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quietearth [Film Festival 06.23.09] movie review drama

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Year: 2007
Directors: Veiko Õunpuu
Writers: Veiko Õunpuu & Mati Unt (novel)
IMDB: link
Trailer: link (NSFW)
Review by: quietearth
Rating: 7 out of 10

A film which is revealed in two simple quotes, one at the start, and one at the end, Sugisball felt a lot like my time spent in New York. I'd look out the window or walk down the street and wonder what all those lives were doing crammed into those little boxes stacked atop one another, and this film gave me a glimpse. Starting with a flyover of row upon row of gloomy, nondescript apartment blocs which to me, implied a dead end, Sugisball is a stunningly shot Estonian drama which follows the lives of multiple characters as they try to manage existence.


I'm not going to reveal the last quote, but I'll share the telling first, told by an outside character at a literature conference to one of our main characters, a doorman in a monkey uniform. She regaled the doorman with the idea that the Balkans had no identity and everyone was attempting to manufacture one, and on the scale of our film, each character, unsatisfied with their life, tries to define themselves. This was our first glimpse into what tied the stories together with one slim thread, besides the fact that all the characters lived in the same gloomy apartment blocs. No, they don't cross paths and change each others lives, this isn't a Hollywood flick.

Based on the novel "Autumn" by Mati Unt, the characters run the gamut from an architect who refuses to move to a nicer area in attempt to retain "humility,"
a doorman who is also a ladies man and keeps a list of his conquests, an artist whose wife has left him for a friend, and more. Each on the same quest as the rest of humanity, revealed by the last quote, the film follows no set pattern but shows us pieces of each characters life, sometimes profound, sometimes mundane. But even the mundane can be poignant as one character refuses to talk with his crying wife in the middle of the night or a little girl stands freezing on her balcony, her mother sobbing inside.

Sugisball does not follow any normal character arcs, in fact it leans more towards the aberrant and obsessive which makes each character unique and enjoyable to watch, and which also lends itself to quite a bit of humour throughout the film. One guy wakes up from a drunk in a stolen car which he crashed into a garbage bin to find an artist friend ticketing him for parking wrong. This is done in such a flippant manner, you laugh then wonder where the police are. Another great scene was when the other doorman was singing to Michael Jackson's Billie Jean and dancing, classic.

The cinematography, done by Mart Taniel (who is also doing The Temptation of St. Tony) was superb with the drab environment beautifully framed as a character would walk out of focus, or night scenes which contained hints of German expressionism. The only real complaint I might have is that it's a bit slow at times, although I wouldn't change a thing in it's roughly 120 minute running time, it was just part of the story. If you like beautifully shot foreign stories with a Ballardian eye for the East, then this one is for you.

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projectcyclops (2 years ago) Reply

Great review, sounds unusual, will keep an eye out.

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Billy T (2 years ago) Reply

Not to nitpick, but Estonia is in the Baltics not the Balkans...They're quite different places

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gryn (1 year ago) Reply

Can't believe you guys don't see the difference between the Balkans and the Baltics - these places are quite far away from each other and completely different.


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