Veijo Meri

Manillaköysi is a cult status holding TV-movie adaptation of the satirical war novel by Veijo Meri. Manillaköysi has an endless list of classic one-liners, but it is still not based on cheap laughs or anything like that. The whole humouristic aspect of it comes from describing the absurdity of war, and the whole military system, by looking it with the eyes of a simple man, who's thrown into it, and who simply does not give a rats ass of it all. The tone of it is not overly preachy or moralizing. If I would have to describe it with one word, it would be: unglamourizing. The main point of Manillaköysi is pretty much compressed in one of the most famous quotes of it: There is nothing supernatural about war, it is just work like anything else.

Young hockey player Illu spends his summer in local restaurants, just like the stunning blonde Salme, with whom he and every man in town is in love.

The Finnish army retreats during the war summer of 1944. Corporal Lauri Ojala is left on the wrong side of the Vuoksi River. He decides to break ranks with the army and goes home. Two months later, Ojala is forced to dig his own grave.

Time of depression in the 1930s. "Poverty and abundant wealth have simultaneously filled the earth's circle. The peasant's cornerstones are moving." Iso Herneinen's mistress is dead and grief lives in Jopi's heart. Jopi's grown-up boys are hardly happy. The eldest boy fell in love with the house maid. The middle one is, according to Jopi, a strange modern product. The youngest does not enjoy working or working at home. The three-part TV series tells about the peasant's collapse in years of depression.