is available on Hulu and other places where you can watch movies on your television or computer. You should watch it.
I do, generally, like a bloody and violent show, HBO’s “Rome”, BBC’s “Silent Witness”, and “Killing Eve” on AMC+, but this sounds like something I couldn’t watch. I can’t bring myself to see “Braveheart” nor “Gladiator.” Whatcha think about my ability to maybe see “Sisu?”