Director: Hlynur Palmason
Starring: Ingvar Sigurdsson, Ida Mekkin Hlynsdottir
Distributor: Palace Films
Runtime: 109 mins. Reviewed in Jun 2020

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Rating notes: Mature themes, sex, violence, coarse language, nudity

Iceland has a Scandinavian heritage. It has the clouded atmosphere and temperatures of northern Europe. The landscapes are rugged, coastal and mountainous. And the population is small, something like an island nation village. The Icelandic film industry is not prone to comedy.

And this drama is certainly not comic. It is sombre, often grim, white, white days indicating snow but a quotation, Source Unknown, at the film’s opening, suggests that when the day is white, when sky and earth are indistinguishable, ghosts communicate with the living.

The initial focus is on a car driving on an icy road, a comparatively long sequence, and then the car skidding, crashing into the guardrail and disappearing. In fact, this episode will be highly significant as the drama unfolds.

Then the director uses a telling device, the fixed camera on a farm house which is being repaired, ponies on the property, mountains in the background – then a succession of still shots, the house in night and day, in different seasons, grounding our attention in this environment. We spend a lot of time in the interiors of the house, especially as it is being repaired and renovated, but also some time at the local police station, on the roads and in the tunnel under the mountains, in the countryside, and by the sea. We experience the Icelandic atmosphere.

Which is important because the central character, Ingimundur (a powerfully persuaded persuasive performance, often menacing, by Ingvar Sigurdsson), a local policeman, his renovating the house for his daughter and his granddaughter, Salka. We come to realise that he is grieving for his dead wife, killed in that car accident. He holds in his feelings, putting all his energies into the house. He does have some help in counselling but is resistant. Ultimately, reacting badly to the questions put to him (by Skype because of weather difficulties and travel), he erupts. And he takes it out on the local police, another violent eruption. And Salka, with whom he spends a lot of time, cheerfully bonding with her, but then she experiences the brunt of his outbursts.

A significant part of his grief is that he feels his wife had kept secrets from him. And the latter part of the film finds Ingimundur goaded into confrontation, quiet rage, and emotional collapse.

As might be expected, there is no neat or happy ending in this kind of Icelandic drama. Rather, Ingimundur has gone through grief, traumatic consequences, emotional collapse, but also steps towards apology, reconciliation, some possibility for peace in his soul and in his life.

Peter Malone MSC is an Associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting.