If you want to improve your Finnish then watching Finnish movies with English subtitles is a great help . . . though you have to wait for the DVD to come out. Käsky is certainly worth the wait.

It could have been yet another Finnish Civil War movie, but Käsky is so much more. Beginning at the end of the conflict, the victorious Whites are rounding up the Reds and putting them in concentration camps at best or just shooting them at worst. Amongst the Reds were a number of female platoons and the movie starts with one such platoon being forced to surrender to the Whites before being systematically brutalised and illegally shot by drunken soldiers.

One of the female soldiers – who refuses to give anyone her name until well into the film – survives the shooting and plays dead. She promised another soldier she’d see if her son was okay if ‘I don’t make it’ – which, of course, she doesn’t. So the Red female clutches a photo of the boy as she pretends to be mortally wounded. Harjula, the White soldier with a conscience, insists on taking her to the local judge for trial rather than simply shooting her. To the mockery of his comrades, he rows her up the coast but she manages to sink the boat and they find themselves stranded on an island.

And so begins an intense and contradictory relationship which brings both to the edge of death. It would be so easy for such a film to become sentimental or openly moralistic. But this film deftly avoids these pitfalls. Both Harjala and the Red woman (Minna) find themselves abandoned in a sinister and bizarre world. And they are each forced to confront just how far they are prepared to go to survive and to keep their promises to people they love.

Käsky is fascinating portrayal of the Civil War and there are also many interesting little touches. The horrors of the war were photographed in detail and throughout the film the same eccentric photographer documents everything – including the judge standing astride freshly executed Reds.

If Käsky (which translates as ‘Order’) is anything to go by then the Finnish film industry is a well-kept secret with a lot to offer.

2009.