The 6th European John Templeton Film Award went to *The Man Without a Past* by Aki Kaurismäki (Finland, Germany, France 2002). The film tells the story of a man who survives a brutal act of violence and starts a new life. The award is selected from among the Church awards given to a European film from the previous year. “The Man Without a Past” received the Ecumenical Jury Prize at Cannes in 2002. Also shortlisted were “Le fils” (The Son) by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Honourable Mention from the Ecumenical Jury at Cannes) and the documentary “War Photographer” by Christian Frei (Film of the Month as selected by the jury of the Evangelical Film Association in Germany, the Reformed Media and the Catholic Media Service in Switzerland). The award ceremony took place on 9 February 2003 at the Matthäuskirche on the Kulturforum in Berlin as part of a service. The sermon was delivered by INTERFILM President Hans Werner Dannowski.
The prize is endowed with 10,000 CHF by the John Templeton Foundation. It is awarded on behalf of the Foundation by INTERFILM and the Conference of European Churches (CEC). The winner is selected by a three-member jury, which, as in previous years, comprised Robin Gurney, Hans Hodel and Karsten Visarius.
The eulogy of the jury reads:
The Man Without a Past is a story which includes depths of tenderness and moments of humour. It is a parable of the birth of a socially deprived community inspired by the rebirth of an individual, thrust into the almost total deprivation of his memory. The film features the celebrated Finnish actor Markku Peltola as the victim and actress Kati Outinen as the Salvation Army worker who inspires the man without a past to begin the climb back to personal and social dignity.
The film conveys a deep knowledge and understanding of human relationships and their closeness to such biblical themes as death and resurrection, poverty and greed, selfishness and selfgiving; the story is simple and direct avoiding all tangents in its telling.
Sermon
by Hans Werner Dannowski, Hannover
during the 52nd International Film Festival Berlin
in the Service on Sunday, 9th February, 2003
in St. Matthew Church at the Kulturforum Berlin
“Jesus answered and said to Nicodemus: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you: unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.’ Nicodemus said to him: ‘How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?’ Jesus answered: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you: ‘Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, “You must be born again.” The wind blows where it wills, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
John 3:3–8
Dear congregation!
Have you not, too, ever had the thought – or perhaps even the desire – to be able to start all over again? At the very least, as a tantalising flight of fancy, this has accompanied me in certain situations in my life. To be able to shed everything that one is. All the entanglements and complications that are often already there, but which sometimes also weigh one down. To slip into a different guise. No, not to be born again – I’ve actually never had that thought. Not to face the uncertainty about one’s own identity or the trials of adolescence all over again.
Not to feel once more that life is always happening where you’re not. No, not to experience once more that uncertainty in relation to the opposite sex: being powerfully drawn to someone without knowing how to deal with it. I wouldn’t want to be 20 again. But, dear congregation, to lead a different kind of life as an adult. To be able to choose a different path from among life’s infinite possibilities. ‘You must be born again,’ says Jesus to Nicodemus in that night-time conversation in which hopes and possibilities come to the fore. As an adult, he means. To be born again of water and the Spirit; otherwise you cannot enter the Kingdom of God.
In his film *The Man Without a Past*, to which we are today awarding the 2002 Templeton Film Prize, Aki Kaurismäki has dared to undertake such an experiment in a different life. It begins in a way that, naturally, one would not wish on anyone: being beaten up by a vicious trio who specialise in robbing people. To lose his memory – indeed, his very life – with a terrible blow to the head. But then begins a series of improbabilities – indeed, miracles, really – just as one might expect in a different life. To be left in a hospital as a dead man, covered in a shroud, and then suddenly to sit bolt upright, tear the ropes from his body and leave the hospital with his head still wrapped: that is extremely unlikely, to be sure. But it also seems, in a way, only natural, and expresses what resurrection might be: starting life anew. There he lies by the water, sleeping off his exhaustion for the time being, whilst a saddler pulls his boots off his feet. In this other life, there is nothing – or very little – that once defined his former life. What slowly comes to light, not through him or about him, but from the outside, is that he is – or was – married. That this former married life was not an easy one. And that he was a ruinous gambler. All that is gone, and his passion for gambling is now expressed, at most, in his enjoyment of playing with the two children of his new host family. Above all, however: his name is gone, and with it a whole part of his identity. That name resurfaces later, via his former wife, who gets in touch: his name was once Lujaren, I believe, but that no longer matters. He is placed into this other world, so to speak, almost naked. With hands that still betray the fact that he was a labourer, but with which he initially does other things: cleaning the cottage he rents and planting potatoes in the ground. To experience the world and life completely defenceless, completely anew. ‘You must be born again,’ says Jesus. Otherwise you cannot experience or see the Kingdom of God.
Yes, dear congregation, this other, this new life. Perhaps anonymity is part of it too, it occurs to me. My name is important to me; it forms part of my identity, and I notice how annoyed I get when people mispronounce my name; how embarrassing it is that I constantly have to search for other people’s names. ‘I have called you by name; you are mine’—these are God’s words of affection to the people he loves. When my name is spoken, I am the one being addressed. But, as I learn from Kaurismäki’s film, that seems to be only one side of the story. The birdsong in the early morning is beautiful, even though I cannot identify the different species. The face of a young woman or an old man suddenly moves me deeply, without my asking for their name or inquiring about who they are. Names can take on a life of their own; they can come between us and our immediate experience of the world, provoke attitudes and prejudices, and render the vibrant experience of life impossible. I am familiar with philosophical, art-historical or theological discourses that consist of a constant juggling of names and concepts. This is dreadful; the vibrant and exhilarating experience of life is lost in the process. Kaurismäki has portrayed this with tremendous sensitivity in his film. There are the difficulties faced by the man without a name in being understood, let alone recognised, by the authorities. There is Irma, the Salvation Army officer, who only reveals her name when she realises that he is referring to her personally. ‘She has a name – but not for you,’ he says, defending his new relationship against attempts to exploit the other person’s name for one’s own gain. And then there are the light-hearted name parodies: the fact that the harmless dog, which his landlord forces upon him by grabbing him by the throat, is called Hannibal of all things. No, one must evidently immerse oneself in the power and energy of immediate life experience before rediscovering the relational quality of a name. “The wind blows where it wills,” says Jesus, “and you hear its rustling, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Classifying names is important, but only if they are a flexible expression of our encounter with the world and with people.
Yes, dear congregation, you must be born again. That other life, the life of the Resurrection, which I sometimes dream of, which I also experience here and there, because I have been drawn into this life. The most thrilling thing, however – which also annoyed me slightly at first, and which suddenly overwhelmed me whilst watching Aki Kaurismäki’s film – is something else entirely. This other thing, this new life – amidst all its ambiguity, it is far more positive and beautiful than the way many of us experience our own existence around us. There is a sense of a powerful, primal affirmation of the world. In the end, the villains get their just deserts. And the others: people with their quirks and flaws, with secret and overt passions and longings – they are all like that. Yet there is a spirit of solidarity, particularly amongst those who have little or nothing to share. Even the apparent exploiter, who rents the meagre lodgings to the ‘Man Without a Past’ at a usurious rate, ultimately comes to embrace a sense of ‘we’. A sense of immediate belonging emerges time and again, stemming from a sensitive awareness of their shared fate.
And then there’s the Salvation Army. People such as I have encountered time and again in my own town whilst at work, and whom I scarcely dared to admire as directly as Kaurismäki’s film does. This girl, this woman Irma: as straight as a die, as if she’d swallowed a stick. Equally rigid in her moral and religious views – ‘marriage is sacred’ – she knows no compromise. Struggling with issues regarding their physicality and their status as creatures, the slow transformation of the Salvation Army group is a masterclass in observation. Certainly not role models in faith, these people of the Salvation Army. But immense in the energy of their concern for the poor and the marginalised. Always under ideological threat, yet wonderful. And for me, without glossing over the abysses or the vulnerable, the film is a declaration of love for these Christian pioneers in the fight against human misery and exploitation. And perhaps it is the case that in this other world—this world of resurrection—into which the ‘Man Without a Past’ stumbles and which he helps to shape: that people and things are then seen through a different lens. And that the discontent, the gloom and the disregard for people – particularly in their fragmented existence – are more a matter of one’s own weary perspective than of an open perception of reality.
‘You must be born again,’ says Jesus. I think, dear congregation, that in the Kingdom of God there is a new immediacy in relation to people and things. That is surely what Jesus meant. We become once more what we were created to be. The fear of closeness disappears. Even the distance created by names and concepts, however important they may be, diminishes. The reflective distance by which the world keeps itself at a safe remove begins to fade. In attentive engagement, in action, in doing, I am connected to the whole world. Spaces open up. The world expands. A person set free into love feels a sense of vastness. The breath, the wind – whose origin and destination I do not know – carries me away. The Spirit of God sets my feet in a vast expanse. It makes me one with the world’s different rhythm and with the lives of others.
Yes, that other life, the life of the Resurrection, which I sometimes dream of and in which I sometimes find myself. Aki Kaurismäki’s film takes us a long way along this path. That is why a church film jury has awarded him this prize. That is why, in our opinion, he richly deserves the 2002 Templeton Film Prize.
Amen.