Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale...what can I say...?
Every so often there are films that come around that are so strange, peculiar and altogether original that they have you thinking about them for days afterward. That's definitely a good thing, as the usual Hollywood whiz-bang type flicks can get tiresome eventually. But in some cases, there are films that are so odd, you just don't know what to think. The Finnish film Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is one of the latter.
Rare Exports starts out with a Raiders Of The Lost Ark-style expedition in the Korvatunturi Mountains in Finland, where a group of diggers discover a massive, icy tomb which holds one of the biggest secrets in the history of man. Watching over the diggers is Pietari, a little boy living locally with his father. Pietari discovers what the mysterious group is actually digging for, but when he tells his friends and family, no one believes him. That is until potato sacks, radiators and even Pietari's friends begin to disappear. After a bit of research I discovered that the flick was based off a short film made by the same director, Jalmari Helander, that got something along the lines 1 million views in a couple of weeks. Helander has crafted a nice little mythos for himself with Rare Exports, as while you're watching it, you really have no idea where it will take you next. With each bizarre turn of events, comes a new twist on the Christmas movie as a whole, so credit must be given for that. The pace and structure work well with the film as it glides through each set piece, coming in at a lean and tight 84 minutes.
The main problem I had with Rare Exports is that while it puts a neat spin on the Bad Santa sub-genre, sometimes it takes a bit too much suspension of disbelief. This isn't a world that plays by the rules. In this world Pietari (a child aged about 9 or 10) is free to just wander wherever he likes and finding a body of an old man means cutting it up and disposing of it rather than call the police and just tell them it was an accident. Several times throughout the flick I scratched my head at the behavior of it's characters. It gets to a point where when a character just happens to know something already (like the fact that this old man happens to be the original Santa Claus) you just go with it, as there's no particular explanation as to how or why anything happens.
Aside from the strange nature of the Rare Exports world, the film is brimming with cool effects work, good performances and a nice little twist. The ending suffers slightly from an obvious lack of funding, making it a little bit anti-climatic, but you can't help but be sucked along in the final set-piece. In fact it's in the last 20 minutes of the film where it's really going to divide the audience. Casual cinema attendees are likely to laugh off the stuff on screen as just plain 'weird shit', as others are likely to embrace it like an old, but equally weird friend. Overall I found the ending worked though, again, it's slightly hampered by a small budget.
If you're looking for a regular Christmas flick to catch on a cold Sunday night, this probably isn't the one for you. But if you're open to the idea of an evil Santa Claus, children with guns, thousands of naked elves and general madcap behavior, then give Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale a watch. While it's nothing mind-blowing, I can almost guarantee you've never seen anything quite like this before.
