In The Man Without a Past (2002), Aki Kaurismäki continues with biting irony his study of the excluded, the abused and the losers, which he began in Drifting Clouds (1996). A man gets off the train in Helsinki, hoping to find work. Just outside the station, he is savagely beaten. He is taken to the hospital and pronounced dead. However, he leaves his room mysteriously. At this point, Kaurismäki inserts a view of the port, with symphonic music, in a slow high-angle shot that reveals gradually the body of the ‘dead’ man, lying on the rocky soil. This is followed by a wide shot of a black and pink sky. A tramp comes along and takes the boots off the prone body, then two blond children, carrying a water can, see it and run off. The next image, a fixed long shot, shows powder blue and rust-coloured metal containers. In front of the biggest container, on top of which lies a water tank, a fire is burning. The two children run up to their father to tell him of their discovery. The audience then understands suddenly that a poor family lives in that container. The polished colorimetry of the shot (the red sky, the blue and yellow containers) produces an affected optical lyricism, which in turn resonates with the orchestral music playing through these shots. The rusted vats and jerrycans, the old containers and the various bits of scrap iron lying about, are carefully and geometrically arranged in this lot near the port, as if chaos was more structure than dislocation. This sophisticated dereliction gives off a feeling of artificiality, of exoticism. In this parable-movie, this harbour rubbish dump is more celestial than terrestrial. It seems one must resort to using the term ‘scenery’ to describe this sundry spatial arrangement, in which poverty is a form of decoration.

In Damnation (1988), Béla Tarr shows the wanderings of Karrer, a disillusioned and dissatisfied man, in an isolated and muddy town on the great Hungarian plains. Having been abruptly thrown out of his flat by his lover, Karrer remains seated on the floor, leaning on the door frame.