Compartment #6

  The key to Juho Kuosmanen’s whimsical snowbound romance may lie in the old woman’s advice to Laura: Trust the little inner animal that provides woman’s wisdom. 

Its antithesis is the camera, which provides an alternative approach to living — detached, observing, preserving, reliving — instead of direct engagement. Laura’s camera is stolen by the apparently nice, cultured Finnish guitarist she invites into the compartment she has been sharing with the drunken Russian lout Ljoha. That loss proves liberating. 

Their meeting cute scene is rather harsh. Ljoha is drunk, aggressive, and he sexually assaults her. The aspiring archeologist and the miner are clearly worlds apart, as he realizes when he brusquely refuses to exchange addresses and insincere promises of any future reconnection. 

The old woman is also correct when she tells Laura “You have a good man there.”  The rough Ljoha proves more devoted and reliable than Laura’s Moscow lover Irina. When her camera loss also loses her Moscow she begins her liberation from insincere Irina and the false promise of the academics. 

It may be true that “If you don’t know the past then you can’t deal with the present.” But that academic savvy proves less helpful than the human connection with which the unlikely Ljoha serves Laura when she needs it. 

Laura is on an ill-planned journey to study the famous petroglyphs in Murmansk. When she’s left unable to record them she is freed to their direct engagement, fleeting but fulfilling — like her connection with Ljoha. The experience provides a different richness and intensity than she expected — because it’s completely unacademic. That proper culmination of a relationship could not survive this incident. 

Laura’s inner animal opens her to the crass jerk she initially found repulsive. But his inner animal knows that even if he can now provide her with a wonderful experience any future for them is impossible. Hence the irony in the Finnish lesson he preserves. She told him the Finnish phrase for “I love you” is “fuck you.” As they part that’s her new secret, as intriguing as the petroglyph..