Karin Pennanen: Days of Wonder
Uncle Markku was Karin’s favorite as a child. He was full of fun, wonderful to play with, joyful as uncles should be, but not always are. He introduced her to something, she did not know about before much later, when she grew up: Art. She made short films, sent them to him, he praised them and promised to put a music score to them. He kept his promise. Which she discovered after his death, when she was the one who opened the door, where he lived on his own – she and her family did not visit him for 34 years!
But there were telephone calls and Markku recorded them, and when Karin broke into his isolated house, she found an artist atelier that was unimaginable. Audio cassettes, video tapes, thousands of cut-outs from papers and magazines, paintings… A house with a room that was divided into two, one for the visual art and one for the music. Indeed, uncle Markku was a multitalented artist, who as a young man was at the Sibelius Academy and at the Academy of fine Arts; he did not finish the studies at any of them, and when a boy he was kicked out of school(s).
“The artist in his ivory tower” is that the characterisation to be attached to Markku? Not at all, and maybe, but he was in contact with the world around him… he had a job as paper deliver, which he performed during night. And he had a platonic phone relationship with Marja-Leena from the delivery company, “you are the queen of my heart”, and he actually was kind-of planning a documentary about himself. There are great clips to be used for that, one of them including his brother, Karin’s father, visiting him, and several are clips, where he goes closer to his camera to say something. Most of it is joyful but there are also photos of himself – fantastic, Rembrandt-like – accompanied by words describing moments of depression, loneliness?
I wrote to the publicist of the film Dimitra Kouzi that I wanted to watch the film as I have a weak point for Finnish documentaries – and their way of storytelling, breaking the anglo-saxon tradition; “Days of Wonder” is no exception, building a conversation between uncle and niece from the art he did. The last sequences where she is – through animation – making great collages from his cut-outs from papers and magazines, is simply amazingly beautiful as are the many sketches on paper, she finds from his, let´s call it like that, archive.
It’s a niece’s declaration of love to an uncle, you feel that during the film, made in an original way, an homage to an artist, who made art for his own sake but knew that one day his door would be opened to discover, through sound and visual, music and film and art pieces that Uncle Markku was creating for a meaning with it all. Like we all do…
❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
Finland, Denmark, Sweden, 2025, 88 mins.
