"Our Aki": the auteurial-national nexus and Aki Kaurismaki's Finland trilogy

[Truncated abstract] This thesis explores the interconnections of ‘Finnishness’ and ‘Kaurismäkianness’ in and around Aki Kaurismäki’s so-called Finland trilogy: Drifting Clouds (1996), The Man Without A Past (2002) and Lights in the Dusk (2006). The thesis addresses how Kaurismäki, whose work and public persona have tended to be critical of national institutions and preoccupations, has developed into an increasingly national figure in Finland’s years of Europeanisation.
In order to examine the links between ‘Finnishness’ and ‘Kaurismäkianness’ I establish, first, the way in which Kaurismäki’s films engage with national themes; and, second, the way in which this Kaurismäkian take on Finnishness is received and further appropriated in Finland. I provide a textual analysis of each of the focus films, paying particular attention to their national aspects and their references to Kaurismäki’s other films. I combine this close analysis of the film texts with discussion of the context of the films, their media presence and ‘afterlife’, for example the discourses surrounding the films after their initial release or the ways in which their ‘Kaurismäkianness’ has been appropriated by others for specifically national purposes.