Review: Mannerheim ja saksalainen suudelma

The Responsible Life of a Lone Warrior

Director Kari Heiskanen’s team on the stage of the Helsinki City Theatre is like a group portrait that is studied by focusing on just a few people.

The subject of the longer zoom is the 6th President of the Republic of Finland, Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim. And there is no doubt that he, our country’s most famous soldier of all time, can withstand it. Of course, once you have endured all the attention directed at him, from the statue to the biographies and memoirs, to the previous evaluations that have made him at times a distant aristocrat and a failed politician, sometimes a superior, mythical savior of his country.

The focus on the ‘human Mannerheim’ is largely done by the regulations offered by the author – Juha Vakkuri – which director Kari Heiskanen has taken up with piety and enthusiasm and shared the task with Asko Sarkola, who interprets the title character.

Sarkola is known to be wide-ranging, he masters minimalism as well as unabashedly large expression and, above all, subtle nuances.

His marshal confuses, irritates and delights. As authorities often do.

In the director’s words, “the story progresses first”. From the point of view of the structure of the play, it is a bold, if not downright reckless, decision. Even though the rank of the soldiers, not least the great soldier in question, is weighed with the chosen things, one cannot avoid the idea of competing with a merciful lecturer, such as a military scientist comparable to the Sibelius researcher Erik Tawaststjerna. But even though the episodes proceed chronologically rather than surprisingly, what the audience does, it follows the performance with concentration and quiet.

When it comes to the stages of one’s own country, the 1918 war and the Second World War, fictional side paths would hardly bring added value to the implementation. The drama is built-in and as such appeals to emotions.

In addition, state-of-the-art videography, precisely timed visual and verbal information bring the performance closer to the present day and the narrative it values.

Popping into the stages of power and, above all, visiting the Commander-in-Chief’s staff is an excellently chosen stage-filled number in the celebration of Finland’s centenary.

Especially when the viewer is convinced that the focus is on a sincere here and now atmosphere. However, the atmosphere at the headquarters is a bit subdued in its general appearance, until the opposing forces, which are usually the elixir of plays, are realized. They are now visible in the dialogue that expresses contradictions and are at their best when the lines escalate.

Pertti Sveholm as the large landowner Hjalmar Linder, (who influenced the industrialization of Southern Finland and especially Lohja), gets to breathe out Linder’s indignation about his unrelenting class hatred, the prison conditions after the Civil War, the suffering his former workers faced in the camp and the plight of their families.

Eero Saarinen, on the other hand, as the enraged Field Marshal Keitel, loosens the play handsomely to the end.

Like many other members of the team, Matti Olavi Ranin has several roles, of which he is particularly convincing as Colonel Paasonen, the second first-person narrator in Vakkuri’s novel of the same name.

Aladár Paasonen was the recorder of Mannerheim’s memories, and in the play, the memories of the two people complement each other.

More space would have been given to the renowned General Aksel Airo, who was responsible for planning operations during the Winter War and the Continuation War.

Airo also represented a snarky counterforce, although it is said that when Mannerheim was asked after the war who led the military operations, he replied: “Airo and me.” Airo, on the other hand, answered the same question: “The Marshal and I.” In any case, the limited role is interpreted interestingly by Antti Timonen.

Women are left on the sidelines in “this war”, although it is of course a deliberate choice and substantively justified. Instead, the spice of comedy could have been used without any worries without losing anything important.

Asko Sarkola manages to convey his respected, albeit controversial, role model as a humane man who, although he may have had to compromise on his principles between a rock and a hard place, never on the fundamentals.

As an experienced soldier and aware of his responsibility, he knew that even if help was needed, foreign soldiers and power intrigues should not be allowed too close.

The behaviour and facial expressions of a lone warrior adopted by Sarkola speak volumes. A finished, upright performance that makes it easier to believe how unconditional trust there was in Mannerheim at the front.