Upamanyu Biswas
At the end of ‘Little Siberia,‘ Joel undergoes a radical shift in his mindset as he finally comes to grips with his existential crisis of faith. The pastor’s lack of belief propels him to take some drastic measures throughout the story, almost as a way to find an answer to all his problems. However, the more he succumbs to his desperation, the more he realizes that the truth has always been close to his heart all along. Instead, his obsession with the meteorite, just like the rest of the town, causes him to lose sight of the important things in life. Near the final moments, the film delves into Joel’s inner psyche and also the divine providence he has been seeking as an ailment to all his troubles. Still, it comes at the cost of a lot of struggles, including personal, spiritual, and emotional. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Little Siberia Plot Synopsis
The story begins with a man lying in the snow with a knife sticking out of his chest. We see a vision of the Universe and its various evolutionary stages through billions of years. Eventually, a rock breaks off from an asteroid belt and heads towards Earth. Fourteen days prior to our opening scene, a man is shown to be driving a car recklessly through the streets of a remote town named Hurmevaara. Meanwhile, a couple are having sex in their bedroom. Suddenly, the entire night sky starts glowing a bright red color. The driver skids his car to a halt right before it hits a rock on the side of a street. When the glow dies away, the driver realizes there is a hole in his car’s roof and his passenger seat. A meteorite landed inside his vehicle right before the man ran straight into a rock.
The following morning, a pastor named Joel heads off to attend to his client, Matias. They have an esoteric conversation which ends with Joel hurrying away. While in town, the protagonist is flagged down by a man named Jukkis, who wants him to take over guard duty at the museum. The meteorite from the previous night has been kept on display at the museum and is expected to bring great fortune to the village. The pastor decides to attend a town event where Jukkis talks about the benefits of the meteorite. Joel’s wife, Krista, stops by to greet him. After leaving, she shares a monumental piece of news with him – she is pregnant. Joel goes to his doctor the following day to check up on a serious issue. The truth is that a military injury from his past has made him incapable of having children. He undergoes some tests to see if that is still the case.
Knowing that he is infertile, Joel becomes suspicious that his wife may be cheating on him, particularly with the new development of her pregnancy. At her dance class, he spies her having some close exchanges with Raystis, a local resident who runs a gym. That night, Joel takes up guard duty at the museum. When everyone leaves, he spends some time alone staring at the meteorite. We learn that the pastor is having a serious crisis of faith and is looking for signs from God, a miracle. Tarvainen, the man who found the meteorite, stops by the museum to see the rock again, but Joel sends him away. A group of robbers break into the building and escape with something. The pastor follows them until a car explodes. He later learns that they absconded with a hand grenade rather than the meteorite.
Little Siberia Ending: What is the Miracle? How Does Joel Rekindle His Faith?
Joel’s crisis of faith runs throughout the narrative and remains the most important element of his journey. After years of being unable to conceive a child with Krista, the man has lost all belief in a higher power, even when he preaches his word. All he wants is a grand gesture to prove God’s existence – a miracle. However, he has grown so cynical that even something like a meteorite landing has no great effect on him. Instead, he seeks something monumental and awe-inspiring, something that cannot be refuted no matter what. As time passes, this thinking proves to be flawed. Joel realizes that he has been looking for a miracle in the wrong place. His biggest sign of divine providence has always been by his side and kept him company through his worst pain – his wife, Krista.
Joel fails to see his wife’s devotion to him because he becomes focused on all the negative things in his life, the biggest of which is his inability to give Krista a child. As a result, he has developed a deep insecurity about himself and his relationship. He thinks that Krista is willing to leave him at any moment because of his infertility. Hence, he starts believing that she is cheating on him. He cannot comprehend the possibility of a miracle in their ability to conceive a child. Thus, in some ways, his infertility and his crisis of faith have grown entangled together in a complex mess, both feeding into each other. He starts believing that no matter what he does, Krista will never be happy with him. This allows him an easy way out when the meteorite lands in the town. He becomes convinced that the rock is a sign from God rather than the pain he feels when thinking about his shortcomings.
It takes Joel a long time to move past his demons. His internalized feelings of inadequacy are a mixture of his personal beliefs and his declining spiritual devotion. We see him occasionally weeping in front of God. It is a sign that he is desperate for some answers to the bleak situation he is wrapped up in. In fact, it is not until the end, when Krista and Joel begin addressing their problems more openly, that the pastor starts to realize the folly in his thinking. He remains stubbornly convinced that she cheated on him to become pregnant because that is what he “wants” to believe. He thinks he is incapable of her love because he cannot give her what she wants. In his head, it is a foregone conclusion that she slept with either Jukkis or Raystis to have the child. At one point, he even accepts it as something natural.
When Jukkis reveals that he, too, is infertile, Joel realizes that a lot of the assumptions he has been carrying in his head are wrong. He assumed that Krista had a child with someone else. He never thought that a miracle could have happened to him. In the movie’s final moments, Joel undergoes a radical shift in his mind, realizing that he was wrong to believe in things simply because he thought he was undeserving of love and attention. His faith was only as strong as what his belief told him. He tells his wife that she is his miracle. All this time, he has been a fool not to notice the most crucial thing in his life. She and their unborn child are the miracles he has been looking for. Instead, he lost focus and thought the meteorite was the answer to all his problems. Those words confirm his love for his wife and his rekindled faith.
How Does Joel Save Krista? What Happens to Him?
After Jukkis comes by the house and tells Joel about his infertility, the protagonist starts ruing his last exchanges with Krista. It becomes evident to him that she never cheated on him. However, due to her earlier ultimatum that she plans to leave him unless he can give up his obsession, he believes that she left him. Moments later, he gets a phone call from an unknown person who tells him to steal the meteorite that night if he wants to see his wife again. Joel visits Karolina at the Golden Moon, where he learns that the woman is the one behind the recent call. She wants the rock for herself because she has grown tired of living in Hurmevaara. She gives him detailed instructions about what to do during the heist. If he follows her orders, she promises that he will come out of the situation looking like a hero and with his wife back.
That night, Joel starts his night duty armed with a rifle with only one bullet in the chamber. As per Karolina’s instructions, he finds a thief breaking in through the back – Petar. At gunpoint, he orders Petar to stick his hands and tongue to a metal pole before going back inside, expecting the giant man to be preoccupied for a good amount of time. Inside the museum, Karolina shows herself and orders Joel to break the glass casing around the rock. She wants him to do it because it will look like a break-in, and there will be no fingerprints for the authorities. Surprisingly, Petar also enters the building, having somehow ripped his tongue and arms away from the pole. The trio is interrupted by another thief, Tarvainen. He takes the rock and absconds from the scene. Joel follows.
Joel manages to find Tarvainen in his house. He consoles the man regarding his recent philosophical and existential challenges. It momentarily calms the situation before Tarvainen sticks a knife into Joel’s chest. An injured Joel follows Tarvainen out into the frozen river, desperate to get the meteorite back as it is the only way to retrieve Krista. The ice collapses under Tarvainen’s feet, and he plunges into the ice-cold water with the meteorite. Joel succumbs to his desperation and injury and lays down on the ice. He sees a grand vision of the Universe once more and the beauty of existence. At that point, he revives himself and heads back to the house. He gets a message that Krista will be returned if Joel brings the rock to Raystis’ gym. He uses an ordinary rock as a replacement for the meteorite.
Joel sees that Raystis has been hooked to a hand grenade trap at the gym. If he stops running on the treadmill, the bomb is set to go off and kill him. The man reveals that he was the one who abducted Krista because his business is about to go bust. Now, Petar and Karolina have her in their clutches. Joel goes out to the back of the shop to disrupt their plan. They enter into a standoff, where Karolina shows her true colors by shooting Petar. All she wants is a shot at freedom herself. She brings Krista out at gunpoint to retrieve the bag with the rock from Joel. However, Joel is able to send a coded instruction to Krista, telling her to “pirouette” as he uses the only bullet in his rifle to take Karolina down, thereby saving his wife’s life. After a time skip, we also discover that the pastor is alive and well, living a happy family life with Krista and his newborn child.
What Does the Meteorite Symbolize?
At the end of ‘Little Siberia,’ the meteorite lies at the bottom of the frozen river while Joel moves on with his life. In the story’s beginning, everyone in the town obsesses over the little rock and craves it for their own personal desire. However, by the end, it remains underwater, forgotten by the town’s inhabitants, who have found a better outlet for their enthusiasm. In some ways, this symbolizes the growth in everyone’s personality, particularly Joel’s. The pastor was convinced that the meteorite could be a glimpse that God really exists and is sending messages from heaven. Even Tarvainen recites the same idea to Joel. Everyone believes the rock holds some secret recipe for salvation. However, after a series of struggles, its value recedes in the minds of everyone involved.
Read More: Where Was Netflix’s Little Siberia Filmed?
