Tales of a lost decade: Estonian film noir in the 1990s

Abstract

ABSTRACTAfter the collapse of the Soviet Union, Estonia experienced a radical socio-economic transformation process. In this article, we examine how this reconfiguration of society finds its expression in Estonian film noir of the 1990s. The transformation process generated spatio-temporal effects, reflecting the neoliberal conversion from the public to the private, and shifted the axis of identification from horizontal to vertical. The new constellations of power generated centripetal and centrifugal effects, creating winners and losers, the included and the excluded. The 1990s Estonian films noir focus on the losers of a period that was considered by many Estonians as a lost decade. Similar to American film noir of the 1940s and 1950s, the portrayals of doomed characters in a universe without moral points of orientation reflect the paradox of the rise of individualism in a world where the domestic sphere is in crisis. The doomed protagonist, the visual and narrative bleakness of the 1990s Estonian films noir, is the subject of our chronotopic analysis. The dark side of post-Soviet transformation, both in socio-economic and psychological terms, resonates in these films. We argue that the chronotope of the 1990s Estonian films noir is the outopia, the no-place.