CLASSICS

rection, the camera work and the lighting. The cooperation between the two directors worked as a nice symbiosis.”9

Most of the film was shot in real locations. The Satan’s farm was built in Suure-Jaani and the spectacular fire that takes place at the end was filmed for real. Together with the firefighters, the villagers and the film crew, there were about 200 people to manage on set, which was quite an achievement for the time, and for the two fairly inexperienced directors.

The gates of Heaven with their large scales where Peter and the Satan have their discussion on bliss in the prologue to the begin- ning of the film had to be built in a studio. Since the set was so large, it wouldn’t fit into any sound stage in Tallinn, then they had to go to Leningrad (modern day St. Petersburg) and build it there. Cranes were holding the giant scales in place and the smoke used to create the atmosphere meant that a separate, metre-high barrier had to be built around the set so that their impression of heaven wouldn’t spill out into the rest of the pavilion. Production designer Rein Raamat had to decide the style for the gates and he went with gothic because of the style’s strong ties with religion.10

For the life-and-death struggle between the Satan and the mother bear, they searched all over the Soviet Union for a suitable bear until they found one somewhere in the expanses of Russia. The bear cubs came from Tallinn Zoo, and all of the bear roaring we hear in the film are original recordings.

A Timeless And Relevant Piece

As a result of all the challenges faced and preparation done, a completely timeless film was made that talks of themes as relevant today as probably at any time, as long as the world still has a capitalist market economy and some form of currency in use. There has always been a danger of working one’s self to death but, today, an era striving more than ever to combine work, a lifestyle and self-realization at any cost possible, these topics are even more relevant than they were in the Estonia of the first half of the 20th century when Satan-Jürka roamed.

The film perfectly presents the absurdity of the situation where the Satan, usually associated with evil, seeks bliss, so he enslaves himself to the big banks, or to loan sharks, or to the embodiment of an inhuman boss, Clever Ants, who keeps raising the rent because that is how our people are supposedly able to live better, even if that means the worker has to sell his worldly belongings and still ends up taking out another loan on top of it all.

There is an absurd atmosphere in The Misadventures of the New Satan, which is enhanced by the brilliant dialogue and excellent supporting roles that help to highlight the contrast between slowwitted Satan-Jürka’s benevolent, extra-terrestrial strength and Clever Ants’s boundless greed. The final phrase that slips from his lips at the end of the film: “Let it burn, the money will come!” is the historically symptomatic attitude of the entire Western worldview that believes in endless economic growth and the reason why humanity and our planet are in danger of catching fire here in the 21st century. It is exceptional how accurately a writer from a small country, and two film directors working together were able to put the confrontation between human greed and sincere benevolence unprotected against exploitation into such an effective, 95-minute, explosive form. EF

The cast and crew working on the set of The Misadventures of the New Satan.

“The film contains a lot of opposite polarities, such as happy versus unhappy and exploitation and the exploited, and, in the end, the book is really just telling us that we have to learn to lie in the right way. Just as there were no disabled people on screens at the time, there were no church pastors there either. They just didn’t exist for the public. Russians, Jews and Estonians also didn’t exist for the public because there was one, Soviet people. But this film could refer to Tammsaare (and created nationalities and professions that didn’t exist before – ed.) and that was powerful!”