Ruusujen aika (A Time Of Roses)
"Me tuijotamme menneisyyteen, suremme tulevaa aikaa..."
"We stare at the past, mourn for the time to come..."Director: Risto Jarva
Finland 1969
107 minutes
Script: Peter von Bagh, Risto Jarva, Jaakko Pakkasvirta, Antti Peippo, Kullervo Kukkasjärvi, Titta Karakorpi, Seppo Palosaari
Cast: Arto Tuominen, Ritva Vepsä, Tarja Markus, Eero Keskitalo, Kalle Holmberg
Original music: Kaj Chydenius, Henrik Otto Donner (with Blues Section). Sound effects: Erkki Kurenniemi.
English synopsis:Ruusujen aika ("A Time of Roses", 1969) by Risto Jarva is a rare example of Finnish science fiction cinema. Taking place in the year 2012, the film is a fantasy of a "utopian" time when all class conflicts have been erased, at least superficially. An opportunistic history researcher Raimo Lappalainen becomes obsessed by the life of nude model Saara Turunen, a woman who died in 1976, and tries to reconstruct it for TV, with some help from Kisse Haavisto, an engineer at a nuclear plant who bears a striking resemblance to the late Saara. At the same time a strike at the nuclear plant will lead to a violent upsurge, which media only manages to keep secret from the public with a clever cover-up.
Elokuvasta / About the film:
Risto Jarvan Ruusujen aika ("Rosornas tid"/"A Time of Roses", 1969) on vuoteen 2012 sijoittuva tulevaisuusfantasia. Ruusujen aika kuvaa aikaa, jolloin ei näennäisesti ole enää olemassa luokkaristiriitoja tai muita tähdellistä yhteiskunnallista harmoniaa häiritseviä tekijöitä. Kun eräässä tuotantolaitoksessa syntyy lakko, tiedotusvälineet häivyttävät sen ovelasti. Puolueettomat virkamiehet, tutkijat ja humanistit hallitsevat Jarvan vivahteikkaasti muotoilemaa tulevaisuudenkuvaa.
Risto Jarva's A Time of Roses (1969) is a future fantasy taking place in the year 2012. The film depicts an age when superficially, there are no more class conflicts or any other disruptions to society's harmony. When a strike takes place at a nuclear plant, media will cunningly cover it up. The politically neutral bureaucrats, scientists and humanists rule in the vision of future which is designed by Jarva in rich nuances.
"One could consider Risto Jarva's science fiction film A Time of Roses (1969) a characteristic 1968 movie, born in the immediate sphere of influence of the ideas and events of the year 1968, in the spirit of Marcuse and McLuhan. Jarva's distanced social critique bears the stamp of the era of its origin, carrying the vision that is ever relevant, on the more or less subtle machinery of manipulation by those in power. When the screenwriter Peter von Bagh later saw the film, he was astonished by the topics captured in it, according to him it was full of "1960s neoleftist ideas of communication, power and such things, actually being an anthology of those. One can see the whole spectrum of the level of information and consciousness so far. It is as if into the film had been put everything that was known and felt then, as if the riddle of life had been solved and one wanted to present it to the public at large."("Leimallisena vuoden 1968 elokuvana sopii kuitenkin pitää Risto Jarvan tieteissepitettä Ruusujen aika (1969), joka syntyi vuoden 1968 aatteiden ja tapahtumien välittömässä vaikutuspiirissä, Marcusen ja McLuhanin hengessä. Jarvan etäännytetty yhteiskuntakritiikki kantaa syntyajankohtansa leimaa ja sisältää aina ajankohtaisen näkemyksen vallanpitäjien enemmän tai vähemmän hienovaraisista manipulaatiokoneistoista. Kun käsikirjoittaja Peter von Bagh näki elokuvan myöhemmin, hän ällistyi elokuvaan tarttuneiden asioiden määrästä, hänen mukaansa se oli täynnä "60-luvun uusvasemmistolaisia ideoita viestinnästä, vallasta ja muusta sellaisesta, oikeastaan niiden antologia. Siinä näkyy koko senhetkisen tiedon ja tietoisuuden taso. On kuin siihen elokuvaan olisi pantu kaikki mitä silloin tiedettiin ja tunnettiin, kuin elämän arvoitus olisi ratkaistu ja haluttu esittää suurelle yleisölle.")
Sakari Toiviainen: 1968 suomalaisessa elokuvassa ("1968 in Finnish cinema"), Filmihullu 5-6/98
Trivia (warning: spoilers)
A Time of Roses is one of the rare works representing Finnish science fiction cinema. The others were Aurinkotuuli by Timo Linnasalo (1980), Mika Kaurismäki's Mad Max variation The Last Border (1993), Jari Halonen's Lipton Cockton in the Shadows of Sodoma (1995) and Timo Vuorensola's Iron Sky (2012). Originally the film was supposed to be filmed in colour and Cinemascope format, but due to financial and technical problems this didn't happen. The script is influenced by Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo on which Peter von Bagh, one of the screenwriters, was writing his graduate thesis. The scene with the strike at a nuclear plant and the leader of strike (Kalle Holmberg) shot dead in front of TV cameras was filmed in the same day in August 1968 as Czechoslovakia was occupied by the Soviet Union troops. In the film, the future of the year 2012 has electronic newspapers. One of them, Uusi Suomi (ironically, in real life that newspaper went bankrupt in the 1980s, though later has seen a resurrection as online version) has as its logo the upside down, split-in-the-middle "Y" symbol of the 1960's peace movement! The most popular disco dance of 2012 -- danced with sensual movements to the experimental electronic-sounding music -- is called "pyllymylly" (free translation: "booty mill"). Erkki Kurenniemi, Finnish tech whiz known for his ground-breaking electronic instruments and compositions, provided electronic sounds for this film. The use of mood-enhancing pills as means of maintaining the control of society is normal in the future of the film, made 25 years before the Prozac boom (though this idea can be found as early as the 1930s, with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World). Pekka Streng, the late Finnish folk/psychedelia artist of posthumous cult reputation appears as one of the extras of this film. For international distribution, a 20 minutes shorter version was cut, with a special introductory sequence. Actress Ritva Vepsä received Silver Asteroid award for the film at The Trieste Festival Of Science Fiction Films in 1969, and the film also won Special Prize at the same festival. The director Risto Jarva died in a car accident in 1977. Saara, the obsession of the protagonist Raimo Lappalainen (Arto Tuominen), had similar fate, according to the film, only one year earlier, 1976.
Director Risto Jarva and cinematographer Antti Peippo
during the filming of Ruusujen aika
From the filming of Ruusujen aika, Jarva lying on the floor
In Memoriam:
Peter von Bagh (1943 – 2014)
Henrik Otto Donner (1939 – 2013)
Kalle Holmberg (1939 – 2016)
Risto Jarva (1934 – 1977)
Paavo Jännes (1892 – 1970)
Kullervo Kukkasjärvi (1938 – 1983)
Erkki Kurenniemi (1941 – 2017)
Matti Lehtelä (1906 – 1971)
Jukka Mannerkorpi (1944 – 2012)
Eila Pehkonen (1924 – 1991)
Antti Peippo (1934 – 1989)
Unto Salminen (1910 – 1972)
Pekka Streng (1948 – 1975)
Arto Tuominen (1941 – 1986)
Ritva Vepsä (1941 – 2016)
BibliographyToiviainen, Sakari: Risto Jarva. 1983 Suomen elokuva-arkisto A3/Valtion painatuskeskus, Helsinki (ISBN 951-859-397-3 ISSN 0358-3643)
Links
Ruusujen aika: full credits and info @ Risto Jarva -seura/Risto Jarva Society (in Finnish)
Ruusujen aika @ Wikipedia (in Finnish)
Ruusujen aika @ Elonet (in Finnish)
A review by Vincent Canby, New York Times, October 20, 1970
Ruusujen aika @ Kansallinen audiovisuaalinen arkisto (in Finnish)
Ruusujen aika -elokuvan tulevaisuusvisiot @ URS (in Finnish)
Ruusujen aika - a review @ Elitisti (in Finnish)
Ruusujen aika DVD release (in Finnish)
Risto Jarva @ Google (search results)
Computers At Our Service - a 1968 short film by Risto Jarva
Oliko Suomessa 'uutta aaltoa' 60-luvulla?
Futuro: more Finnish retro sci-fi design of the same era
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