Arquivo

Juha is based on the novel by the same name by Finnish author Juhani Aho (1861-1921). The story is simple: a naive housewife is seduced by a charming trickster and abandons her marriage. Aki Kaurismaki opted to make the film in black and white, without dialog (only the sound track composed by Anssi Tikanmaki). “This means”, explains the film maker, “that the novel is not silent but the film is set to music”. According to the director, the literature is full of dramatic triangles, but few as intense and well built as that of the Juha novel, of 1911: “The plot is direct and strong, and full of detail, just waiting to be ruined by the cinema”. “Almost all of the efforts to make a silent film in the last decades failed”, says the director. “The ease with which all is explained in words has polluted our scripts and has made of our production a pale shadow of original films. The stories have lost their purity, the essence of cinema: innocence.”