Pretty Good is Pretty Good! In Praise of the Non-Masterpiece: Hatching (2022, dir. Hanna Bergholm, Finland) by Matt Olsen
Recapping the general idea behind this series: I often fail to properly recognize movies that commit the grievous crime of being either too contemporary or imperfect. To rectify that – and I fully acknowledge that this is a ME problem – I’m attempting to highlight a few recent films that I think earn merit because of their predominantly positive attributes and in spite of their minimal faults.
Hatching was released in early 2022. In other words, this very same year in which we live. It’s the first feature by Finnish writer/director, Hanna Bergholm, though she has directed several shorts and TV episodes, none of which were previously known by me, much less seen. It’s an exciting and self-assured introduction from a country whose cinema hasn’t generally made much of an international impact outside of the rightly celebrated Aki Kaurismäki and, perhaps, one or two others.
The narrative centers around a teenage gymnast, Tinja, as she prepares for an upcoming team trial and contends with an unstable homelife under her highly strung and extremely social-media-active mother, here called Mother. Though that description doesn’t necessarily hint at the genre (genres), the film is primarily a horror fantasy as seen through a folk/fairy tale lens with an additional dose of cultural satire.
In the tradition of almost all horror movies, a great deal of the suspenseful, scary scenes take place at night but, I think, what separates this film is just how much of the story occurs in the light. A brightly, especially vivid light. Both the family and the interiors are dressed in complementary soft pastels. It’s a perfect, immaculately staged setting for the mother’s constant Instagram videos of her ideal Finnish family.
Chaos literally enters the family’s sanctum in the form of a crow. In a scene that is equal parts harrowing and hilarious, a rogue crow flies through an open window and proceeds to lay waste to the family’s carefully manicured living room. The shelves are festooned with a seemingly countless amount of highly fragile pieces, all of which crash to the ground in the course of the crow’s mad rampage. As the family wildly flails to catch the similarly wildly flailing bird, the damage only increases. Finally, the crow alights on the back of a sofa. Tinja approaches and is able to gently wrap the bird in a loose sheet. There appears to be a sense of an understanding between her and the intruder. Later, Tinja takes home a spotted blue egg found in the middle of a misty, dreamlike thicket and that suggestion of a connection becomes something very real and impossible to control.
Trivial grouses may result from the only slightly distracting CGI creature effects (though, there are very good practical effects as well) and certain members of the family may push toward caricature depending on your flexibility. But, as a teenage girl navigating both natural and supernatural challenges, Sirii Solalinna, is absolutely solid in what also appears to be her first film. Seeing new talent in front of and behind the camera is an always exciting experience in that moment and, more so, for what’s yet to come.
Matt Olsen is a largely unemployed part-time writer and even more part-time commercial actor living once again in Seattle after escaping from Los Angeles like Kurt Russell in that movie about the guy who escapes from Los Angeles.