KUKUSHKA (CUCKOO)

Russia, 2002, 105 minutes, Colour.
Anni- Kristiina Juuso, Ville Haapasalo, Viktor Bychkov.
Directed by Aleksandr Rogozhkin.

Cuckoo is an interesting film, a film about war and its aftermath.

Towards the end of World War Two, retreating Russians leave a Finnish sniper chained to a rock, dressed in Russian uniform – with orders to kill as many people as he can before he himself is killed. The first part of the film shows him escaping from the rock. A second character is a Russian who is being taken by vehicle to trial for anti-Soviet sentiments and who is stranded when the group is attacked. The third character is a Lapland widow whose husband went to war four years earlier and who survives in the forest. The plot brings the three together, each having a different language, attempts at communication, the woman not worrying about their political allegiances but helping them both back to health – and to relationships. The film is both serious and comic.

1. A Russian perspective on World War Two? Attitude towards the Germans? Towards the Finns? Towards Russia itself and its involvement? The war in Lapland? Fifty years on and perspectives?

2. The importance of the landscapes, the forests, the isolation, the bleak season, the rocks, the lake, tracks? The mood of the north? The musical score?

3. The title, the sniper and his role as a cuckoo, trapped, for death? Anni and the explanation?

4. The Nazi invasion of Finland, the use of the Finns, the German retreat? The sniper, the command, the chain, the rock, his escaping?

5. Veikko, the glimpse, the fire? The house, eating and drinking? Getting loose? Anni? The deaths?

6. The Russian, his arrest, warning the officer, the drive, relieving himself, the planes – and the deaths?

7. Anni in herself, her life, work, basic, the reindeer herd, the house, the food? Her healing the injured men?

8. Veikko and his arrival, the relationship with Anni, with the Russian, their working together? The tensions?

9. The plane, the crash, the women? The leaflets? The gun and the shooting?

10. The mystical background of life in Lapland, people and nature? The rituals of healing, the bark? The visualising of this? The dark?

11. The departures, the end of the war, a future?

12. Anni, the sexual relationship with the men? The aftermath, their departure? Her being left with two sons?