Cukoo

[Ingemar]

Some foreign film the folks rented.

Now this is an interesting flick. This is perhaps the first trilingual movie I have ever seen. It is about two soldiers, one Finnish and one Russian, who end up in a Lapp war widow's (they are a minority group in Finland, the ones who domesticated the reindeer) home. No one in the group knows the others' language--the Finn knows German, which the Lapp doesn't and the Russian only knows some canned phrases. Nevertheless, they speak to each other as if they thought the other knew what they were talking about. This leads to some misunderstandings, both comic and tragic (they call the Russian Gerlost--when, after asking his name he tells the Finn to get lost)--and also to some conversations that are tangential or unrelated to each other. They end up being friends, even though the Finns are at war with the Russians (this is WWII), and even though they never know what they are telling each other.

I think it's impossible for anyone to watch this movie without subtitles. Finnish is unrelated to any other language in Europe (or even the world) and Lapp is spoken by so very few. We had some guests who spoke Russian that watched the movie, but I doubt that they understood what the other two characters were saying. And of course, dubbing would ruin the whole effect of the movie.