“A deeply personal and profoundly moving artistic odyssey.”

While it may not be their entire purpose, every artist yearns to be recognised, even if solely for the sake of knowing that their work is able to touch others. However, the nature of life means that for every world-renowned artist hailed as masters of their medium, there are dozens who live and die in complete obscurity. One such person is Markku Pennanen, a Finnish multimedia artist who spent his life in pursuit of creation, using various methods to express his innermost desires and existential quandaries. Unfortunately, due to his reclusive nature and his decision to live almost entirely in isolation from the surrounding world, his work remained largely unknown to those outside his closest circle – until now, when his niece Karin Pennanen chose to tell this story after discovering many of his artworks when he died in 2021 and his house (which had been sealed off from the outside world for decades) was finally explored. This simple but touching story takes the form of Days of Wonder, an intimate and personal voyage into the life of a man whose entire raison d’être was to create by any means necessary. Best described as a combination of artist documentary, visual diary, familial essay and detective story, the film becomes an actively engaging cinematic excavation, a search for answers through the work of a man whose perspective was unconventional and challenging, and says more about the intersections between memory, art and mortality than many other similarly themed works.

There are endless ways to tell a story, and we’ve seen many fascinating approaches to making documentaries. Something that Pennanen realises in the process of putting Days of Wonder together is that the best way to explore her uncle’s life is to allow his work to speak for itself. Her position as a documentarian is to curate his artworks in such a way that they reflect the deeper themes that she wishes to explore. Throughout the film, we see archival footage (drawn primarily from family home videos), sound recordings, short films and letters, each one extracted from its raw form and reconfigured so that it takes on new meaning. These components intertwine with each other, as well as the footage that the director captures specifically for this documentary (mainly interviews with surviving family members and others who knew Markku, as well as scenes in which she explores his home after his death), highlighting the interweaving themes of decay and discovery, a vital aspect of this film’s overall thesis statement. We begin to notice that a lot of this film is spontaneous – Pennanen did not approach it with a preconceived set of ideas, but rather allowed the discovery of these artworks to guide the filmmaking process, which creates a unique rhythm in which we feel like we are unearthing these long-dormant masterpieces along with the director for the first time. It’s a slow, methodical process, but one that is exceptionally cathartic, especially as we begin to see everything coming together, taking on a more cohesive, logical format that says as much about Markku as it does his niece, two very different artists who have become inextricably connected in the process.

We could dwell on the form of the film and how it represents a kind of sincere ambition that comes when a good concept is paired with someone who is wholeheartedly committed to the premise. However, beyond the plot, we discover there are a wealth of moments throughout this film that are worth exploring, particularly in the hidden meanings lurking beneath the surface.  Markku is not a compelling subject simply because he was a talented artist – this is part of his story, but only one part. Instead, he’s someone who marched to the beat of his own drum so intensely and frequently that he successfully managed to carve his own niche. To those who are artistically inclined, this is both appealing and terrifying – to become so enraptured by your creativity that you are isolated in your own metaphorical artistic paradise can be a blessing and a burden. Pennanen does what she can to offer insights into her uncle’s very private, reclusive life, using all the resources she has at her disposal to weave a portrait of a man who chose to lead a solitary life, but mostly because he was never able to find many people who shared his vision. How much is freedom worth when it leads to such isolation? The film doesn’t have the answer (and if it does, it chooses not to go into detail, since it would likely be profoundly unsettling), but in choosing to examine Markku and his artistic exile, it creates a powerful statement on the relationship between art and isolation, since his seclusion allowed his imagination to run wild and his creativity to flourish, but at the expense of genuine human connection, which the director posits is vitally important in many ways. It’s both an elegy and a celebration of his life and work, balancing them in a way that is simultaneously critical and reverent, in equal measure.

The story of Markku and his approach to artistry is always going to remain unfinished, since he left long before he intended to, which makes the jagged, incomplete nature of Days of Wonder so appropriate and purposeful.  The departed artist becomes an unconventional ghost, whose voice (whether through his visual artworks or the recordings of his voice) guides the production, a companion to his niece as she goes about this challenging endeavour to pay tribute to her uncle. The director takes what she inherits from her uncle, which is nothing more than a wealth of artworks that most people view as worthless, and turns them into a poetic, moving story of authorship and artistic legacy, crafted in the form of an unorthodox, cross-generational collaboration between two artists who exist at the perfect intersection between family members and creative peers, reconnecting with each other despite the obstacle of his death that divided them. What starts as a very personal story of a filmmaker using her medium as a means to understand her uncle and his life eventually becomes a poignant meditation on memory, grief and how creativity can unexpectedly persevere, even after death. A physical resurrection may not be possible, but Days of Wonder evokes the idea of a spiritual version, one in which critically engaging with the artworks he left behind can allow Markku’s voice to be heard again. The film is a loving tribute to the director’s uncle, but it also allows the viewer to confront our own definitions of meaning, identity and the importance of creative purpose, showing a particular ambiguity that only enriches the film. Using fragments of a peculiar but compelling life, Pennanen pieces together the story of Markku, a deeply personal and profoundly moving artistic odyssey that is invigorating and unique, and entirely authentic in its depiction of creativity in all its forms.