By Jeremy Carr.
A seemingly intact image is a big lie”—
This assertively obstruse line comes at the beginning of Time of Roses (Ruusujen Aika), which is itself, particularly at the beginning, a rather obstruse film. But as the picture progresses, the ostensibly elliptical declaration becomes central to what emerges as a self-conscious sci-fi story with political and ethical ambitions.
Released in a 4K restoration by Deaf Crocodile Films, in collaboration with the Risto Jarva Association, Time of Roses was directed and co-written by the Finnish Jarva and released in 1969. Its preliminary ruminations—both stated and derived from its imagery—seem to concern the diverging readings of visual stimuli, be they works of fabricated art, like the pleasing paintings seen hung in a gallery, or works of harsh realism, like what appears to be genuine autopsy footage. As time goes on, however, and in its fragmentary way, Time of Roses expands this foundational speculation to include the nature of one’s identity and the blurred lines between the interpretated illustration, the authenticated reality, and the official chronicle.
Set in a quasi-futuristic Helsinki, in 2012, Time of Roses takes a while to come around to its overarching plot, which, at its most basic level, follows Raimo (Arto Tuominen), a researcher for the History Institute, as he investigates the mysterious death of Saara Turunen, a saleswoman who posed for erotic publications and films and was killed in 1976. In a roundabout way, Raimo is joined by an engineer, Kisse (Ritva Vepsä, who also plays Saara in “archival” footage and, later, in recorded reenactments), as well as his romantic companion and collaborator, Anu (Tarja Markus). Raimo begins sifting through material about Saara and tracks down those who knew her, but the true character of this inscrutable young woman, clouded by controversial subjects of abortion and promiscuity, remains persistently elusive. Why Raimo is so determined to define Saara isn’t overly obvious at first, but neither is what he finally comes away with, which is a twisted and at times tawdry depiction of a person enlivened by subjective recollections and distorted perspectives and by what can only be inferred from the images, moving and still, of Saara in her unsettling prime. Eventually, further overlapping the reality of Saara with the fiction, Raimo decides a recreation of Saara’s later life and demise is the only solution for understanding.
It gradually becomes clear that part of the understated reason for Raimo’s interest in Saara is that she broadly represents the not-too-distant past, which in theory is lightyears away from the film’s present/future utopia of peace and prosperity. Her troubled life embodies previously troubled times (recent times as far as the actual film is concerned), but like most everything else in Time of Roses, this social separation is also a contorted facade. All is supposedly well in this perfect 2012 world, far better than it was in the crude and chaotic days of decades ago. Yet we are instantly led to question this premise by the enigmatic glances, movements, and postures of nearly everyone seen; they interact and observe with peculiar agitation and hesitation. There is also the sense that everything around them is constructed and declared for show, a point underscored by the proliferation of newsreels, photographs, and video monitors—someone always watches something, engaged but still detached from the reality. It is, in other words, a world (and a film) of performers and voyeurs.
With Time of Roses Jarva manages to construct a probing film that, even when bogged down by an initially muddled and occasionally staid storyline, is nevertheless notable for its compelling commentary on how one absorbs the past and present while simultaneously conceiving the future.”
This all serves to form the many conflicting and contrasting contradictions of Time of Roses. As a distinct product of its time, the film revels in its late-sixties aesthetic while also using this unique era to fashion a now-is-later futurism, a resourceful production design that recalls Alphaville without the underlying emotional core (similarly, the film’s doppelgänger developments submit a more dispassionate Vertigo). The picture’s far-out future, as conceived in a far-out present, contains the sort of technology one might have assumed would exist 50 years later, like instant food machines, but other scenic elements, like inflatable furniture, come across as presumptive holdovers that will never go out of style. People behave in the exaggerated way people in the future might, which again, with its psychedelic flamboyance, isn’t so different from the way they do now (or did then). Everyone also acts in a decidedly mannered fashion; they are restricted, deliberate, and cautious. But they can also be sophisticated, socially and intellectually above those who came before them, and liberated, as best evinced in a handsy sporting event and coed showers. At the same time, though, while the turmoil of the 1960s has purportedly been swept away, now looked upon only with antique curiosity, conspiratorial threats of suppression, a looming labor strike, and related violence belie the mainstream talking points that deny any political uncertainty.
Jarva was a briefly prolific filmmaker before his passing at just 43 years of age, and with Time of Roses he manages to construct a probing film that, even when bogged down by an initially muddled and occasionally staid storyline, is nevertheless notable for its compelling commentary on how one absorbs the past and present while simultaneously conceiving the future. The summation of ideas may not gel completely, but the political allegory works well enough to get the point across. Jarva takes thoughtful, if somewhat timeworn, stock of the then-present by its relation to the actual past and the potential future, doing so with all the arthouse ambiguity one might expect from 1969. Furthermore, the film’s relentlessly striking imagery is always impressive and its secretive undercurrent is subversive and engaging.
Ultimately, it is Raimo’s obsession with Saara that rises to the fore. Having become consumed with characterizing the women, he enlists Kisse to play the part of the deceased and a crew of filmmakers and technicians to stage her final hours, including her death. What began as an earnest inquiry with historical ramifications becomes a cold quest for the truth, or at the very least a suitably manufactured truth. When there is a terrible accident during the filmed reconstruction, it is not the well-being of an actual person that concerns Raimo but the image, the impression, he desires. It doesn’t matter who lives and dies, or lived and died. All that matters is the final product used for narrative dissemination. Truth or fiction, real life or reconstructed life, the past, the present, or the future—in the end, it is all secondary to what Raimo and by extension Jarva callously question in the face of fatal tragedy: “Did you get the shot?”
Jeremy Carr is a Contributing Editor at Film International and teaches film studies at Arizona State University. He writes for the publications Cineaste, Senses of Cinema, MUBI/Notebook, Cinema Retro, Vague Visages, The Retro Set, The Moving Image, Diabolique Magazine and Fandor. He is the author of Repulsion (1965) from Auteur Publishing and a contributor to the collections ReFocus: The Films of Elaine May, from Edinburgh University Press, and David Fincher’s Zodiac: Cinema of Investigation and (Mis)Interpretation, from Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.