In the winter of 1969, Tauno Pasanen shot four policemen in a small Finnish village. This real event was the impetus for Mikko Niskanen’s work on an epic about the difficult lives of simple people in the countryside. At the beginning of Niskanen’s version, shots are fired by the farmer Pasi, played by Niskanen himself. The rest of the four episodes show in flashbacks what led up to this bloody deed. Niskanen doesn’t judge his protagonists, but rather portrays their situation in detail. Taxes and land reforms threaten the farmer’s existence so that he can no longer pay his bills, seeking refuge in the alcohol that will destroy his family life. Finally, Pasi has no other way out. An initial version of the film ran twelve hours; this version, the remaining 300 minutes are considered by Aki Kaurismäki and others to be one of the best Finnish films of all time.