The Mine

We in Finland are used to be noticed as least corrupted country in the world. Mining industry with environmental problems has been discussed around Finland. The Talvivaara nickel-zinc-uranium mine has been a major environmental, economic and political scandal. The environmental problems started with opening the mine 2007-2008 with release of hydrogen sulfide gas, dust and toxic chemicals to waterways. This culminated in November 2012 with a spill of tons of heavy metals, 0.5-1.0 ton of uranium, huge amounts of aluminum, sulphate, manganese, and iron to Oulujoki and Vuoksi waterways.*

The movie the Mine (Finnish Jättiläinen/Giant) explains the business and administration secrets of the environmental catastrophe. There is special type of corruption called structural corruption directing permit and supervision authorities to allow and not to notice unreasonable waste amounts in the environment. The mine director and owner Pekka Perä (Jani Volanen, amazing resemblance of public figure of Mr Perä) takes unreasonable risks to deliver "a good story" to investors who start the mine with 500 million euro.

The mine permit authorities are engineer and geologist friends of the miners, and go hunting together. A new environmental permit officer Jussi Karevuo (Joonas Saartamo, a fictive character resembling a real life permit officer) gets a big job for permitting the new Talvivaara mine from the boss Raimo (Peter Franzén). There is benefits in pleasing the industry like highly paid jobs as environmental managers of the mine companies, but failure in this would be punished by the society of "the good brothers"(a Finnish expression for the circles). The movie company used highly appreciated investigative journalists like Juha Kauppinen and Hanna Nikkanen to dig facts behind the scandal.

There will be material for part 2. The Talvivaara disaster goes on with the name Terrafame and with funding of Finnish state, which has been considered to be against EU competition regulations. The structural corruption driving the economically hopeless and technically non-functional mine is continuing and members of parliament are asking after taxpayers money without answers. The state mining company and supporting politicians like minister Olli Rehn are openly requiring and lobbying for a waste water pipe line to lake Nauasjärvi already opened but in court. The mine project is a threat to travel industry of Sotkamo with 1 million sleeping nights every year at lake Nuasjärvi, and a threat to for example agriculture, summer cottage owners and fishermen.

Gothenburg Film Festival review: https://www.filmdoo.com/blog/2016/02/03/film-review-the-mine-2016/

English information about Talvivaara www.nuclear-heritage.net/

Jättiläinen (The Mine) felt a bit like The Big Short without the humour, fast-paced editing and clever exposition pieces.

There was a lot of good. The actors are great and there's fun scenes, mostly everything involving Jani Volanen.

There's an admirable level of restraint in the movie which is not too typical for a majority of Finnish 'big budget' films (one million euros). The movie was shot with a sense of patience. It looked good, the landscape shots were great. The muted colour palette in addition to the soundtrack compliments the melancholic and desperate feeling the main character Jussi (Joonas Saartamo) brings to the film with his performance.

Overall the movie doesn't want to make the issues of the movie a fun, silly spectacle which the aforementioned The Big Short did with its issue. However in the end everything felt somewhat shallow.

The characters' motivations are explored only with the main character and even his scenes are short, mostly him just being tired with his family. There's a buildup to him having an affair, but it doesn't go anywhere. The main 'villain' has no depth, he's simply greedy and wants profit.

The issue itself was left somewhat obscure. I understand that there was corruption but even the inevitable conclusion, environment pollution, had no impact in the film. There's clips from real life news, few shots of muddy lakes and that's it. The details of the corruption involved was the core of the movie and yet it felt shallow as well.

To wrap it up I'll return to The Big Short. After watching that movie I felt like I could, not need to, read the Wikipedia summary of the housing bubble.

After watching Jättiläinen I felt like I really should read the Wikipedia summary to fully understand what it was all about.