The real you is hard to ignore. You can outrun it for a time, keep it somewhat hidden underneath layers of defensiveness and lies, but it’s there, staring at you at every important turn your life takes. It can become exhausting, and who likes to be overly sleepy? If you embrace the real you, you can do the things you want. Feels nice, doesn’t it?
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| Photo credit: Tom of Finland/IMDb |
That’s the realization artist Touko Valio Laaksonen comes to in filmmaker Dome Karukoski’s biopic, Tom of Finland, which is titled for the assumed name Laaksonen used to produce decades of underground gay pornographic art and distribute it around the world.
A Finnish officer fighting alongside the Nazis in World War II, Laaksonen felt a lot of pressure—from his comrades in arms, his family (especially his sister/roommate Kaija, played by Jessica Grabowsky), his career in advertising, and the reactionary society in which he was raised—to bury his sexual orientation. But his orientation, his true self, is there, enticing him, showing him what he could have—what he could be—everywhere he goes. His orientation is embodied by the character “Tom’s man” (Troy T. Scott) a mute, mustachioed, leather-clad biker who grins flirtatiously and makes bedroom eyes at him. Tom’s man is pure sexuality, the type of buff guy who would star in explicit comics for the entirety of Laaksonen’s career, awakening young gay men around the world all the while. That he bears a striking resemblance to the Russian paratrooper Laaksonen stabbed to death during the war complicates the narrative, and it’s perhaps Tom of Finland’s finest, most uncomfortable moment.
The movie takes visual cues from the dominant genres of the years depicted within it and synthesizes them into an often immaculately composed event, shot with the sure hand of cinematographer Lasse Frank. It tells a story of a man sneaking away every chance he gets to be his true self, first in the shadows (late-night walks in Finnish parks for anonymous, illegal sex are foggy, shady affairs reminiscent of film noir’s finest moments), later in lighter-but-still-secluded forest cabins (a la Ingmar Bergman’s early ‘60s dramas), and still later in the seeping wet-but-welcoming streets of 1970s New York City (the same ones that drove Travis Bickle mad in Taxi Driver). Laaksonen, as performed by Pekka Strang, is a man who cares less and less about what the world thinks of him as he grows more comfortable in his skin throughout his life, even if that skin appears on the screen under old-age makeup that increasingly looks ludicrous the longer the film goes on—the makeup is the only part of the movie’s technical side that is distinctly lacking.
None of Laaksonen’s comfort with himself would work to any degree without the generational conflicts set up by the script, which was penned by a legion of seven screenwriters. Laaksonen finds himself drawn (not always sexually) to younger men, and their idealism and rage at the way things are for gay people in the world at the time often rubs the weary Laaksonen the wrong way. His much younger long-term partner tells him in an argument scene that all he wants to do is to hold Laaksonen’s hand outside like any straight couple, but Laaksonen rebuffs him, more concerned with maintaining his status and monetary comfort as an ad executive than acting on the things that would make him—and so many in his community—happy. Later, other young gay men in America, whose openness about themselves initially baffles a late-50s Laaksonen, eventually win him over. Tom’s man beams with pride at the scenes of poolside parties in hazy 1970s Los Angeles that look like Robert Altman had shot them.
Laaksonen’s arc is an often fascinating one, but, as is so often the case with biopics, it falls prey to a misguided instinct for comprehensiveness. It is too intent on telling every twist and turn of the man’s life to linger satisfyingly long enough on the stuff that really matters to him. Any of the eras in Tom of Finland would be worthy of high drama, but instead, the script spreads itself so thin by covering events from the mid-1940s through the 1980s. His moments of discovery, of artistic inspiration (for Laaksonen and the movie itself), fall far and few between. It is an untenable structure that cuts much of the beauty shot by Karukoski and Frank off at the knees.
By trying to say so much about so many things—I count among its many extraneous themes aging, being on the wrong side of history, fandom, international culture clash, and more—it loses sight of this man’s artwork, which, while extremely explicit in its prurience, is also extremely accomplished. At times, the figures that come from Laaksonen’s pencils resemble the work of painter Alex Ross if Ross had chosen to depict comically large genitals on bikers rather than comic book superheroes.
Much like Laaksonen’s early walks through the park, the movie about his life is a foggy one. It meanders, it tiptoes, and it’s nervous to be itself much of the time, except for those brief moments of release. If Tom of Finland had wanted to truly follow in its subject’s footsteps, it would mercilessly remove the unnecessary bits, get comfortable with what it truly is, and cut to the money shot. It, and its viewers, would be a lot happier if it came out of the fog.
Director: Dome Karukoski
Writers: Aleksi Bardy, Dome Karukoski, Mark Alton Brown, Noam Andrews, Kauko Röyhkä, Mia Ylönen, Susanna Luoto
Starring: Pekka Strang, Jessica Grabowsky, Lauri Tilkanen, Seumas F. Sargent, Jakob Oftebro, Troy T. Scott
Rating: 3/5 stars
Available in limited release October 13
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