Rare Exports (2010)

Rare Exports is a simple little film from Finland, but it got me going down a rabbit hole when it came to the background behind the story.  Christmas in the United States is quite sanitized.  There is Santa Claus, there is his wife, there are the flying reindeer and a bunch of little elves that help him make toys up at the North Pole.  For Americans that means Santa lives somewhere up in Alaska - we're certainly not going to let Canada have him - with some sort of Not My Problem field surrounding his village.

It should not be a surprise that this is not the same everywhere else in the world.  The elves are a sanitized version of the various demons that traditionally follow Father Christmas on his rounds or show up to take care of naughty and nice kids throughout December.  These include Krampus, Belsnickel and Zwarte Piet, to name a few, with Krampus undergoing a bit of a revival and Piet getting a necessary makeover as the Netherlands have figured out blackface has diminished in popularity over the years. 

A major difference is that Santa is not hanging out in our 50th state but instead on a mountain on the border of Finland and Russia called Korvantuturi, or Ear Fell.  That is where Father Christmas, his wife and his cohorts dwell, and it is also where a good portion of the world addresses its letters and wishes when Yuletide comes around.  What Rare Exports proposes is that maybe there is some truth behind the myth. 

A joint American and British expedition by a company called Subzero is taking samples and supposedly doing seismic research on the Finnish side of Korvantuturi.  Two kids, Pietari (Onni Tommila) and Juuso (Ilmari Järvenpää) sneak onto the base to see what is up.  While Juuso is skeptical, Pietari believes that the organization is trying to dig up Santa Claus.  He is correct, as it is funded by a man named Riley (Per Christian Ellefsen) who plans to transport the body of Santa to his research lab. 

Problem is the jolly old elf is not what the happy stories make him out to be.  Instead, he is a giant horned creature that tortured bad children, and things got so bad that at one point the local Sami people buried him, and his tomb became the mountain.  After the local reindeer are slaughtered, thus ruining the annual roundup for the village, Pietari's father Rauno (Jorma Tommila) gathers his friends Aimo (Tommi Korpelo) and Piiparinen (Rauno Juvonen) to confront the workers at Subzero, only to find the camp abandoned.  Even stranger, Rauno finds a man (Peeter Jakobi) dead in his wolf trap.  Thing is, he's not dead, and has the unique ability to sniff out children and gingerbread.  Thinking he is the Santa of legend they contact Riley and demand a ransom, but things don't go as planned. 

Rare Exports was based on two short films made by writer and director Jalmeri Helander.  The original, released in 2003, served as an advertisement for a company called Rare Exports, Inc., who captured Father Christmases for use around the world, while the second from 2005 was an in-company training film warning of the dangers of not following the safety instructions to the letter.  Both starred most of the actors that would be in the full film, and some elements were incorporated despite the movie itself being different from the shorts.  Some of the humor is still present in the feature, but it works much better in the short films, and the ending of the movie makes much more sense if one is familiar with what came before.

That said the majority of the movie works.  The plot is explained from the beginning, but the slow ramping up of the tension as more and more is revealed is what keeps the interest.  Also, there is the cinematography, evident in the original shorts and even more so here, even though there is a heavier reliance on CGI, most noticeable in the scenes with the helicopter.  

The main issue is that if one goes into this blind they may be disappointed in the ending.  It is a bit anticlimactic, and after watching the shorts I understand why it ended like it did, but initially it caught me off guard.  Without knowing the reasoning it can feel like the movie just ran out of steam and that Helander had to figure out a way to end it.  

I still enjoyed it and thought it was a unique take on the Father Christmas legends, and if nothing else it got me doing a bit of research.  I always have to give a movie some consideration when it sticks in my head long enough to get me even more curious than when I sat down to watch it. 

Rare Exports (2010)

Time: 84 minutes

Starring: Onni Tommila, Jorma Tommila, Tommi Korpelo, Rauno Juvonen

Director: Jalmari Helander