Fearless tales The name of Klaus Häre, known only to a narrow circle of viewers, can hardly claim to be in the ratings of the best Scandinavian directors. But in the list of non-standard authors, the Finnish director would take one of the places of honor. Häre’s approach is definitely not trivial: using the acutely social and Nordic harsh themes familiar to northern cinema, he creates a wonderful film that looks more like a fairy tale. The story, which in other hands would have become darker or more compassionate, is full of light and optimism in Häre’s interpretation and is often doomed to a happy, if naive, ending. Love for children and faith in the best is permeated and the debut of the director is touching in its simplicity “Elina”.
The action takes place in the middle of the last century, in a village inhabited by Finns, lost among the forests of Swedish Lena Norbotten. Little Elina spends her time not in games with friends, but among swamps teeming with life, where she feels the presence of her recently deceased father. Hated by all because of the willfulness of the parent managed to teach the daughter two fundamental things – to find a way through the topi and not to give up in the fight for justice. A problem requiring intervention appears with Elina’s transition to the class of the powerful teacher Tora Holm. Through the image of the teacher in the film shows the policy of the Swedish government towards national minorities of the time. Holm forbids children who know only Finnish to speak their native language, punishes for disobedience, but expresses condescending sympathy, realizing how much higher on the social ladder. For the whole village she is different, with her bright clothes, not at all like gray peasant robes, with her urban habits, with her emphatically correct speech. The authors balance the dangerous conflict with one simple detail: the main protagonist - Elina - is also another.
Problems and plot layers are superimposed on each other - social inequality, poverty, misunderstanding, loneliness, but they are all just a background for a painstaking study of the inner world of the child. Following the path of August and Hallström, the author creates a complex image of a small person who is capable of great experiences. Elina is a lonely animal looking for answers in the symbolic swamp of the past, while her sister and mother live in the present. The reason for the girl’s protests is not so much the cruel treatment of Finnish children as the attitude of society towards her father. By her actions, she only defends the right to be like a native person who has become a personal deity. The main question of the picture is not who will be the winner of the school confrontation, but whether the heroine will be able to find her way and her answers, break the umbilical cord that binds her to the swamp. She is not an angel, but a child with a pure soul. And the fate of the girl performed by touching and convincing Natalie Minnevik is impossible not to empathize.
Häre's film is simple and human and delicately balances between truthfulness and naive fiction. “Invisible Elina”, as she was called in the Finnish box office, tells about the era in the life of Sweden, about the search for mutual understanding where it would seem that it can not be, about the growing up of not one person, but a whole village. But first of all, it is a picture of safe trails through gloomy topi - trails leading home.