A languid and rather plaintive documentary about grizzled miners clinging to their dreams of finding gold in the remote outdoors, Juho-Pekka Tanskanen’s The Last Misfits by the Golden River(Aurinko laskee Lemmenjoella) follows the last group of prospectors searching for riches deep in the Finnish wilderness.
Some 300 kilometres above the Arctic Circle, in the northern parts of Finnish Lapland, the area’s gold remained hidden for millions of years before the first major rush of 1870 – since then people have been searching for the yellow metal in Lemmenjoki and other remote areas. The film looks at the last of them, still digging and panning for gold, just as the authorities decide that enough is enough and set about bringing in legislation to bring an end to the industry.
The great gold rush may well be a thing of the past, but in the wilds of Lapland a small community of gold miners live outside of modern society. A proud and traditional way of life with 150-year-old roots that is now threatened, but they still cling to memories and traditions.
Juho-Pekka Tanskanen’s film delivers a rich seam of bold real-life characters. They range from 80-year-old Rami, a gnarled, bearded, loner still hoping to find a rich vein, through to the youngest member of the community, Nils-Emil a boy who reads comics, wanders the barren landscape alone and even sets about doing his own digging and sieving for gold.
The images are rich and varied. Nils-Emil reads about Donald Duck; an elderly man digs with spades and a pick; a woman prospects in a water-logged pit; a man chips a gold ball from a ‘bunker’ and another, who has lived by the rock pits for 36 years, comments how the reindeer eat all of the salad stuff he has planted, but aren’t interested in his raspberries.
Nils-Emil’s parents talk about how they met and why they are there (his mother tells him how he would lie in a pram by the edge of a gold pit) and while the youngster comments, “It is boring here. I’ve got nothing to do,” he also admits to quite liking his unusual home as well.
Half-way through the film, television coverage states that “gold mining will end in Lemmenjjoki” and, despite their worries and disappointment, the miners agree to keep on working until they get formal notification. But they can see the end is nigh when media arrive to report, and in a rare event the miners gather together and remove their hats in silence to acknowledge their livelihood coming to an end.
Rami looks for new mining spots, but ultimately he admits made the wrong move, while Nils-Emils’ father reads out the on-line form he must fill in to apply for a “gold rinsing permit.” He reads that ‘the area will be kept safe for reindeers and people trekking,’ adding that they can dig small amounts of land using only a shovel. Nils-Emil says he is not interested in being a miner, instead “interested in being a chemist, physicist or a mathematician.”
Eventually genial Finnish officials sporting obligatory luminous jackets arrive to find out why some of the miners are so slow in closing down their operations, but ultimately there is a tacit understanding that the miners’ way of life has finally to change.
The Last Misfits is a warm and elegant homage to a unique way of life, and makes the most of the striking vistas – from freezing snowscapes to vast stretches of barren fields punctuated by holes and mounds of soil. By the end, it seems that his area of Lapland has reverted back to nature, with the tantalising notion of gold reserves now a thing of the past.
Finland, 2025, 79mins
Dir/scr/cinematography: Juho-Pekka Tanskanen
Production: Danish Bear Productions
International sales: Syndicado Film
Producer: Isabella Karhu
Editor: Markus Leppälä
Music: Erik Michelsen
With: Nils-Emil Kalla, Raimo Kanamäki, Kai J. Rantanen, Anne-Marie Kalla, Pekka Itkonen, Pirjo Lainesalo
