Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen makes a splashy feature debut with The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, a well-crafted sports biopic.
The feature won the Un Certain Regard prize at the 2016 Cannes Film Fest.
Later, it was selected as the Finnish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, but was not one of the five nominees.
Set in 1962, the tale centers on Olli Mäki (Jarkko Lahti), a young amateur-turned-professional boxer from the town of Kokkola.
While attending a wedding, Olli becomes smitten with his friend Raija (Oona Airola). They travel to Helsinki where his manager Elis Ask (Eero Milonoff) is preparing Olli’s big break: a World Boxing Association featherweight championship title fight against renowned American boxer Davey Moore (John Bosco Jr.) in the Helsinki Olympic Stadium.
The match promises to be one of the biggest events in Finnish sporting history, even though most people are skeptical as Moore’s record vastly outclasses Olli’s.
The journey proves to be demanding. Olli is lightweight and has to lose enough weight within two weeks to reach featherweight.
Meanwhile, Elis’ enthusiasm about the match includes hiring a film crew to document the process, which becomes increasingly disruptive as the preparations go on.
Among other things, there’s staging of various dinner parties with the match’s sponsors, which require the likeable but uncomfortable Olli to adhere to protocol.
The circus around the match disheartens Olli, who falls more and more in love with Raija. For her part, Raija, feeling she’s a burden on Olli’s preparation, goes back to Kokkola.
Olli has a hard time concentrating, and eventually follows Raija, much to the dismay of Elis, who is concerned that Olli won’t make weight on time, let alone be prepared for the match itself.
Olli eventually persuades Elis to leave him to prepare on his own. He puts himself through a drastic process of losing weight: during the weigh-in, he barely makes weight, and on the same day, he proposes to Raija.
When the match begins, Olli has a good start in the first round, but gets knocked down several times in the second and the referee calls for a technical knockout.
While Elis is disappointed, Olli seems to be at peace with the loss, and quietly walks away from the post-match dinner with Raija.
The real Olli and Raija Mäki appear briefly at the end of the film, as Raija looks at them and asks Olli, “Do you think we’ll be like them when we’re old?”
Kuosmanen had previously directed shorts as well as theatre and opera productions.
The film was shot on location, mostly in Helsinki. To achieve the 1960s look, Kuosmanen and cinematographer Jani-Petteri Passi decided to film on 16mm Kodak Tri-X black and white film stock. The production team ended up ordering all the stock available in Europe and the US after which Kodak had to produce more.
Cast
Jarkko Lahti as Olli Mäki
Oona Airola as Raija Jänkä
Eero Milonoff as Elis Ask
John Bosco Jr. as Davey Moore
