DAN WEBSTER:
One-word translations of the Finnish term “sisu” into English just don’t work. Instead of meaning something as simple as grit or resilience or bravery, it signifies all those qualities… and more. As a Psychology Today article defines it, sisu “describes the ability to push through one’s limits when facing adversity and continue on against the odds.”
This quality of character applies even, and perhaps especially, when the odds don’t favor a positive outcome. As legend would have it, then, the defenders of the Alamo would have exhibited a kind of sisu. As would have the holdouts at Masada. The Spartans at Thermopylae would definitely qualify.
The film Sisu is a Finnish historical action-adventure that played Spokane theaters a year ago. Now streaming on a number of services, its protagonist has all the traits previously mentioned… which is something the German soldiers he ends up being confronted by come to regret.
The year is 1944. The war isn’t going well for Germany, and the troops have been ordered to evacuate Finland. Seems the Finns, who’d already made the Russians pay severely for their incursion five years before, are a tough foe.
We’re introduced to Atami (played by Jorma Tommila), an elderly guy living out in the Finnish outback with only his dog and horse to keep him company. He hears explosions and sees flashes in the far distance, letting him know that the war is going on, yet Atami seems concerned only with his search for gold. He pans a stream and finds a few flakes but becomes frustrated when, digging hole after hole, he finds nothing else.
Until one day… he does. And so begins what is an ultra-violent, almost Homeric odyssey, Finnish-style. Atami heads out, though it’s never clear where he’s going. And in any event, since the Germans in their retreat have resorted to a scorched-earth policy, destroying everything in their path, it’s doubtful whether he’ll get anywhere at all.
One small group of German soldiers, composed of a few trucks, a tank, 30 or so troopers and a half-dozen Finnish women they are holding as captives, takes particular delight in destroying everything it encounters—including hanging every Finnish man they come across. Even Atami.
But what they don’t know, and we only gradually learn over the film’s six chapters—each bearing such titles as “The Gold” and “Kill ’Em All”—is that Atami is no ordinary man. Far from it.
Which he proves again and again over the film’s 91-minute running time, surviving the loss of his beloved horse, suffering the theft of his gold, being shot, beaten and, yes, even hung in what is a fantastical test of endurance that ends in a spectacular display of violence and revenge.
Writer-director Jalmari Helander depicts all this in a series of graphic images, including everything from bodies being blown to bits to—in one particular scene—a knife pushed straight through a man’s head. Anyone squeamish to overt violence should consider twice before renting Sisu.
It’s valid to ask at this point whether there is value in such a film that, from one perspective, glorifies violence. That’s a question that has been long debated about film in general, and American film in particular. And any answer depends largely on the attitudes of those asking it.
In a 2021 Trinity College paper examining why people enjoy violence in movies, one reason cited involves what the author refers to as “justified punishment.” And certainly this relates to Helander’s film. We learn that Atami, destroyer of Russians, has rejected any further involvement in war. It is only when he is provoked that he again becomes a ruthless killing machine.
It's to Helander’s credit that he adds a subplot whereby the women captives, aided by Atami, wreak their own form of vengeance. They, too, endure, and like Atami—a Finnish Energizer Bunny—symbolize how the Finns view their national character.
Of course, they aren’t alone. Just ask the defenders at the Alamo, Masada or the Spartans at Thermopylae—all of whom had their own measure of sisu.
For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.
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Movies 101 host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio and a blogger for spokesman.com.