Finish director Lauri-Matti Parppei talks about the inspiration for A Light That Never Goes Out, its themes of outcasts and mental health, use of experimental music, and returning home to Rauma to make the movie.
Inspiration for your film?
My background is in the world that the film is showing. I’m from small town, and I was pretty lonely teenager. I had nothing else to do, so I started to make weird music and art. And through that hobby, I started to find friends. We were a bunch of outcasts from different social classes and different backgrounds. And somehow we shared this massive drive to do something of our own and shape the world to our liking. I just wanted to depict that world and the experience of doing art in it.
I think 90 percent of the motif behind the film was just to give this feeling to people when they think how they could maybe do something like that. When we started making music, we didn’t have any skills, and we just kind of learned as we went. I remember when someone asked me: “Is it hard to start to play guitar?” And I always just like saying: “Well, it’s very easy to play just one string, and you can make a song out of that.” Basically, it’s to encourage people to try out their own voice in different ways.
Creating experimental music?
It was a composition itself. Well, it was pretty meticulously written in the screenplay already: that’s what’s going to happen in the scene, and how the songs build up and progress. But then, after we cast the actual actors, we started to play around with things. And I brought them lots of crates full of different stuff. And our set production designer also came up with a lot of things, and then I kind of modified them and put on contact mics. And, yeah, I wrote and produced the music, but basically we created and arranged it together. Everything is played live on camera.
Protagonist facing mental health struggles
Depression and anxiety, those illnesses or disorders, whatever the word is. That was pretty integral part of the whole setting, because during the time when I was most active and still living in this small town, me and my friends struggled with all sorts of mental health issues, and some struggled with some substance or alcoholism and things like that. But somehow, making music and being with your friends always was a safe haven from that. Somehow it didn’t reach that place. So, we really saved each other, even in a literal sense, during that time. And while depression and self-harm is not something that is thoroughly explored itself, it kind of paints the setting because I’ve struggled with similar issues myself. I kind of find depictions of depression a little exploitative somehow, if that’s the word.
In films, we are often putting depressive music and dark sounds, and someone is looking out of the window in darkly lit scene. But being depressed is extremely boring–it’s about if you can find anything to fill up the boredom. Sometimes it’s very harmful things. It was pretty important to not romanticize depression, but show that this depressed person gets something completely different in his life.
The two main characters are me in very different places in my life. One was me in a small town being very scrappy – I just wanted to make something of my own. “Why don’t people understand my ingenuity?!” And the other person is like me when I’m trying to be a filmmaker, and that world is very different. I feel like a classical musician. because I need to adhere to some rules and bow down to the establishment and beg for money to make a film.
At the same time, I have friends who have been more successful, and a couple of people who are close to me are also classical musicians. For me, it’s absurd how they face pressures and how they are thinking about how to present themselves to other musicians. I get anxiety just watching them being stressed about their work.
Going back home?
I am from a small town, and during the time that the film takes place in, I was a little too visible at times. I am not a person who wants to be the center of attention, even though I’m a musician. We have a band, so it kind of protects me from that. But I organized a festival there. We had a small record company there. We had the band, which still has strong ties to the town, and now I’m the filmmaker who has made the first film about that town.
It’s sometimes feels a little uncomfortable to go to this place where a lot of people have an image of me, which is not really true, and they have had this for a long time, because I also used to work as graphic designer in that town. So that is just part of being a small local celebrity.
Actually, we will have the first Finnish screening there. I was quoted by the biggest newspaper in Finland as saying that I don’t care what the French say about the film, I only care what the people of Rauma think. I am a little nervous to hear how they react to it. But it’s my view of that place and my view on life and the world altogether. It’s actually been super-rewarding to see how the film has crossed borders. Because the characters are speaking a very distinctive local dialect, and that’s completely lost in translation. But that’s the thing that Finnish viewers will notice first in the film, because it’s very different. I’ve been super-happy to see that there are similar small towns everywhere, and people can relate to the feeling of being there.
Casting locals?
People were pretty indifferent to it, they were like: “Yeah, they’re filming some film.” But we have local people playing characters. The man playing music store guy is a local guy who used to work in a music store that is now gone. A couple on a boat was just some random couple from there.
Main characters are professional actors?
It’s important to bring new people along when doing something, and even though I know that some won’t be acting much after this, I hope Anna will continue.
More films?
I hope I can get more films made. I’m working on two different projects. One will be a super-micro-budget thing, a small drama about abusive relationship, a psychological drama. The other will be folk tale, which takes place in Finland, in a rural setting, on a farm. I’ve started writing, so it’s in early development.
After my first feature, which took 7 years from start to finish, or slightly more, with a new project, I’m looking at a seven-year mountain. It’s just scary, but it’s part of the charm of this profession.
A Light That Never Goes Out?
The whole concept was about friendship and hope, and what unity and community can bring along. I’m just super-happy that the film, which I thought might just be a small silly music film from my own hometown, which isn’t that much of a marketable concept itself, is now out in the world and seems to touch people and pull the strings we wanted to pull.
