Aleksis Kivi was wild and strong but sensitive and vulnerable person who made the best profile of Finnish men living in hard conditions. His books were read in schools when I was young but I'm not sure about today's case. Anyway his books made indelible impression to my mind.
This movie was a biography of that great artist and complex person, who died lone and forgotten, like so many great artists. It looks that the illness has been diagnosed thru the ages from Schizophrenia to Syfilis but it looks today that he had Borreliosis which causes very different kind of bad symptoms.
When I first time saw this movie as young, it produced very tough picture. Today my feelings are a bit different and it still makes me touched feeling but because Rauli Tuomi was so stressed doing this movie (also WWII affected him something, I don't know what) that he made suicide few years after.
You can see that this role was hard job to do and the end is one of the memorable shots in the Finnish movies.
