Mikko Niskanen – Kahdeksan surmanluotia AKA Eight Deadly Shots (1972) (HD)

“Eight Deadly Shots is perhaps the most nuanced picture of the working of the economic system in the history of our cinema: a close-up of a man up against the wall, at the most basic level of breathing.”
–Peter von Bagh, Kansan Uutiset

While Mikko Niskanen’s Skin, Skin is light, Eight Deadly Shots is the essence of dark. Born in 1929, the actor and director made 14 features before his death in 1990. The British Film Institute, in 1972’s New Cinema in Finland, describes this B&W effort as his “most important film so far.” One of filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki’s favorites, it remains Niskanen’s most important–even if it isn’t really a “film” (more on that below). A powerful work of social protest, it’s among the finest Finnish pictures ever produced.

Originally commissioned for television, Eight Deadly Shots was broadcast in four installments totaling five hours and 16 minutes. Like the abridged edition of Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 small-screen series Scenes from a Marriage, this theatrical version plays as if it was always meant to be a movie. The BFI proclaimed it “a triumph” and a “minor masterpiece.”

By way of comparison, the BFI proclaimed 1966’s Skin, Skin as “smooth, lively, and unpretentious”–qualifying that it’s a “somewhat overrated youth picture”–while 1971’s Song of the Scarlet Flower (which screens on Saturday) is “a disaster.” The BFI also raved about Niskanen’s first feature, 1962’s Boys, made after two years of study at Moscow’s State Institute of Cinematography, but it isn’t screening as part of the Northwest Film Forum’s Sisu Cinema: Nine from the Finnish New Wave.

To judge by the first week of screenings, including Jörn Donner’s charmingly titled Fuck Off! Images of Finland (1971), the series has been an unqualified success, and those who missed the opening week still have two left during which to get caught up. Summer Rebellion, Diary of a Worker, and Poor Maria brings things to a close next weekend.

Inspired by a 1969 incident concerning Tauno Veikko Pasanen (with whom Niskanen consulted), Eight Deadly Shots examines the rigors of rural life from the inside out. It’s one thing to live off the fat of the land, but it’s another when that land ceases to yield produce of any value, especially when there are no other income-generating options available.

Farmer Pasi (Niskanen looking every inch the Bressonian anti-hero) lives with his wife (Tarja-Tuulikki Tarsala) and children in Konginkangas, an isolated mountain village. There’s plenty of love to go around, but times are tight. To supplement their income, Pasi distills liquor stronger than the stuff the government provides. After a hard day’s work, he gathers with his buddies, brews up a batch, sells a few bottles, and drinks himself into oblivion.

His perceptive, unnamed wife understands the situation all too clearly. The money is a boon, but the operation represents a serious liability. The authorities have been keeping tabs on the community, and the penalties for bootlegging are stiff. Worse yet, Pasi’s drinking is taking its toll by destroying his family and, through distribution, the entire town.

The BFI: “The illegal distilling of spirits, an important part of the film’s action, becomes a social protest, the last trial of strength for a powerless small farmer, an illusory flame of freedom and life but which, according to the class laws of society, irrevocably destroys the protester himself.”

Like Shohei Imamura’s 1966 The Pornographers, which blames a repressive regime for stunted sexual maturity, Eight Deadly Shots eschews speechifying to make its point. The focus is always on the farmer, but where are the government programs that could help re-train workers for non-agricultural trades? Where are the substance abuse counselors?

Eventually, the police catch the distillers in the act, and Pasi’s downward spiral accelerates until an act of violence seals his fate. Nobody makes him pull the trigger, but nor does anyone help him when he’s down.

About the neo-realist thriller, the BFI adds, “One of the great achievements of Niskanen is that he is able to portray the basic positiveness of the leading character of this grim story–also his belief in the possibilities of nature and work–and all this without the wrong kind of romanticism, without traditional poetic clichés of film humanism–and without pity, since pity would have meant placing oneself outside the situation.”

Aside from the carefully observed writing, Niskanen’s deeply felt performance makes Eight Deadly Shots hard to deny. It may not sound like a fun night at the movies, but the film is so attentive to time and place that it feels universal (Niskanen grew up in the same part of Finland).

Whether or not there’s a history of alcoholism in his family, Pasi’s reasons for drinking are always understandable. And his efforts to deny it recall Ray Milland’s prevaricator in The Lost Weekend. As in Billy Wilder’s 1945 feature, Niskanen doesn’t waste time with Freudian psychobabble–dad was withholding, mom was controlling–but gets in under Pasi’s skin, allowing the audience access to his feelings of hopelessness and despair.

Eight.Deadly.Shots.S01E01.1080p.MUBI.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-KUCHU.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 17 min
Size: 	2.83 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1800x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	5:3
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 882 kb/s
BPP: 	0.100
Audio
#1:  	Finnish 2.0ch AAC LC @ 320 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/F2AB9A5F732C2D9/Eight.Deadly.Shots.S01E01.1080p.MUBI.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-KUCHU.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/E37BDBB8CD4FFE4/Eight.Deadly.Shots.S01E02.1080p.MUBI.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-KUCHU.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/DE2DCDDB91CCA9F/Eight.Deadly.Shots.S01E03.1080p.MUBI.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-KUCHU.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/7DCD70B2E9F774D/Eight.Deadly.Shots.S01E04.1080p.MUBI.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-KUCHU.mkv

Language(s):Finnish
Subtitles:English, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Turkish