English
The failure of one of the biggest Albert Hanover’s projects, writer from Samoa, probably had more to do indirectly with Albert’s strong impression from the torrid of the Lawrence Kasdan´s first film Body Heat. This incrediably sexy film played with the idea that prolonged excessive heat creates a state of emergency that is an altered state of consciousness that makes us inclined to go to our dark side, irrational, repressed and secret.
It was however a gloss reading of Julio Cortazar´s story WF Harvey August Heat included in the book The Beast with Five Fingers, which caused him to have the idea of adapting it and the Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki who convinced him to put appropriate action, from all over the world, along the strange and beautiful Hietaniemi cemetery Helsinki, famous for both the spectacular landscape with a lake, and for parties and varied and intense sexual activity taking place at night around its large perimeter.
If what eventually Hanover decided was the challenge of imagining the likely effects of a heat wave in Helsinki – the photos showed Kaurismaki documenting the phenomena that had occurred in Finland in such exceptional circumstances were difficult to avoid – or promise Finnish director finally failed in getting the money, and even the French actor Jean Pierre Léaud, idolized by both, as a protagonist without too many problems, remainded a matter of debate.
Despite the fact that the shooting had to be interrupted at the beginning of the second week, in some black markets it is possible to find the pirated footage and some copies of the script, which turn out to be surprisingly faithful, not so much to the history, but to the summary made by Cortázar. It´s really hot and a strange force pushes the narrator to draw a court of law where a man has just been sentenced to death. Frightened by his own drawing, he wanders aimlessly through the city to stop in the dark garden of a house near the cemetery. There, a man identical to his draw, work on a tombstone where the name and exact date of birth and death of the former, coincides with the current day. The narrator pale and the man explains that he is lapidary and that he is inventing the data engraved on the tombstone, for an exhibition. Heat increases, both “double coincidence understands that it is going beyond the absurd explanation that makes it awful.” The lapidary invites him to dinner and asked him to stay at home until the end of the day, where he could be safe and out of danger. The narrator accepts and writes the story as the lapidary sharpens his tools. Becoming warmer, we are told in the last line of the story “heat can drive anyone crazy.”
Paul Oilzum
The film was never made, but Hietaniemi Cemetery is still there, disturbing, mysterious, strangely beautiful. If you like strong emotions might visit it when you rent one of the apartments in Helsinki
Translated by: Hans
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