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Director's Statement
CONCRETE NIGHT is not a film about school killings, mass murderers or the Chechen brothers in Boston. It’s a film about a young mind that was shattered long before the all-encompassing misanthropy may have got a hold of it. This is a film about the metaphysics of coincidences in a world which we, blinded by our delusional omnipotence, think we have control over and thus the ability to destroy. The protagonist of the film, 14-year-old Simo, is the fragile and sensitive surface reflecting all the rumblings that take place around him.
Simo, lacking the ability to distort what he sees or change it to something more pleasing to him, sees the world accurately, just as it is. Life is unbearable when seen without a filter. Humans can't live that way. Being an adult means building walls to protect one’s self.
This is what Author Marja-Leena Mikkola wrote about Pirkko Saisio’s novel “Betoniyö” in the 1980s: ”Edvard Munch’s famous painting 'The Scream' arouses a sense of unease in the spectator. The face of the screaming creature has no expression, and yet it draws the spectator in. One is compelled to look intensely at the gaping mouth of the face, one cannot avoid it and one cannot escape from it. I experienced something similar to this when I read Pirkko Saisio’s ‘Concrete Night’. It has been ripped of everything superfluous – pity, tenderness, hatred, irony – all that remained was this scream, this howl.
In 'Concrete Night' everything is dead for good. We've seen both mentally and physically neglected young people in suburban ghettos before. They have something that Simo doesn’t; a subculture of their own and some concept of themselves. In 'Concrete Night' Simo is an outsider; a faceless young man.
Lifting Simo and his environment into the focus of literal description is an act of love of sorts. The total (and successful) settling inside Simo is an even greater one. The author accepts Simo.”
I, too, accept Simo.