Reykjavík Grapevine - 21.09.2012, Blaðsíða 20

Reykjavík Grapevine - 21.09.2012, Blaðsíða 20
Special thanks to Air Iceland for flying our photographer to Akureyri to meet up with Baltasar. 20 The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 15 — 2012 Feature | Film The film was previewed last night, and it has been met with great praise. It must be a relief for you that it has found such a positive reaction, given that this was not an easy subject to cover. No, it was not an easy subject, and the condi- tions for making the film were not really easy ei- ther, as it turned out. But I took my time with it. I decided from the get go that I would not give into commercial pressure. I wanted to take all the time I needed. I was working on other projects in the meantime. Two-three weeks ago, I was shooting [the upcoming] ‘2 Guns’ in the New Mexico desert, and I was still using downtime to edit this movie. I made some substantial chang- es towards the end, and I think the distance and the time I spent away from the film gave me a better perspective of the story. I felt it was very important to make the film with a certain humbleness towards the subject and I am very pleased that this feeling seems to come across to the audience. I did not want to dramatise the story, or create an antagonist, some bad guy for the main character to go up against. The nature is the antagonist. The enemy he must overcome. You have said the film is also a reflec- tion on the economic turbulence Iceland has been through. I see it as ref lection on who we are, essential- ly. Where do we come from? What is the fabric we are made of? I wanted to return to the basics. American heroes wear capes, Icelandic heroes wear sea gear. That is why this is such a power- ful story; the narrative drive stands so close the Sagas. Someone performs an inexplicable hu- man feat, does not really want to talk about it and downplays the whole thing. This is so close the national character and I believe it is what makes the story fascinating. It comes from within us. This is really a story of a nation. Films and theatre are not toys; they are seri- ous art forms. This is the first time in Icelandic film history that someone deals with a tragedy at sea. This is the biggest scar we bear as a nation. Everyone knows someone who has lost someone at sea in Iceland. This is something that stands so close to us. And we have never dealt with this. It is as if we just consider this the cost of doing business. Small Towns Are A Microcosm Of Society As A Whole This is your second film that deals with life in a small fishing village. The first one (‘The Sea,’ 2002) was a reflection on a time that might be described as the beginning of an era that eventually led the Icelandic economy into a tailspin. That is an interesting analogy. Whatever peo- ple want to say about that film, it was a warning of things to come. The film was based on a play that was written in 1993, and it was a warning of what would happen when we made the fishing quota individually transferable. We turned fish that had not yet been caught into a transferable asset. You can’t base a transaction on a greater bubble than uncaught fish in the sea. Eventually, the market value of the uncaught fish became higher than the market value of the actual fish. This created enormous wealth for some people, and all this wealth, that was really based on noth- ing, had to be put to some use, and that was the foundation of the bubble that eventually burst in 2008. We can point fingers at people and events along the way, but this is the system that created the soil for the crash. But now, I am trying to approach this from a completely different direc- tion. I am not saying that people should not be held responsible for their actions, but I don’t be- lieve that we can recover as society by shouting and pointing fingers. We will only recover when we move on. What happened in Iceland is that we went from being a very simple society to a very mod- ern society in only a few years. When I was a kid growing up in Kópavogur, I could never have dreamed of the success that I have enjoyed, mak- ing movies in Hollywood with someone like Denzel Washington. It simply did not seem pos- sible. Björk was really the first Icelander to break The Impossible Feat Baltasar Kormákur makes movies and loves the journey Director Baltasar Kormákur is to Icelandic film what Sigur Rós is to Icelandic music. After successfully making the Hollywood box-office hit 'Contraband,' starring Mark Wahlberg and Giovanni Ribisi, Baltasar has returned to Iceland with the docudrama ‘The Deep,’ the story of Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, the lone survivor from the five man crew of the fishing boat Hellisey VE 503 that went down three nautical miles East of Heimaey in March of 1984. Guðlaugur spent five hours in the frigid sea (5°c) before reaching Heimaey island. He then walked bare- foot across a lava field for three hours before finding help. Guðlau- gur's extraordinary feat is considered nearly impossible. “ The only way to do the film properly was to give it everything. I could not bear the thought of cheating. We sank the boat and filmed inside while it was sinking. And we swam through the surf and into the cliffs to film the footage when he reached land.„ Words by Sveinn Birkir Björnsson • Photo by Baldur Kristjáns

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