The Finnish horror movie "Sauna" by A-J Annila

A week ago I was visiting the small but cozy movie theater Orion and watched a Finnish movie released in 2008 – Sauna. During the movie I felt excited, fascinated, scared, breathless, confused. In other words I just stared at the screen and forgot the candy I had in my lap. Just like I should do during awesome movies.

The movie Sauna is located in Finland at the end of a long war between Russia and Sweden, in 1595, when a new border is needed. Two brothers are in this project – Knut and Erik – and they find a desolated Sauna in the middle of a shockingly quiet swamp. They stay at the nearest village, the existence and meaning of which remains a mystery to the viewer until the end of the movie.

It is interesting to ponder about the brothers – Knut is an academic young man who feels a huge guilt when he shuts a girl into a cellar and later finds out that his brother didn’t let her out. Erik is the older one who has been so long near the brutalities of the war that he can kill easily and violence is a inseparable side of him. Even though he is accustomed to death he carries within him a number – 73. At least until he lefts the girl in the cellar, then it’s 74.

Personally I was impressed by the usage of Finnish deserted areas and fields in the movie and how well they suit the horror theme. Especially the sauna itself gave chills, already when I was watching the trailer. It was interesting to see how the mythology around the sauna is used in this movie. In the old days there was belief that the sauna was a place to wash your sins away – like the brothers wish and in the end can not avoid.

In this text I have used the original name Sauna, since the translated name – Evil Rising - is not good at all. It does not describe the movie in a mysterious way like Sauna does since it is a movie with unexplainable things and psychological issues. The name Sauna raises questions and so does the mysterious events – and the movie does not answer them. Still it is an amazing movie and just the kind of horror I want to watch. Sauna does not explain itself and it doesn’t need to, since the horror is in the minds of people and it continues to live out there.

First lesson in April - discussions

After the Easter holiday we were back at the university and our English course. The Easter week went well, mostly it was about meeting relatives and not doing much at all at home. You would think that you had time for some homework and late assignments, but no. The time just flied by and before I knew it was Wednesday afternoon and I had an essay in literature to hand in, a draft about Dracula for the English course to be ready and a group discussion I should prepare. Luckily I finished almost each one of them in time.

It was my turn to have a group discussion in English. During the course I had been a bit worried about that, since I've never really had those. And in normal group discussions I can be a part of the discussion, but not the loudest one in the group. And now I were supposed to lead the conversation? I chose a topic close to my main subject, literature. Someone close to my suggested to have a discussion about a book, but the problem is that everyone should have read it. I thought it would be nice to talk about a current event and after some surfing on the internet I found an article about slow reading (think about slow food) and another named "Young people read a lot less" in The Boston Globe on boston.com. I chose to talk about youngsters reading less, since it was a shorter article and an easier subject.

I think I was well prepared for the discussion with my article, my questions, the list of words and so on. I didn't feel that nervous until the point I started the discussion. On the whole everything went well. We talked about reading among youngsters through many different questions. How well is the article showing us the true situation? Can the American results (presented in the article) be compared to the results in Finland or Europe? What kind of reading are we talking about here (anything, even newspapers? Classics?)? And so on. I was surprised how much the discussion went on by itself: the questions I thought I would ask were answered even before I asked them. It was nice to just go with the discussion, but when the silence came I was startled for a moment. I had to read through my questions and figure out what we hadn't already talked about. But as I said it went well, and hopefully the group members thought so too. It was an interesting thing to try and I was happy with my performance.

After the break we shared our group discussions in new, small groups. Afterwards we started to talk about our drafts of the essays we are supposed to finish soon. We shared our subjects and discussed about our writing process. My personal main subject is literature and my topic for the essay is about Dracula - the narrative method of the vampire classic we all are familiar with. My writing process is about thinking of some main points to discuss in the essay, then to start with the actual essay and next I will expand the ideas and points. Finally I will expand some more and then go through the details and make it all work together. Personally I try to take a subject near my interests, if possible, or deal a question through a novel I personally like, therefore I hope I have more to say about the topic. This can not surely be done in every subject, but at least in literature. One girl in my group told us she has issues with starting an essay. I understand this, I have had the same. But I thought about this a while and felt that I have not that kind of issues when writing about literature: I usually start with mentioning the novel I'm going to present and then bring up the issue or question I'm going to deal in the essay.

I guess that is it for now. For next Thursday we are supposed to hand in our second draft of the essay, so I better start :)

Sleep well!