In her critiques Helena Ylänen likes to write about her own first reactions.
	- Helsingin Sanomat in English - Movie Review Query Engine - Dark Horizons - Movie Reviews - American in Paris (1951)

Witty and Open-Minded Movie Reviewing

– The best movies of the world were made way before I started writing reviews. If I must choose the best film of all time, I'd pick An American in Paris (1951). "Delicious" would be a suitable one-word definition of the movie. There are hundreds of "best" films and there's no use remembering the bad ones; recounts Helena Ylänen, one of Finland's best-known movie critics.

Helena Ylänen, who writes for the Helsingin Sanomat daily newspaper, has over 25 years of experience in writing movie reviews. Her critiques can be found each Friday in the newspaper's weekly supplement Nyt, and she reports each spring from the Cannes film festival.

Ylänen has never worked in the film industry, and this is how she describes her path to becoming a movie critic:

– I studied English and literature at the University of Helsinki, but those studies were interrupted when I went to the Helsingin Sanomat Journalism School in 1969.

Seven years later, Ylänen got a chance to write about movies. When a movie critic's spot opened up at the newspaper in 1979, she took time to think carefully before expressing interest in the position, because "there are more exciting jobs in a newspaper than sitting around being a movie critic." At times she has had regrets about this decision, sometimes the clearly defined field of work has been a relief.

Critics Get Criticism, Too

Ylänen does not prepare for watching a movie by digging out background information on it.

– I look for information afterwards, in case I need to find out something about the makers or the subject matter of the film when writing the review.

She defines her job as "daily newspaper critique", with one of the basic requirements being swiftness in writing the review around the time when the film premiers. Especially with Finnish titles, this means reviewing the film before a general opinion among the movie-watching public has developed about it.

– The thing I enjoy the most is writing down the so-called initial reactions. On the other hand, writing about worn-out foreign megaproductions is the boring, routine part of the job.

Helena Ylänen says she gets very little feedback from readers.

– Thanks to e-mail and the website of the Nyt-supplement, I nowadays get a bit more feedback than I used to get. It is of course nasty being an object of criticism myself, yet I enjoy following readers discussing us critics at the Nyt website, Ylänen admits.

"Everything Affects the Review"

According to Ylänen, critiques differ from one another for various reasons. She lists various factors:

– Everything influences the review. Take the forum, in my case a newspaper. One has to consider the amount of space available for the review, and whether it's going to be the main piece of the friday package or just a filler. The movie itself is obviously a factor. For instance, one has to consider what the genre of the film is; whether it's a typical American mainstream production that the audience is well acquainted with, and whether the makers and the subject matter of the film are familiar to the readers. Or whether the film is a comedy with not much content to describe or a thriller with a thick plot that shouldn't be revealed in the review.

– I sometimes read other critics' reviews from foreign newspapers, and nowadays of course from their web versions, just out of curiosity. I do this if I'm interested in hearing first impressions on films that have raised high expectations. Otherwise I avoid reading reviews. They make for such boring reading that in order to keep up interest in this job, it's best not to read them.

Helena Ylänen describes a good critic as being open-minded and witty. But is it possible to write an objective review?

– Of course not. Even the human memory isn't reliable, Ylänen explains.

The Internet is full of sites where average movie-goers can review films that they have seen.

– The thing that makes private citizens' film opinions such fresh reading is that their reactions are often quite unpredictable. However, the stories sometimes get tedious when the writer does his or her best at trying to appear as smart or even smarter than the established movie critic by approaching the subject through a learned formula, Ylänen describes.

	The Internet's movie sites feature reviews by both professional and amateur critics. The "Nyt" -supplement's web site is third from the left.

Last Year on the Jury, This Time Reporting

During last year's Tampere Film Festival, Helena Ylänen worked on the jury of the Finnish film competition. She thinks working on the jury was a fun and social task, because she got to discuss the films with interesting people.

– Opinions needn't be molded into printable form, and I could keep quiet about the films that I didn't like.

This year, Ylänen is a reporter at the Festival. She usually focuses on the Finnish competition.

– This year's long Finnish movies have already been reviewed and seen by the public, which was the case last year as well. The Festival is, however, facing great changes in its content and therefore it's possible to find some unexpected gems in the programme.

TEXT: Elina Jokisalo
TRANSLATION: Petri Raivio
PICTURES: Marko Saarijärvi
UPDATED: Thursday, 07-Mar-2002 20:02:59 EET

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