by Nathaniel R
In the middle of the stylish grief-stricken Icelandic drama, what appears to be an amateur children's play is airing on the television. The camera drifts to it and stays far longer than is natural for "background" atmosphere in a movie. An astronaut and assorted spacesuit wearing children, have experienced some kind of spacecraft crash. As we zero in on the television, the lone adult onscreen. after finding out that each of his charges are still alive (for now), launches into a hysteric speech about how 'we're all going to die. Including your parents and siblings. Yes, even you.' Salka, an eight year-old towhead granddaughter of the the film's protagonist, watches the television with her cheerio-sucking baby brother, entirely unfazed by this truth. Obviously children's entertainment like this would only fly in Scandinavia or maybe France, where young'uns can also drink wine with their parents and learn their existential nihilism young.
Which is not to snarkily say that A White White Day is nihilistic. Just that it's pragmatically clear-eyed even when it should be crying. Far from callous and cold, despite the temperatures suggested by that omnipresent fog, thick-maned Icelandic horses, and all the heavy sweaters, the film is warm when it counts. This is a compassionate drama about grief and the sideways behaviour that will out if you keep stifling the main thing...
an international sign of (cinematic) grief: smelling the clothes of your dead loved ones.
Ingvar Sigurdsson, one of Iceland's chief leading men, is center frame as a widower policeman. His wife died before the events of the film and he's poured all his energy into building a home for his daughter and granddaughter (... "and Stefan" he adds when pushed, begrudging his son-in-law's place in the narrative). Sigurdsson is such a talented actor that in an early short scene in which he is nearly monosyllabic when talking to a therapist, you can sense quite clearly why he is in that office, that the therapy was not his choice, and that he's furious about being there, despite barely fidgeting in his seat, like an obstinate stone in the middle or the road, unaware of traffic and it's own potential for destruction. He also gives you tremendous depth of feeling (or lack thereof) for the people who remain in his life, despite the widower not being particularly forthcoming about his emotions. Curiously Ingvar won the "Rising Star" award at Cannes this year despite having been a headliner for two decades now in Nordic cinema. He's won six Edda Awards (Iceland's Oscar) for his performances over the years.
Writer/Director Hylnur Palmason (who debuted two years ago with the award-winning festival hit Winter Brothers) isn't as idiosyncratic an auteur as Iceland's currently most exciting director (Benedikt Erlingsson of Woman at War fame) but he makes stylish choices in his film's rhythms and imagery, both to add meditative chills, and artfully suggest passages of time where nothing much changes. More perplexing are some odd tonal touches like a rock rolling down the side of a hill for what seems like forever. It plays almost like black comedy in a film that is no laughing matter. Is the dissonant string-based score too disquieting for a film that is ultimately about healing, even though it goes to some chilling places. Maybe. But there's a wonderful plethora of striking inky blacks and foggy whites in the compositions which feel like a perfect counterintuitive choice for a film that actually cares a lot about the grey areas of life and love.
Onscreen grandfather and granddaughter at Cannes where they debuted
Grade: B
Oscar Chances? A White White Day was recently longlisted for the European Film Awards and is also up for the Nordic Council Film Prize so don't be surprised if it ends up as Iceland's Oscar submission this year ...though they've yet to announce.