I myself usually read the book. I have never ever seen a movie which is better than the book it is based on. I like books more because it leaves room for my own imagination. Even if the description in the book is very precise it still leaves room for the reader’s imagination when the visual influence is missing. 

Also the book is a story as it is. It doesn’t have to be cropped in to two hours. Most of the time the movie sucks because something relevant has to be left out. And after watching a film it feels like you have wasted another night on the couch doing basically nothing. A book lasts so much longer and you can almost live in it. When you hit the end you feel like you have accomplished something great.

I do understand the people who want to watch the movie. If I am told to read a book like Wuthering Heights (had to read it for a school assignment, I did not enjoy) I will easily start to google if there is a movie about it. I watched the movie and wrote my review based on it. It was easy and I got a great score. It is hard to enjoy if you have to do it. When I gave Wuthering Heights another shot I very much liked it. I had to try to read it again because I felt like I was missing out and couldn’t say that I knew anything about it.

Watching a movie will be easier but a book will be so much more educating experience. But it is too late to start giving assignments that involves reading a book when we are teenagers because the joy of books is usually found as a child. 

Read a book it is fun or watch a movie, it’ll be different kind of fun. 

During the war Laaksonen had a lethal confrontation with a handsome Russian soldier which leaves him with a lifelong guilt complex while also, the film teasingly suggests, cementin his vision of male beauty. After the war he works as an illustrator for an advertising agency alongside his artistically gifted sister Kaija (Jessica Grabowsky). He starts sketching private masturbatory fantasies based on stylized versions of the soldiers, bikers who wear leather and others who suits his ideal handsome man. Homosexuality was still a criminal offense Laaksonen’s sex life mostly consists of fraught nocturnal encounters in parks of Helsinki and secret all-male orgies where he risks arrest and police brutality. 

Laaksonen starts gaining international profile via the homoerotic physical culture magasines that flourished before porn was legalized. As times change and homosexuality is widely decriminalized his hardcore images are picked up by a publisher from L.A., leading to commercial success in the 1970s and 80s

The film did not fulfill my expectations. I think it had some structural issues and it lingers too long on Laaksonen’s episodic early development before finally making a huge leap forward to his late blooming fame. The screenplay also suffers heavy-handed literalism that affects many biodramas, when a character coughs once it is a sure sign he will die five scenes later.

Karukoski and Bardy are also surprisingly shy about depicting both male nudity and gay sex which are out and proud in the drawings, but marginal within the drama itself. Sure, a movie about someone’s life should not be a porn movie, but I imagined it was a bigger part of Laaksonen’s life. Also the Laaksonen’s controversial intrest in nazi soldiers, who provided part of his early erotic experiences, has also been carefully erased from the story. Laaksonen freely admitted that he loved Nazis because ”they had the sexiest uniforms”. Exploring the forbidden fruit of BDSM fantasy was a key element of his vision. 

All in all the movie was good although my dad fell asleep during it. I expected more, especially I wanted to see Laaksonen’s thoughts on a deeper level. I’m not quite sure if I like it or dislike it.  

1.     Letters from Skye (Jessica Brockmole) 

The plot and storytelling relies on letters. It has very little of actual storytelling, it is mostly letters between a woman from island of Skye and a man from America. Elspeth Dunn is a published poet from Skye (Scottish island in case you were wondering) and he receives her first fan letter from David Graham who is American. They become pen pals and later they fall in love. 

I really enjoyed the way of storytelling. At first I was confused of it because it was all in letters. then it got more intriguing and I couldn’t stop reading. At the end I cried for solid 30 minutes because it was such a heart warming story. 

There is so much to love in this novel that I can’t even list them in any way, just go and read it. 

 

2.     The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Muriel Barbery)

The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a delightfully malicious book where they drink lots of tea, observe the growth of the spikes and chew over the meaning of life. The book presents a whole bunch of questions. It either answers them or leaves them hanging. It treats the wonders of art as well as the modern elite vanguards, poodle as a totem and the melancholy of the cat, the grace of heaven and the pain of a small bladder.

There are two main characters: 54-year-old widowed concierge Renée Michel and soon to be 13-year-old Paloma Josse. They are both first-person narrators and some times it is hard to tell which one is it but the font (thank god) changes between the two narrators so it is easier to follow. 

Renée and Paloma both live in their own little bubbles. They enjoy being on their own and usually they spend their time thinking about life. Paloma keeps two diaries, one called ”Journal of the Movement of the World” to record her thoughts of the world around her and the other one called ”Profound Thoughts” to record her wide-ranging reflections on art, poetry, people and herself. She has decided to commit suicide (not at all in melodramatic way) by setting their apartment on fire. 

Renée on the other hand maintains an illusion of herself as a kind of slow and sometimes stupid concierge. She introduces herself as ”a widow, short, ugly and chubby with bunions on my feet and, on certain difficult mornings, it seems, the breath of a mammoth”

I absolutely love the storytelling and all that philosophical thinking. I very much liked the ending where is a plot twist that opens a new amazing truth for Paloma

3.      Me before you and After you (Jojo Moyes)

I found Me Before You in June and I did not get the time to read it until August. I had just moved to Tampere and I felt kind of lonely with my cardboard boxes. I sat on my armchair and opened one of my boxes which contained books (there were many of them) Me Before You was on the top so I had no reason not to read it. Well I sat there for hours and hours just reading. It was so compelling and the language was so beautiful. 

It is a story about Will Traynor who paralyzed in an accident and Louisa Clark a girl at a coffee shop. Louisa loses her job when the coffee shop shuts down. Lou starts applying for countless of jobs and gets one from Traynor’s. She is supposed to keep company for Will who seems kind of depressed and doesn’t do much with his life. Louisa spents six months with Will and tries her best to keep him entertained. Lou finds out Traynors hired her to be some kind of babysitter, except she is making sure Will won’t commit suicide. 

Will and Lou become closer and closer, eventually they fall in love. Will breaks Lou’s heart by not changing his mind about suicide. Louisa decides to be along side with him through it all. They fly to Switzerland where euthanisia is legal.

After You tells a story about a different Louisa Clark. After Will’s death Lou leaves the tiny town they lived in. She now lives in London and works at a airport as a waitress in a tiny Irish pub. She watches as people come and go and she is not living the life she promised to Will to live after him. At night she sits out on her roof drinking wine, gazing out across the city and getting maudlin. 

Louisa falls off the roof and everyone thinks she tried to kill herself so she ends up in a grief group where all participants have lost someone close to them. Lou meets his ambulance driver after one of her meetings with the group. They both remembered each other and then started dating. Lou is trying to let go of Will and she doesn’t know if she wants to live her life with ambulance-Sam. 

Most of all After You is about Louisa’s journey, a random, bumpy process to accommodation to loss and the fear of starting over. I think there is room for book three and I’m looking forward if one does come out. I absolutely love everything that comes from Jojo Moyes’ pen.