Ruusujen aika / A Time of Roses (1969)
(CC: English subtitles)
(English subtitles)
Warning: spoilers.
"Me tuijotamme menneisyyteen, suremme tulevaa aikaa..."
"We stare at the past, mourn for the time to come..."
Ruusujen aika (A Time of Roses)
Director: Risto Jarva
Country of origin: Finland (1969).
Original length: 108 minutes.
Production company: Filminor Oy.
Premiere (Finland): 7 February 1969.
Script: Peter von Bagh, Risto Jarva, Jaakko Pakkasvirta, Antti Peippo, Kullervo Kukkasjärvi, Titta Karakorpi, Seppo Palosaari.
Editing: Jukka Mannerkorpi.
Cinematography: Antti Peippo.
Original music: Kaj Chydenius, Henrik Otto Donner (with Blues Section), Eero Ojanen.
Sound effects: Erkki Kurenniemi.
Cast: Arto Tuominen, Ritva Vepsä, Tarja Markus, Eero Keskitalo, Kalle Holmberg, Eila Pehkonen.
Synopsis:
Finland in 2012. According to the official review of the Institute of History, society has become more human-centered, democratic and liberal since the turbulent times of the 1960s and 1970s: class boundaries have disappeared, power has been transferred to impartial experts, and the keyword is progress. "For us, progress means deepening our achievements," says Raimo Lappalainen (Arto Tuominen), a researcher at the Institute who represents the official agenda. "I am, above all, a civil servant whose duty is to support the impartiality that is a condition for all progress."
Raimo is preparing a TV programme in which he intends to approach the past 50 years through an individual person’s story, using Saara Turunen, a chemistry store saleswoman, stripper and photo model who lived from 1946 to 1976, as an illustrative example. Raimo's young colleagues, among them his assistant and mistress Anu Huotari (Tarja Markus), are in opposition to the official agenda and plan to question it by exposing Raimo and his methods. They manage to draw Raimo's attention to Kisse Haavisto (Ritva Vepsä), an engineer from Kuortane, whom Raimo soon decides to use as a "living model" for his programme.
Raimo travels to meet Kisse, who doesn't need any extra persuasion to agree to take the role of Saara. At the same time, a strike breaks out at Kisse's workplace at the Kuortane nuclear power plant, the reasons for which Raimo refuses to understand. The Institute has already received information about the unrest and has begun to develop a statement on the "old-fashionedness of strikes".
Kisse arrives in Helsinki and reads the documentary material about Saara: "Saara's scandal" has been revealed to be that she has asked many men for money for an abortion at the same time. In Kisse's presence, Raimo interviews people who personally knew Saara: a photographer (Matti Lehtelä), a boyfriend (Paavo Jännes), an ex-husband (Unto Salminen). Most of them are surprised by Kisse's striking resemblance to Saara. Kisse gets into the role of a photo model and practices stripping under the guidance of an old expert (Aino Lehtimäki). The collaboration soon leads Raimo and Kisse to bed together.
Anu notices that Raimo has fallen in love with Kisse and teases him, causing him to arrange for Anu to be transferred to another position with the help of the Institute's director (Eila Pehkonen). Kisse's colleague and strike leader Ronni (Kalle Holmberg) complains that there has been no news about the strike on television and asks Kisse to tell Raimo about it and to watch the most popular channel at a certain time. At that moment, Ronni appears on the screen in the middle of another programme and manages to present a petition for broader democracy before he is shot to death. Kisse is shocked and gets into an argument with Raimo, who sticks to his role as an impartial civil servant and scolds the strikers for disturbing the peace in society.
Kisse increasingly identifies with Saara as a victim, both of men and social circumstances. "Do you mean that all those whose lives are not real should die?", she asks Raimo, who speaks disparagingly of society's disadvantaged. "Like in a dream, or in an old film, human destinies approach each other," Raimo grandiosely puts it into words when planning the final scene of his programme, Saara's death, which, in his own dramatisation, he changes from a car crash to a railroad accident. Raimo directs the scene by radio from the helicopter, but Kisse does not hear his command to jump, but is caught under the train and dies. "Did you get the shot?", Raimo asks the cameraman, his first words after reaching the ground.
Raimo throws a party for his colleagues on the day his programme "Faces of the Past" comes out. Drunk and smug, he watches his own performance and confession of faith about "a democratic, human-centered, liberal way of life, which must be cherished like a flower in the palm of your hand and spared from all contradictions". "Well said," he manages to mutter, before passing out into an inflatable transparent sofa, gradually emptying of air, while the traditional Finnish workers’ march Taistojen tiellä (‘On the Path of Battles’) roars on: "So many, so many have languished by the wayside. So many, so many have fallen in battles." Raimo hears no more: "But discourage us no earthly power will. We will make peace that will banish strife. So become brothers now the nations of the world. And on the road to happiness roses will bloom and blossom."
About the film:
Ruusujen aika ("A Time of Roses", 1969) by Risto Jarva (1934 - 1977) is a rare example of Finnish science fiction cinema. Taking place in the year 2012, the film is a future fantasy of a "utopian" time when all class conflicts have been erased, at least superficially. An opportunistic history researcher Raimo Lappalainen becomes obsessed by the life of nude model Saara Turunen, a woman who died in 1976, and tries to reconstruct it for TV, with some help from Kisse Haavisto, an engineer at a nuclear plant who bears a striking resemblance to the late Saara. At the same time a strike at the nuclear plant will lead to a violent upsurge, which media only manages to keep secret from the public with a cunning cover-up. The film depicts an age when superficially, there are no more class conflicts or any other disruptions to society's harmony. The politically neutral bureaucrats, scientists and humanists rule in the vision of future designed by Jarva.
Ruusujen aika was the sixth feature film produced by Filminor Oy, a company established in 1962 for the distribution and production of films. Filminor was founded by the Student Union of the Helsinki University of Technology, along with Risto Jarva, Juhani Kolehmainen, and the then-director of the Helsinki Student Theatre, Jaakko Pakkasvirta.
Ruusujen aika was inspired by a portrait of an aunt of the director's wife, Hilkka Jarva. Intrigued by this picture and his wife's stories, Risto Jarva began to wonder who this woman had really been, how she had lived, and what could be known about her circumstances.
“First, we had the idea of how someone would research the life of a deceased person based on the remaining documents. Then came the idea that the perspective could be shifted to the future and utilise the material that exists about people of our time. The first images that we walk through the exhibition still remain from that initial draft. The intention was that the museum guide would transport visitors through different eras, as if without noticing, from the past, past the present, and into the future. This was the situation from which everything started.”
(Risto Jarva)
The creative team behind the film, not only its technical crew, actors and writers but also composers and musicians working for its score and sounds, can be considered a sort of Who’s Who of the late 1960s Finnish cultural life. For example, Peter von Bagh, one of the screenwriters, was to become a renowned historian of cinema and documentary film-maker. At the time he was writing his graduate thesis on Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) from which the central plotline of a man's fatal obsession over a woman was borrowed for Ruusujen aika. Also Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Oval Portrait" (1842) inspired the screenplay.
The plot and characters were developed by Jarva and von Bagh, while Jaakko Pakkasvirta, a film director in his own right, wrote the dialogue. Also Antti Peippo, Kullervo Kukkasjärvi, Titta Karakorpi (who also worked as the film's assistant director) and Seppo Palosaari participated in the script-writing and research process, although their individual contributions haven't been specified. All in all, the final screenplay was a collective work of seven people altogether, which was both the film's strength and weakness, almost as if it had been written by a committee. Ruusujen aika can be considered a meeting place of different personalities and thinkers drawing from various influences and ideas that just were in “in the air” during those heady days of the late 1960s. (Coincidentally, the scene where the strike general played by Kalle Holmberg is shot dead was filmed on the very day in August 1968 when the news had just been received on the Soviet Union's occupation of Czechoslovakia.)
In his previous films Risto Jarva had often used also amateur actors. This time, however, he wanted professional actors for all the central roles. Still, the aim was to find such faces that were not very worn out and that could not be clearly recognised as people of today.
Ritva Vepsä (in the dual role of Kisse Haavisto and Saara Turunen) was a fairly well-known film actress, but in recent years hadn't been in any prominent film roles, so she was now making a comeback. Arto Tuominen had been more active in the theatres and was not known in the film world. Tarja Markus was almost a newcomer, having just starred in the film Miljoonaliiga (1968), directed by Maunu Kurkvaara (Ritva Vepsä had a small supporting role in the same film).
During the making of Ruusujen aika, the actors' characters were also changed. The supporting roles include many veteran actors of the older generation, such as Eila Pehkonen, Paavo Jännes, Unto Salminen and Matti Lehtelä, the last three of whom were on the big screen for the last time. Jarva had originally planned Kalle Holmberg for the main role; now he is seen in the important supporting role of Ronni, the strike general.
Not only were there people familiar from the most talked-about film and theatre productions of the era, there was also a connection to Helsinki’s Love Records label, which represented some of the most progressive Finnish music at the time. Otto Donner (a.k.a. Henrik Otto Donner), alongside Atte Blom and Christian Schwindt, headed the label which was a home for such diverse musicians as Kaj Chydenius and Blues Section, also Pekka Streng who appears in a small role as one of the strikers. Erkki Kurenniemi, both a pioneer of Finnish electronic music and futurologist, provided the sound effects for the film.
“When we look into the past, many things may seem amusing or strange to us, even though they were experienced as quite natural at the time. When we think about the future, we build mental images that feel strange, perhaps even frightening. Most often, these mental images also do not contain elements that would help us experience the future as natural – the perspective is our own, that of a modern person. Therefore, many fictional accounts concerning the future are more an escape from reality than an imagination of reality.”
(Risto Jarva)
Filminor logo from Ruusujen aika (1969).
Filming was done at Filminor's own studio and at the Pasila Workers' House, but also in many locations outside the studio in Otaniemi, Espoo, Helsinki and Jyväskylä: these were mostly used for interiors. The exterior shots for the subway scenes were filmed in Stockholm.
The film was originally supposed to be shot in Cinemascope, but the lenses purchased from West Germany (BRD) could not be made to work. Colour was also abandoned for budget reasons.
Some of the books inspiring the film's screenplay were The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years by Herman Kahn (1964) and The Rise of Meritocracy by Michael Dunlop Young (1958). Also the works of Herbert Marcuse and Marshall McLuhan, both thinkers very much in vogue at the time, were reflected in the film:
"One could consider Risto Jarva's science fiction film, A Time of Roses (1969), a characteristic 1968 movie, born in the immediate sphere of influence of the ideas and events of the year 1968, in the spirit of Marcuse and McLuhan. Jarva's distanced social critique bears the stamp of the era of its origin, carrying the vision that is ever relevant, on the more or less subtle machinery of manipulation by those in power. When the screenwriter Peter von Bagh later saw the film, he was astonished by the topics captured in it, according to him it was full of '1960s neoleftist ideas of communication, power and such things, actually being an anthology of those. One can see the whole spectrum of the level of information and consciousness so far. It is as if into the film had been put everything that was known and felt then, as if the riddle of life had been solved and one wanted to present it to the public at large'.
[From 1968 suomalaisessa elokuvassa ("1968 in Finnish cinema") by Sakari Toiviainen, Filmihullu 5-6/1998.]
The February 1969 premiere of Ruusujen aika was held in three cinemas in Helsinki and simultaneously in five other cities in Finland. The audience success was considerably lower than the average for the year, with only about 30,000 viewers in total, and even after the State Prize worth of 150,000 Finnish marks, Ruusujen aika still showed a loss of 110,000 marks. Tuomo Kattilakoski, responsible for the film's sound design, received the State Film Artist Award of 3,000 marks, for Ruusujen aika and two other films. The reception of Ruusujen aika among Finnish reviewers ranged from praise to some disdain, there having been even some debate among critics in the press about the film's pros and cons, though in general there were not overtly negative reviews.
At the 1969 Festival Internazionale del film di Fantascienza (Trieste Science Fiction Film Festival), Ritva Vepsä received the Best Actress award, although due to an oversight by the organisers, the film could only be shown to the jury and the press. In Finland, partly thanks to this film, she received the 1970 Jussi Award for Actress.
In addition to Sweden, West Germany, Austria and Switzerland, there were foreign sales of Ruusujen aika also to the United States and some other American countries. For international distribution, a 20 minutes shorter version was cut, with a special introductory sequence. In New York City, the film opened on the 19th of October, 1970, at 72nd Street Playhouse and was reviewed for The New York Times by Vincent Canby, describing it as a somewhat quaint and unengaging film with an unusual view of a polite future society, though it contained some amusing "fringe benefits", such as a basketball-like game where kissing was encouraged.
Although the film was initially a commercial flop, over the years there was some rising interest in it, not least as a rare example of Finnish science fiction cinema. As time went on, despite its certain narrative weaknesses, the film's vision of the future, seen through that special filter of the late 1960s, began to seem increasingly compelling. Among those international audiences who had managed to discover the film, Ruusujen aika began to draw comparisons to some other art house science fiction films of the era, also made on a relatively low budget, such as Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville (1965), Fahrenheit 451 (1966) by François Truffaut (based on Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel), and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1973 television series Welt am Draht (World on a Wire). The Year of the Sex Olympics, a British TV drama from 1968, directed by Michael Elliott and written by Nigel Kneale, depicts a dystopian world which bears some similarities to that of Ruusujen aika (the teleplay was also inspired by the 1960s hedonistic counterculture, and like Elio Petri's 10th Victim of 1965, accurately managed to predict the birth of reality TV).
In Finland Ruusujen aika was shown on TV in 1973, 1981, 1990 and 2012. Finnkino released the film on DVD in 2005, with 92 minutes of extra materials. This release slightly suffered from having its master taken from a somewhat dark and scratched film copy. A considerable improvement to this was had in 2023 when American Deaf Crocodile company released Ruusujen aika on Blu-Ray, as a remastered 4K copy, made in full co-operation with the Risto Jarva Association.
Risto Jarva tragically died in a road accident in December 1977, only a year after when his fictional character in the film, Saara Turunen, was supposed to have had a similar fate. As to Jarva's posthumous reputation, he is generally regarded as one of the most ambitious Finnish directors who always kept exploring new ways of film-making, having his finger constantly on the pulse of what was happening in society. This is how Risto Jarva himself commented on the finished film of Ruusujen aika:
"Meritocracy became a little more total than we had originally thought. This is probably partly due to the dramatic construction, partly because people always have a tendency to exaggerate these background forces. So it's not a question of meritocracy being total, but rather that people have internalised it. Then there is a television channel where anyone is free to express their opinions. But no one watches this channel. So there are as many ways to vent as possible (mood-enhancing pills, etc.), the conditions have been made as pleasant as possible for the potential rebels. And this is the way those dissidents are silenced. We don't want to claim anything about that time per se, but we start from what we have at the moment and which tendencies are likely to intensify."
Final scene from Työmiehen päiväkirja (A Worker's Diary), directed by Risto Jarva, 1967.
Starring Paul Osipow and Elina Salo.
Risto Jarva's previous film, Työmiehen päiväkirja (A Worker's Diary) of 1967, had already hinted at the worlds of science fiction in its own way. In the mysterious final scene, the main characters' sensuous lovemaking, accompanied by a musique concrète soundtrack, combines with vast cosmic visions that seem to even predate Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which was released on the big screen only a year after Jarva's film.
Raimo
Risto Jarva creates a memorable antihero in Raimo Lappalainen, the likes of whom are difficult to find, at least in other Finnish movies. The closest point of comparison that comes to mind might be Jarva's own film Kun taivas putoaa (When the Heavens Fall, 1972), which features a fairly similar character, Olli Meri (played by Erkki Pajala), a writer for a sensationalist magazine.
It's not that Raimo couldn't be considered an intriguing, even a fascinating character. This portrait of a narcissist is very complex and open to interpretation. In no way can Raimo be seen as a straightforward bad guy whom the viewer could simply hate. As a character, he's too complicated, too smart, too slick, too cunning for that. He can be charming and romantic but turn cold very quickly.
He's a sycophant, eager to please and flatter whenever it suits his purposes. In social exchange, it is as if all his talk would be brimmed with weasel words. Behind their backs, however, Raimo strongly despises people once he has managed to get from them what he wants.
At a party, a drunk Raimo aggressively ("Let me smell you, I'll fucking smell you!") approaches his coworker (Eero Keskitalo) and calls him a social climber, Raimo refusing to realise how much he is only projecting his own qualities onto the colleague.
Raimo is full of academic eloquence, hiding behind superficially convincing but essentially empty phrases that he repeats to people to emphasise the importance of his own mission.
Does Raimo have any redeeming qualities, then? As Ronni once states, at least Raimo is sincere in his own way. He is obsessed, his compulsion is genuine, at least. Even though the consequences will be dire.
For me, the film leaves Kisse's death ultimately ambiguous: is it merely an accident or does she sacrifice herself on purpose? One obvious motive would be a protest: against Raimo's cynical opportunism, against the brazen political play where those who seek social justice are either coldly silenced or eliminated.
Society of the future
Ruusujen aika depicts a "post-political" era when, instead of politicians, society is governed by so called impartial experts, apparently by scientific means and on a meritocratic basis, at least nominally.
However, this society is not without its internal strife even though it is well concealed from the public eye. There seems to be in existence a hidden opposition, consisting of such people as the striking workers of Kuortane's nuclear plant.
Otherwise, Ruusujen aika appears to be a bit vague about the overall political system in the country, concerning such topics if there are still parliamentary elections (as again we are informed that politicians are now replaced by those allegedly unbiased experts), if corporations hold a considerable power in the world of 2012 (apparently they do since there seems to be a highly advanced technological infrastructure in existence, with such ubiquitous trademarks as Sony witnessed throughout the film).
Then there are also such questions as how many unemployed people there are in this society, how is social security for the poor organised or if there's even some kind of universal basic income system in existence (well, maybe not if people still have to work for a living here), and so on. In general, how have they managed to solve all those problems that plague modern societies – poverty, crime and disease? Pollution or ecological concerns are not mentioned, either. Perhaps all of those issues have only been conveniently swept under the rug, out of sight, as the film seems to imply.
Admittedly, a lot of this information would be unnecessary exposition (if there's not enough of it as it is) to take away from the impetus of story.
What is implicated, though, that population is placated by various means, from television's mass entertainment to mood-enhancing drugs. There are some satirical swipes at media, such as the absurd headlines of the electronic newspaper that Raimo reads: "The Pope Approves Men's Foam", "New Messians Expect The End Of The World In A Week", "Finland's Hairiest Man Changes Faculty", "Butt-Mill Conquers The World"...
Uusi Suomi ("New Finland") was a conservative newspaper that, in real life, was published from 1919 to 1991. As its logo here is seen the peace symbol (which is upside down), designed by British artist Gerald Holtom in 1958 for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). In Finland the symbol was adopted by Sadankomitea (Committee of 100), an anti-war and pacifist organisation founded in 1963.
Eventually, things take a sinister turn. The seemingly utopian society reveals the dark machinations underneath. The shooting to death of strike general Ronni on live broadcast shows that those in power are prepared to resort to extreme measures to maintain social peace, to uphold the status quo. This scene brings back all too vivid memories of the 1960s assassinations of the Kennedys or Martin Luther King, all practically live on air, which had only recently taken place at the time the film was made.
As cinematic exposition and also shedding light on the historical timeline of Ruusujen aika, a film montage of archive footage is seen, accompanied by Raimo's narration, which is occasionally interrupted by critical comments from his colleague, played by Eero Keskitalo, a lone voice of opposition against the prevailing consensus.
Political turbulence and the unrest taking place at the time of filming, 1968, and the previous years are now observed from a speculative perspective of the future history, with some predictions of what would happen next. With the benefit of hindsight, it's a matter of interpretation to assess how accurate they actually are.
Raimo: "Few people were able to see the real picture. For example, the attitude towards the ideas of Karl Marx, who lived in the 19th century, was strongly emotional. Some swore by him, others cursed him. We can ignore that jumble of ideas as one of the jokes history abundantly offers to the researcher.
The 1960s and 1970s witnessed a sharp increase in politicisation, manifested in a huge rise in Socialist ideas in the West. Europe saw the most violent demonstrations of the century.
America swayed constantly on the brink of a new civil war. Maybe as a consequence of that, powerful far-right groups emerged in both Europe and America. All political groups claimed to be more democratic than the others. This gave the troubled period the name 'The Decades of Democracy'.
While the rest of the world went through difficult crises, Finland and a few other privileged countries lived in a time of abundance. In the developing countries, the late 1970s saw the beginning of – as they were called then – 'The Great Hunger Years', which lasted fifteen years. It was handled very ineptly by the politicians in power. Famine-stricken masses in Africa, Asia, and South America headed northwards towards the centres of prosperity. We can only wonder why it never led to a global war, only to small local conflicts in underdeveloped countries.
With its plagues and migrations, the era was a strange mixture of the most modern and the fearful Middle Ages. Many developed countries experienced considerable rioting and disorder. Some even saw outward war as the only way to restore a sense of national unity.
The Berlin Crisis of 1982, which began with unrest in former East Germany and the border clashes between China and the Soviet Union a year later brought the world perilously close to total war.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, once a cause of fear, that took place exactly fifty years ago and which, according to current research, paved the way to the murder of the then-President John F. Kennedy, was child's play compared to the crises of '82 and '83..."
Colleague (Eero Keskitalo): "The whole thing is incorrectly exemplified. The actual wars and killings focused on poor countries."
Raimo: "It was clear such immature political crises had to be ended and efforts focused on fighting global hunger. Conflicts between the socialist and capitalist countries began to ease. Freedom and humanity increased in industrialised countries..."
Colleague: "Bullshit! Not freedom but a new and more sophisticated form of intellectual oppression."
Raimo: "As a logical result, society achieved its modern proper form. We can be proud of that. The politicisation that hampered progress has given way to real scientists with unbiased expertise. Social maturity has erased harmful class-consciousness. Progress has replaced violence. Progress creates comfort, security and freedom."
Colleague: "In other words, power is exercised by experts, supposedly impartial officials so far from the people that it stinks! That's your freedom!"
Style, design and fashion in Ruusujen aika
The film's visual style reflects the fashion and design of its specific era. Of the still photographs released with Ruusujen aika, the first thing people's attention usually focuses on are Tarja Markus's striking eye makeup and cropped hairstyle, which could be straight from the mod style photos of fashion models of the time, such as Twiggy. (Kisse's scene with the sleazy photographer, played by Matti Lehtelä, seems to be inspired by the most "mod" film of them all, Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up, from 1966.) Ulla Floyd worked as the film's makeup artist. More of the same visual style is seen with both female and male extras in the film's party scene where also some some hippie-inspired face paints are applied.
Responsible for the film's costumes was the fashion designer Saini Salonen (1933 - 2010) of Saini Design. Having already worked with Risto Jarva for Yö vai päivä (Night or Day, 1962), her futuristic vest-like garments in Ruusujen aika are clearly inspired by such contemporary fashion designers as Pierre Cardin who, alongside Paco Rabanne and André Courrèges, had pioneered the "Space Age" look in the mid-1960s.
The sets for Ruusujen aika were designed by Lauri Anttila (who later had a multifaceted career in the Finnish art scene), Jarva's old architect friend Juhani Jauhiainen and Antti Peippo (who was also the film's principal cinematographer). For example, the inflatable sofas seen in the film were familiar from the trendiest apartments of the era, but it is important to remember that history is also always present in the interior style of Ruusujen aika.
The technology of Ruusujen aika
The film features some predictions of what the future technology would be like. Some of these turn out to be surprisingly prescient or at least provide some sort of indicative sketches of what would actually take place decades later. As a source material were used the writings from some of the era’s most accomplished futurologists, based on the current ideas of what science and technology could possibly be able to provide one day.
It seems no new futuristic devices were actually designed for the film (except for the "vacuum cleaner", perhaps). Instead, the film-makers made use of the available existing technology, those devices, instruments, props and furniture "off the shelf" that were maybe slightly repurposed, if at all, therefore the whole film has that distinctive look of the late 1960s design, the modish fashion of the decade. It should be noted that the film presents the historical and futuristic designs side by side, thus making it appear like a lived-in world, not having any outlandish or even sterile look of some other, better-known and higher-budgeted sci-fi films or TV shows.
For starters, there’s a scene with surveillance video cameras that keep following people at the Institute of History, with microphones simultaneously hearing all their conversations, whether they were meant as private or not, subtly indicating a dystopian society where the constant monitoring of citizens – with or without their knowing – is commonplace.
Pepe Lahtinen (played by Allan Pyykkö), an elder technician working for the Institute, sits all day behind the screens in his monitor booth, intently watching and listening everything going on in the premises. (Though less bleak in tone, this sequence may be compared to yet another science fiction film of the same era, THX 1138, the debut by George Lucas from 1971.) By Raimo’s request Pepe switches on a reel-to-reel videotape when Raimo wants a recording of Kisse who frequently visits the Institute to watch the copies of old artworks on the gallery’s walls (obviously this is a reference to the scene in Hitchcock’s Vertigo where James Stewart follows Kim Novak in an art gallery).
Now Anu uses the console to talk with a clerk at the Central Archive of the Institute of History while watching some online photographs of Saara Turunen, then making prints of them. Later, Raimo also contacts the clerk, shows the camera a photograph of Saara and asks them to find from the archive a person looking approximately like her, indicating there’s also a sort of face recognition technology available.
While Raimo and Anu are having their conversation, a domestic worker enters the room, carrying with him some sort of futuristic vacuum cleaner that emits a rattling, Geiger counter-like sound and doesn’t even touch the floor when he’s doing his job.
There are car scenes where, in the manner of a GPS system used nowadays, a synthesised voice provides spoken turn-by-turn directions to guide the driver.
There are videophones, with Kurenniemi’s alarm signals, and flatscreen televisions.
There’s a sort of mobile phone, a small handheld box attached to a keychain, reminiscing a pager but with a two-way microphone and giving an alarm signal whenever someone calls. (As an interesting side note, Raimo has to contact the operator first to order a call to Kuortane: in Finland telephone exchanges became automatic by the end of the 1970s, meaning there was no need anymore to make a domestic call through the operator). Raimo also uses the device as a dictation machine, apparently connected wirelessly (with some sort of wi-fi?) to a C-cassette recorder, the technology that was introduced by Philips in 1963. As one more detail, the mobile phone has a voice-activated clock feature, as speech synthesizer gives the right time whenever commanded.
Not so futuristic for its time, though with a nifty design, Raimo has a small box-shaped transistor radio with an antenna.
People wear some heavy-looking headphones for their silent dances, obviously connected to a Walkman-like portable audioplayer under their clothes.
The scene with Kisse’s strip-tease rehearsal is filmed with what looks like Sony’s 1968 CVC-2100 1" Vidicon camera with CVF-4 (a 4" electronic viewfinder).
Television of the future: Valo-kanava ("The Channel of Light") is the most popular and watched TV channel, but there is also the Channel 4 where you can say anything you want without censorship but which virtually no one watches.
The suspended animation technology is in existence, with 27.000 persons already in deep freeze waiting for their bodies to be revived one day, but so far the means for this haven't been invented.
There’s a mention of mood-enhancing pills, the type of which in reality became commonplace only in the 1990s, with the arrival of Prozac, though there had already been all sorts of tranquilisers and “pep pills” for decades, and in science fiction, this was not a new idea as such: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932) already featured a recreational drug called “Soma”, used by the state to control the population. Also the use of psychedelics seems to be prevalent in Ruusujen aika, as can be witnessed from the party scene.
Music in the film
Although Otto Donner is better remembered for his other achievements, he also wrote a lot of soundtrack music for Finnish films from the early 1960s all the way to the 2000s. The music for Ruusujen aika is connected to his most productive period as a composer. In addition to Risto Jarva's works, Donner's music was heard in the films of directors such as Eino Ruutsalo, Jaakko Pakkasvirta, Maunu Kurkvaara, and Mikko Niskanen.
Of the original soundtrack music made for Ruusujen aika, Otto Donner's 'Päämelodia' ("Main Melody"), or the theme music with its distinct, slightly Slavic type of melody both romantic and melancholic, is heard in the course of film in three variations, stylistically ranging from modal jazz even to some bluesy jazz rock trappings; the first of them during the opening credits where it is preceded by Erkki Kurenniemi's electronic sounds as the intro. Donner also has three other compositions featured, 'Pääskytorni' ("The Swallow Tower"), 'Ryhmätanssi' ("The Group Dance") and 'Intialainen' (a.k.a. "India"), the latter an improvisational/free jazz type of piece of some pseudo-Oriental flavour, almost sounding like ritual music, playing in the psychedelic party scene. A prominent Finnish jazz musician Eero Ojanen has his feverish 'Slow Motion' featured in the club scene.
'Näettekö tulevaisuuteen?' ("Can you see into the future?") was a 1945 poem by Arvo Turtiainen (1904 - 1980), which was adapted into a song by composer Kaj Chydenius and performed in the film by Arja Saijonmaa. The tone in Turtiainen’s poem was coloured by the fact that it was written just in the aftermath of the bloody Second World War, nevertheless expressing unbridled optimism for the future.
Näettekö tulevaisuuteen?
(Arvo Turtiainen, 1945)
I
Näettekö tulevaisuuteen?
Minä näen.
Se on toivon kansoittama,
ei mitään muuta kuin toivoa
ja unennäköjä.
Merkillinen
on tulevaisuuden ranta:
toivolla ja unilla
on siellä ikuiset muistomerkit.
II
Tulevaisuuteen,
mielikuvat,
veren huurujen usvista tulevaisuuteen.
Tahto nousee raunioista merkillinen:
tahto katsoa totuutta silmiin.
Hämmästyttääkö sen yksinkertaisuus teitä:
Ei ole muuta suurta kuin rakentaa
ja tehdä työtä,
rakentaa
ja oppia rakastamaan.
Can you see into the future?
(By Arvo Turtiainen, 1945)
I
Can you see into the future?
I can.
It is populated with hope,
nothing but hope
and dreamings.
Strange
is the future's shore:
hope and dreams
have their eternal monuments there.
II
Images for the future
from bloodshed to the future.
The will rises from the rubble,
a strange
will to look the truth
in the eye.
Does its simplicity surprise you?
Nothing else is great but to build and work.
To build and learn to love.
'Pääskytorni' ("The Swallow Tower") was an ancient Chinese poem by Su Tung-P'o (1037 - 1101) which had been translated into Finnish by Pertti Nieminen. Composer Otto Donner, who was also responsible for the jazzy theme music of Ruusujen aika, adapted the poem into a song where Donner’s own vocals are heard, accompanied by Blues Section. The song was released as a single for Love Records (catalogue number LRS 1015, December 1968). In the film, though, only the instrumental version is used.
The Swallow Tower
by Su Tung-P'o
Written After Spending the Night in Hsü Chou and
Ascending the Swallow Tower After a Dream
(To the tune of Yung-yü le)
Bright moon like frost;
Fine breeze like water.
The scene was clear and boundless.
Fish were jumping in the winding creek,
And dewdrops rolling off the round lotus,
All these went unappreciated, in solitude.
Boom – the midnight drum struck,
Clang – a leaf fell to the ground.
In the dark my amorous dream was interrupted,
with a start.
The night being so vast,
It was impossible to recapture the dream;
I walked through every turn of the garden.
A weary traveller at the end of the world,
Gazing at the mountain path leading home,
Which lies hopelessly beyond the reach of my
yearning eyes.
Now that the Swallow Pavilion stands empty,
Where has the beautiful lady gone,
Leaving the swallows behind the locked door?
Past and present are like a dream
From which one never really wakes up –
A dream filled with old joys and new sorrows.
Some days he who sees the Yellow Pavilion at night,
Will certainly heave a sigh for me.
(English translation by Ying-hsiung Chou.)
Further reading:
Jyrki Siukonen - Living in the Future: Revisiting Time of Roses (2018) [PDF]
Olaf Möller - Audio commentary for Deaf Crocodile Podcast (2023)
Suomeksi:
Ruusujen aika @ Risto Jarva -seura
Toivon ja raivon vuosi 1968 [PDF]
In Memoriam
Lauri Anttila (1938 – 2022)
Peter von Bagh (1943 – 2014)
Kaj Chydenius (1939 – 2024)
Henrik Otto Donner (1939 – 2013)
Kalle Holmberg (1939 – 2016)
Risto Jarva (1934 – 1977)
Paavo Jännes (1892 – 1970)
Kullervo Kukkasjärvi (1938 – 1983)
Erkki Kurenniemi (1941 – 2017)
Matti Lehtelä (1906 – 1971)
Jukka Mannerkorpi (1944 – 2012)
Jaakko Pakkasvirta (1934 – 2018)
Eila Pehkonen (1924 – 1991)
Antti Peippo (1934 – 1989)
Allan Pyykkö (1926 – 2011)
Unto Salminen (1910 – 1972)
Saini Salonen (1933 – 2010)
Pekka Streng (1948 – 1975)
Arto Tuominen (1941 – 1986)
Ritva Vepsä (1941 – 2016)
Bonus:
Tietokoneet palvelevat ("Computers At Our Service", 1968)
A short film directed by Risto Jarva. Sound effects by Erkki Kurenniemi. [Info]
(no subtitles)
Tämän blogin suosituimmat tekstit
Club Telex (Tampere, Finland)
JR29: Vaiettu rykmentti (2025)
Kommentit
Lähetä kommentti