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The Kidnapping of a President

This film, screening at the Nordic Film Festival, is a slightly slapstick telling of the attempted coup in Finland in 1930, where ex-President Kaarlo Ståhlberg and his wife were kidnapped and driven across the country by the right wing fascist Lapua Movement.

It's tied together by a best on ground performance from the Finnish Glenn McGrath, Jussi Vatanen (it's astonishing how much this guy looks like Pidge - scroll to the bottom and decide yourself). He plays Eero Kuussaari, a colonel desperate for respect and promotion. This frustration and feeling of inferiority drives him to drunkenly order a young crew of right-wing activists to kidnap Stahlberg (Pertti Sveholm) from his country home. They don't bargain on Mrs. Stahlberg (Riitta Havukainen) insisting on joining them.

Director Samuli Valkama has made a clever little historical comedy drama with current reverberations, considering Finland's place as a potential bulwark to Russia in Europe. The events of this film take place after the First World War and the Finnish civil war but just before fascism took a proper hold of the continent (Mussolini is name-checked).

The light treatment of the film suits the ridiculous story but there's a darker, more insidious entity lurking behind the scenes. It reminded me of Mel Brooks in the way he would skewer fascism in his films. The conspiring buffoons in The Kidnapping of a President are not a million miles away from Franz Liebkind in The Producers, for example.

The Finns have a curious knack of making unfussy, obscure, off-kilter films (mainly thanks to the influence of the brilliant Aki Kaurismäki), and this film, while not as kooky, certainly has the Finnish touch.

The Kidnapping of a President is screening as part of the Nordic Film Festival at Luna and Palace cinemas in Perth (check local guides for venues around Australia).

See also:

Kaurismaki's Fallen Leaves (2023) also stars Vatanen. Kidnapping in the snow? Anyone for the Coen Brothers' Fargo (1996)? Also, see below for the Vatanen/McGrath nexus.

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