Killing Nazis the Finnish Way: Jalmari Helander on Hyperviolent Action-Comedy Sisu

Director Jalmari Helander on the set of Sisu, the new Nazi-slaying romp starring Jorma Tommila as a gold prospector bloodily hacking down the Reich. (Image courtesy of Freezing Point Oy/Antti Rastivo)

In Jalmari Helander's office, there are two film posters. One is for Rare Exports, his unexpected international breakout success about evil Christmas elves in Lapland. The other is for Rambo: First Blood Part 2. "It's my favorite," he grins.

The combo makes sense for his latest film, hilariously gruesome action-comedy Sisu. He teams up with his Rare Exports star Jorma Tommila for the tale of a Finnish gold prospector, Aatami Korpi, in the farthest reaches of Lapland who crosses paths with a retreating column of Nazis at the tail end of World War II. Dozens of heavily armed and armored Wehrmacht and SS troopers versus one old prospector with a knife and a shovel? They don't stand a chance.

Austin Chronicle: When you wrote the script for this, you committed yourself to making a movie in mud. This may be one of the muddiest films ever, and making a movie in the middle of nowhere comes with a lot of challenges.

Jalmari Helander: There were a lot of technical challenges just to get the gear to the shooting places, and of course there were all the vehicles and the tank. It's the most northern place in Finland you can get, it's called Nuorgam, and because there's no trees and nowhere to hide it was the perfect place to shoot this film, but it also gave a lot of challenges.

The biggest one was the wind. It was so hard on some days that you couldn't even shout if someone was 10 meters away. The Nazis lost their helmets, and the sand was going everywhere - eyes, nose, ears, also into the camera. Everywhere.

AC: I'm sure your sound department was very happy with you.

JH: Well, we didn't have much dialogue, so ...

AC: And what dialogue there is is mostly in English. This is a very Finnish story, but by doing that you set this up to be an international movie.

JH: It was quite clear to me at the beginning that we needed to be in English in order to have the financing for this. And I don't have any problem with Nazis speaking English because they do in Hollywood movies all the time. They just have to speak a different language than Aatami does. And not having Aatami talk at all was important to me because that's the most Finnish way to do it, and while I'm doing that it forces me to think of everything through pictures, in a cinematic way.

The script, in a way, is like a novel because I had to describe everything that is happening because nobody is speaking. I really enjoyed doing that, and I might do a film where there's no dialogue at all some day.

AC: What's the current state of filmmaking in Finland?

JH: We're doing a lot of films here in Finland – in my opinion, a little bit too much, almost. But this is a country of about 5 million people so you don't get that big a budget if you're just aiming for the Finnish market, and I'm aiming to be somewhere else.

The biggest challenge for me was that I wanted to make an action movie in Finland, and everybody was laughing at me because we didn't have that kind of industry. This is basically the first action movie from Finland ever.

One big concern was making a war movie, because the war in Finland is almost a holy thing for Finns. What will happen if I don't do it seriously or historically accurately? So I just did what I want, and everybody seems to like it, so maybe it's a new leaf in Finnish cinema.

AC: You're explaining a bit of Finnish history that a lot of people may not know. They'll think there's just the Axis and the Allies, when in reality there are countries like Finland that are just in this long fight for survival. Were you ever concerned about how much you needed to explain, knowing that you're aiming for international audiences?

JH: No. Actually, I even thought that I won't explain anything, because I could tell all this from Aatami's perspective, and Aatami doesn't know that Finland isn't working with Germany any more. They have made peace with Russia and have to get rid of the Nazis.

I don't have anything in the beginning explaining anything. What is important is that Aatami comes across bad Nazi guys who want his gold. That's quite easy to explain, and I don't know you need anything more to enjoy this film.

"There was basically nobody else." Jalmari Helander on casting Jorma Tommila as gold hunting Nazi killer Aatami Korpi in Sisu. (Image courtesy of Freezing Point Oy/Antti Rastivo)

AC: And you've worked with Jorma before, on Rare Exports. When did you realize he was your Aatami?

JH: The second after I had this idea. I called him a second after I had the idea of someone having a lot of gold, and fighting Nazis in Lapland in '44. There was basically nobody else.

AC: That means you have someone you could work with all the way through the creative process.

JH: We talked quite a lot during the writing process, but I know him so well that it was just a big help just to know him. It was easy for me to write him because I didn't just have to write for somebody – it was Jorma, and I knew exactly what he was going to do.

AC: And that he embodies this idea of sisu, this very Finnish concept of unstoppable determination.

JH: I'd been thinking that Sisu would be a cool title for a film, but when I had this idea I went, 'OK, there it is.' To use that mindset almost as a superpower. But it's not a superpower. It's just a determination that I'm not going to die before I do what I'm here to do.

AC: Aatami reminds me of some of the men I grew up around in farming communities – not in the Nazi-killing way, but that they get up in the morning, they do their thing, they don't interact with people in the course of their day, they're very linear.

JH: Being in the middle of nowhere to do my film and not having much of anything in that place, I can build my own thing there. It's so much easier to control. Maybe I'm simple-minded, but I feel the safety of being in the middle of nowhere, and all the characters are there. I didn't want to shoot in a city of a million people. It's so much cooler and easier to be somewhere where you can control the environment. I like that kind of movie, like Alien or Jaws or First Blood, to be somewhere in the middle of nowhere where there are no police and no rules, and you do what you can to survive.

AC: And you flip the script by making your dead-eyed killer, your jaws, the hero. The kills are so creative, and who doesn't want to see Nazis get killed in creative ways?

JH: It seems that a lot of people do want to see that. The reason I did that kind of action is that I didn't have a $100 million budget, so I knew I had to be inventive and I have to surprise the audience every time Aatami is doing something. I'm pretty sure that no one can know beforehand what happens next, and that makes a good experience when you're watching a movie in a cinema – to be surprised.

It's not enough for Aatami to fight Nazis. It's how he does it. We've seen a lot of kills in movies, so I knew I had to do something inventive.

Sisu opens in cinemas this Friday. Read our review and find showtimes at austinchronicle.com/screens.