"Talvisota" - The Winter War

[swfwebmaster]

On Behalf of McGuirk
10 OCT 2011

pershainovitsh,

Are you aware of the movie, "Talvisota" - The Winter War? Great Finnish made movie about the war between the soviets and the finns prior to ww2. I think you'd enjoy it.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0098437/

On Behalf of pershainovitsh
10 OCT 2011

Actually, no, I haven't heard of it. I'll see if I can find it somewhere.

If someone's interested in Finnish war movies, or just Finnish culture in general, you have to watch "Tuntematon sotilas" - Unknown Soldier. It has been shown on every Independence Day here for years. (Be sure to watch the 1955 version, not the newer one.)

One thing to note in the film is that the characters speak like people really speak: not like in written Finnish, but with their own accents; people from eastern, western, southern and northern Finland have their own distinctive accents, and sometimes even their own words. Just like Irish, Scottish, British, Australian and American people have their accents.

Unfortunately, this is probably impossible to show in the English subtitles.
I mentioned it because:

1) most of the time in Finnish films (on the few I've watched) and TV shows the people talk exactly like it is written in the script. This makes it sound extremely unnatural.

2) people from different areas of Finland have traditionally had some anger towards each other, but during the wars, everyone worked together.

One thing I like really much in Unknown Soldier is the lines. They are often very funny, despite the serious setting. Not like crazy comedy -funny, but ironic comments made by the soldiers. But, it is a serious movie.

Some quotes from imdb:
www.imdb.com/title/tt0048752/quotes

There are many more great quotes. Pretty much all of them can be found here, but unfortunately the page is in Finnish only.
fi.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tuntematon_sotilas

I will translate some good ones later, now I should be heading to bed.

I have to warn that Tuntematon sotilas is a really long movie (about three hours).
www.imdb.com/title/tt0048752/

Maybe these posts should be transferred to the Movies forum? It would make more sense there than in the Project Reality forum...

[pershainovitsh]

There's a part in the Unknown Soldier where three soldiers are punished for stealing by making them stand in the standard standing stance for two hours (normally it would have been 24 hours of custody but it was in the middle of the war and if I remember correctly, deep beneath enemy lines so the 2 hour standing was better for the situation).
Here's a clip:Watch from 1:40 to 3:25. www.youtube.com/watchfeature=player_detailpage&v=ScN_Ovg8bng#t=91s

The language is Finnish, and the subtitles are in Swedish.

The middle one, NCO Lehto, who is a very serious, rugged, stubborn and almost an evil man, won't move from the position until he has done his sentence, no matter if there are bomb dropping by and people calling for help. One of the great scenes in Unknown Soldier.

And at 16 seconds and onward, the soldiers are given pea soup, a basic army food. It should be made of water, peas and meat, but during the war the ingredience was very limited. Infantryman Rahikainen says: "There the pea is looking for his friend, but its work is for naught."

In the following scene a soldier reads the etiquette on the cognac bottle "Cut cognac. Hehe. How do you cut cognac?" he says and everyone starts laughing. Mind that this was humor in the 1940's, and in the stressful situation the soldiers found something funny on everything to relief themseves form the fear.

At 0:41 officer Kaarna comes to the scnee of battle at a swamp. "What is this? What do I see? Now you have quite got it wrong. Oh no no no no, this is not the way war is fought, nooo. This kind of war isn't going to work at all. Let's just go over the swap in a flash [something else mening doing something quickly would work better]!" he says, then he grabs his pistol and starts walking. "Hack on, Pohja's [I'm not sure if this means the region of Pohjanmaa or the town of Pohja elsewhere] son!"