A daring, obviously heartfelt experiment, Juha is Kaurismäki's silent version of a famed Finnish novel that was the subject of three previous adaptations (including Mauritz Stiller's 1921 version, Johan, which showed at PFA in 2002). While his work already exists in a stone-faced, near-wordless state, Kaurismäki here willfully embraces the stylistics of the great film masters of the late 1920s. Complete with intertitles and a symphonic score by Anssi Tikanmaki, the film tells of a tragic love triangle between the simple farmer Juha, his shy young wife Marja, and Shemeikka, the stranger with the fancy sports car who lures her to the big, brothel-ridden city. A simple story, yet one that perfectly fits Kaurismäki's concept of an elemental cinema, where speech remains unnecessary and narrative is driven by image, sound, and soul. For him, “since film started to gamble with mumbling and fancy words, stories have lost their purity, cinema its essence: innocence.” The film's stellar black-and-white photography authentically recreates the crisp silent cinematography of a Sjöström or a Stiller, especially during resplendent shots of the Scandinavian countryside.