While a lot of money swirls around paintings painted with a banana in the sand, and sculptures from hotel towels, beautiful works of artists can lie in the dust.
They are not included in the catalogs of important names, the buyer does not understand what he will boast in front of his guests when they ask him, and who is the author of the wonderful landscape. He shrugs his shoulders and the guests will think about why he had to buy it – money for the wind. Because the author is unknown.
Olavi's doing pretty badly. It is time for him to close his art shop in the heart of Helsinki. But finally, he decides to make a deal with a painting by an unknown artist, because he is sure that its author is Repin himself.
Art detective, family drama and a sudden story of growing up - the film of one of the most important modern Finnish directors Klaus Härö (in 2003 he received the Ingmar Bergman prize from Bergman himself) combines and copes with genres, intriguing artistic and historical riddles, manipulating emotions and causing surprise at how you can combine in one story a deal of 100,000 euros and features of Scandinavian family relationships, which for many can become a great revelation.
In the film, generations collide, but find common ground through mutually beneficial cooperation. The elite world of buying and selling antiques suddenly appears naked in front of the viewer in all its cynicism and hastily wraps itself in sheets, like a girl caught in the fall.
The old does not try to prevail over the new, but wearyly watches how a certain, albeit microscopic, but civilization is collapsing, and is replaced by a voracious industry that destroys names and devalues their meaning, creating faceless golden calves for profit and imposing that we must necessarily respect this. If we do not understand something, then the problem is only in us.
So the visitor to the gallery freezes in front of the painting of Raphael only because he knows that before him is Raphael. Otherwise I'd pass by. Because it is not highlighted in large print and not emphasized for particular persuasiveness.