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Tartu. In his bourgeois comfort zone, Ulf has lost all contact with that other reality, although it has always been there. Whenever his childhood friend Doctor (Taavi Teplenkov) asks Ulf, if he can recall one incident or the other, the answer is always: “I don’t remember”. An obvious lie, probably brought on by fear of gazing into the past and facing the harsh truths that might stare right back

Stairway to Heaven

By Mart Noorkõiv

First published in Sirp from the crevices of time. But we know what they say about those who don’t remember the past. They live without the future.

All this fancy philosophising can be broadly labelled as “midlife crisis” – a label that will certainly be used by many viewers, and rightly so. Fortunately, here, this is not an unfortunate case of pitching simplistic youth against depressive middle-age. Ulf doesn’t want to wallow in nostalgia because he thinks that, quite to the contrary of the usual meaning of the word, the past doesn’t contain anything desirable for him. During the jumps back in time we encounter a young Ulf (Timoteus Sammul) who is a spitting image of his older self. He is an aimless soul, drifting around without any tangible dreams. He gets excited about Jawa motorcycles, jeans, and bubblegum, just like his peers, but doesn’t really engage with life much. When Doctor (young version played by Rasmus Ermel) implies that they should start taking things seriously because they are already in the tenth grade, Ulf states that he’d rather continue kicking the football around. The main difference with grown-up Ulf is that he has given up any semblance of exploration as an adult, and basically just come to a standstill. So, it seems to be his biggest fear to just admit, how little has changed during these past decades, besides appearances. Geographically, this situation is characterised by the fact that Ulf lives only a stone’s throw away from his childhood home: Day Street has given way to Night Street.

Stairway to Heaven takes place in 1970ies and 2020ies. Mait Malmsten plays Ulf, a man who finds a way to timetravel.

But let us return to time – as does Kivastik, repeatedly, both in images and words. The film begins at the deathbed of Georg (Raivo Trass), a painter, Ulf’s role model and lifelong friend, and his declaration that time doesn’t exist, it’s our own invention. The past, the present, the future – it’s all one and the same continuum where we simultaneously exist. To navigate and move through this timescape, he tells Ulf a brilliantly primitive trick: let go of the bike handlebar, and just ride.

Say no more. The main visual of the film features an ecstatic Malmsten on a bike, no hands. A beautiful allegory that is perhaps exploited too much by Kivastik, especially in the end, where he gives it an unnecessary metaphysical twist, as if it were Nolan’s Interstellar.

Much to his family’s surprise, Ulf begins to take strange bike trips around town, and around time that doesn’t really exist, as we established. At times, I felt that Stairway to Heaven should have started with a Jackass-style warning not to try this cycling style at home. Please don’t. Especially not on the steep banks of Emajõgi River, or Tartu’s main highways. Who will scrape those middle-aged men chasing after lost youth off the streets later? These trips bring visions of 1970s Tartu in all its eternal summer glory. Without a mega-budget, it must have been real pain to find and capture locations that still more or less match the period. The time to do this sort of period piece in a natural setting is quickly running out, and respect to Kivastik for freeze-framing this moment on film for eternity. Stairway to Heaven is like Tartu’s version of Tenet

In the middle of all this timespace there are also people from the past and the future, connected by bridges of time. Suitably for a novel, there is an abundance of characters and not all of them have been granted enough of that most valuable resource – time. This is one of the main concerns here. Stairway to Heaven feels like a Wes Anderson or a Woody Allen film where there’s a celebrity behind every walk-on. The most memorable cameos are by Tõnu Oja as an ailing hippie who hasn’t changed a bit, and Ivo Uukkivi as young Georg, who first introduces Ulf to the shapely forms of a female body. Raivo Trass’ last role as an old and tired Georg is especially moving. The film is dedicated to him, and becomes his send-off, literally. Other members of the cast have good moments too.

The film has no big dramatic turns or incidents, and there doesn’t have to be. The flashbacks work like a memory that doesn’t save the most significant historical events, but the happenings in between. Seemingly random occurrences that have left a trace, nonetheless.

According to the writer-director Kivastik, writing books and plays is for him a substitute to cinema, when there is no other choice. The same with Stairway to Heaven, that couldn’t wait to become a film and was born as a book first. The result is a bit like a donkey caught between two haystacks, and this conflicting duality becomes quite apparent now and then. You can fit less into a film than into a book, and squeezing you own free thoughts into the rig- id frames of a movie can be quite painful. And the pain is felt by the film too, not just the author. Kivastik is a bit like an Estonian version of McDonagh: one has Ireland, the other Tartu, and both are rather writers in a filmmaker’s skin. McDonagh has shot all his films based on original screenplays. One can only guess if Stairway to Heaven would have become even better if it had been made straight to movie.

Undoubtedly, Stairway to Heaven is Kivastik’s best film to date. And the most ambitious, at least where time-space is concerned. The film works, and quite well too. It is of course up to the viewer’s willingness to watch an- other melancholic story about the self-searching journey of a well-off middle-aged white guy. Malmsten has breathed life into this tired trope, and Ulf is easy to empathise with. Timoteus Sammul in his acting debut also triumphs as young Ulf. Without him, the film would fall flat on its face, much like old Ulf mounting a bike for the first time in a few decades. For the first time, Kivastik has the masterful Rein Kotov as his DOP, who also has a big part to play in the film’s success. The visual contrast between the past and the present is vivid. The expressionist images of Ulf’s father’s (Hannes Hermaküla) vague face in the mirror, or the shadow of his mother (Külli Teetamm) reflecting on a cupboard while playing piano are nice keepsakes from memory lane. In any case, Kivastik has rapidly moved a few steps up the stairway to heaven with this one. Hopefully he doesn’t run out of steam and plans to take a few steps more. EF