Reykjavík Grapevine - 15.07.2011, Blaðsíða 41

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41
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 10 — 2011
is the closing of the slaughterhouse that
seems to be the last nail in the coffin,
for most other run-down places it's the
fact the fishing quota has been taken
away from them. And it is telling that
the filmmaker, Ólafur Jóhannesson (also
known as Olaf de Fleur), is born there,
but like most people who dreamt of big-
ger things, he had to move. Like perhaps
most of us who live in the big city: if it
wasn't us, it was our parents or grand-
parents.
Then there were the two films that
really stuck with me after the festival:
“John And The Reverend John” (‘Jón og
séra Jón’) and “A9ainst” (‘Ge9n’). They
may seem worlds apart, but they keep
bumping into each other in my head.
Perhaps it helped that nine of us got
locked in a heated debate long into the
night, mostly about those films and re-
lated matters—but it was interesting that
those who most liked the former were
critical of the latter’s lack of narrative
and central character. And character is
“John And The Reverend John's” strong
point—it really focused on one character,
the John of the title, and his descent into
madness. The Johns of the title are really
one and the same; it's a Jekyll and Hyde
story, although Dr. Jekyll admittedly gets
little airtime. But the miracle of the movie
is how close filmmaker Stein!ór Birgis-
son gets to this very real person, a stock
character in Icelandic mythmaking that
is usually seen as eccentric and endear-
ing, while the truth tends to be more to-
wards lonely and sad.
However, there is an underlying
theme that some other filmmaker might
do well to explore further: the inhumane
society of the Icelandic clergy. When it
becomes clear that John is losing his
mind, the church does not move in to
help its servant get the best possible
treatment, medical or otherwise. No, it
simply uses every trick in the book to get
him off their land. This is a society within
a society, where the battle for jobs and
lands is fierce. Since I've been back from
Skjaldborg, the news has again been full
of stories of scandals within the church.
One can't help but come to the conclu-
sion that another “A9ainst” is needed,
this time about the clergy.
“A9ainst” itself revolves around the
Reykjavík 9, the group of people tried for
attacking Iceland’s parliament. The rele-
vance of the subject matter is clear when
we consider the January Revolution of
2009, and the fact that if they are guilty,
then they are not alone; there were thou-
sands of us that could also be accused
of attacking parliament, a parliament
that many felt had done itself more harm
than a few protesters ever could. The
film doesn't narrate the trial, but rather
shows those nine people (and in fact a
tenth protestor, who in a way stands for
all those of us who were not brought to
court, even if we were just as guilty/in-
nocent). We get to hear their views and
their stories, but even so I didn't really
feel it was about them so much as some
underlying horror. It's actually a new ver-
sion of the classic monster under the bed
story, albeit with a very real monster that
is some freakish hybrid of capitalism,
government, nationalism and old power
structures. This is a monster that twists
some truths and sweeps other uncom-
fortable ones under the carpet, so the
question remains unanswered: will they
be able to keep “A9ainst” out of the pub-
lic consciousness? The film is slated to
show in Reykjavík this September, but
we've yet to see if that will be enough.
Yet another feature of “A9ainst” was
to capture an Iceland we hadn't seen
before—and that sometimes took a bit
of staging. It showed us parts of the city
that, yes, we've seen—just usually not in
movies or photographs. It's the less ro-
mantic parts, the supermarkets and the
trash heaps. By putting people in unusu-
al contexts in these surroundings, talk-
ing about revolutions and corruption—
and in one scene simply screaming—the
film makes us see them all over again.
RUNNING AMID BROKEN DREAMS
Surprisingly, the less romantic parts of
Reykjavík also got their due in ‘Freerun-
ning’, one of two sports films premiered
at the festival. Freerunning is a sport
that is all about running and jumping, on
and off rooftops—it's simply about get-
ting from A to B in a direct line—which
means you enter through parts of town
you would otherwise never see. It really
is a film about teenage boys (and some
in their twenties) who have found a way
to channel all their frantic energy into
something that is very much their own,
their private domain—and even if most of
us would never dare to try it, we sort of
understood.
The other sport film at the festival,
‘Blikk’ (part one of two apparently), was
all about the public domain. In fact it was
about a sports field, Melavöllurinn, that
until Laugardalsvöllur was built was the
headquarters for most Icelandic sports.
There is a fascinating story to be told
about this field, but somehow the film
failed to tell it. The scenes from the old
field were often very interesting, but
the director failed to use them to build
a coherent narrative. Worse, the film
proved oddly male-dominated, because
while those old pictures showed plenty
of women and young girls, the film was
constantly interrupted by old men remi-
niscing about past glories, and not until
the very end was a woman interviewed.
It must be said that women were under-
represented in most films at the festival,
in other cases it could usually be excused
because of the story being told but hard-
ly in this case. However, the movie also
followed the traces of Icelandic national-
ism to our earliest sport heroes, a nation-
alism that has become bent and corrupt
in the more modern films like “A9ainst”.
Finally I should mention ‘Paradox’, a
film that in its own way captures Icelan-
dic filmmaking history in a story of two
generations. The first was a generation
mostly without filmmakers, when Icelan-
dic filmmaking was in its infancy—which
was as late as the 1960s. Two Icelandic
filmmakers arrive from Sweden to shoot
“The debate in
Icelandic society tends
to be Reykjavík vs. the
countryside. Just like
the films, which usually
focus on just one of those
places, rarely both.”
Continues on page 44