Reykjavík Grapevine - 12.09.2014, Blaðsíða 30

30 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 14 — 2014FILM
In the film, ex-brothers-in-law Mitch (Earl
Lynn Nelson, the above-quoted) and Co-
lin (Paul Eenhorn) take a trip to Iceland to
“get their groove back.” Mitch is divorced,
Colin is widowed; both are around retire-
ment age. The story beats are familiar,
but the characterizations have enough
depth to make them emotionally satisfy-
ing: there's a balance of movie-enlivening
indulgence and reflective distance in the
rein the film gives Earl's dirty-uncle act. (In
fact, Earl, a surgeon like Mitch in real life, is
Martha Stephens's very own dirty cousin.)
The trip
These characters' arcs, leading them to-
wards acceptance of loneliness, and an
embrace of such companionship as is to
be found, are set against a trip that takes
them, in an absurdly large rental Hummer,
from Reykjavík to the Golden Circle, along
the South Coast and into the Highlands,
before being capped off with cameos from
a couple more Lonely Planet must-sees.
The magnificent landscape, shot on
well-graded hi-res digital, is played up as
the incongruous backdrop for the two old
goats' shenanigans: repeating in baffle-
ment their waiter's descriptions of the
courses at Dill, bickering about their mar-
riages on sheep-grazing land, or dancing
on the black sand beaches of Vík. The
filmmakers fashion a low-fi riff on ‘80s-
style road-movie buddy comedies—Mitch
and Colin are very much more the kind of
guys who go to the movies than the kind
of guys who are in them. Driving through
a lava field, they compare the physiques of
their favourite actresses; at Gullfoss, Mitch
yells to Colin, over the roar and the mist,
“Have you seen 'Last of the Mohicans'?”

Iceland is a foreign country

But, of course, you should really save
your 'Last of the Mohicans' references
for Seljalandsfoss, where you can walk
around to the cave behind the waterfall,
Daniel Day-Lewis style. And it will be in-
teresting to see how 'Land Ho!' plays to
an audience of moviegoers who know
more about this country than the people
on screen do.
The film depicts a vacation, after all.
Mitch and Colin interact largely with
service professionals, and other Anglo
vacationers. In the smoking bay at Dolly,
they do have a brief conversation with one
Icelander, who greets them with a drawn-
out, drunken “Americaaaaaaaaans!” (He's
played by local rapper Emmsjé Gauti.) In
an inside joke for other former visitors,
Mitch curses emphatically after Colin
reads him the alcohol content of his su-
permarket beer.
'Land Ho!' was shot like a vacation,
too. Stephens, Katz and their crew stayed
in an Airbnb rental downtown (they have
professed a fondness for Noodle Station),
and what we see on-screen during the
out-of-city portion of the film represents
the production logistics, minus a couple
extra rental cars and hostel beds. The
editing takes some slight liberties with
the geography of Iceland, but nothing
so egregious as the recent Icelandic film
'Vonarstræti', which was largely shot on
Tjarnargata. Like their protagonists, the
filmmakers were on a fixed schedule and
finite budget, and had to stick to an itiner-
ary. (Though they did make the film out of
sequence, shooting the Highland scenes
first in late September 2013, before the F-
roads closed and to take advantage of the
longer days, before heading to the city in
early October.)
That said, 'Land Ho!' was a profes-
sional production, with an Icelandic co-
producer to navigate the country's foreign
production incentives, and an Icelandic
locations manager to see to permits for
filming in protected areas. But the con-
trast between this film and other Ameri-
can movies shot in Iceland is striking. The
crew of 'Land Ho!' for part of their shoot
shared a Landmannalaugar hotel with the
B-unit from Christopher Nolan's 'Interstel-
lar', who got all the nicer rooms. Iceland
is Iceland in 'Land Ho!', unlike in 'Inter-
stellar', in which Vatnajökull stands in for
deep space—or in 'Oblivion' (Iceland as
postapocalyptic New York), 'Sands of Iwo
Jima', et cetera.
And yet this film, about tourists and
made by tourists, takes a tourist's-eye-
view of Iceland as well—the germ of the
idea for it came as Stephens was re-
searching a possible pleasure trip. Iceland
is Iceland, sure, but it is still treated as an
otherworldly place. Which it is, of course,
to the characters, and the filmmakers. In
interviews, this perspective is something
Stephens and Katz have been quite frank
about. The country is the ironic counter-
point to Mitch and Colin's habits; it is the
fountain of youth, as in the natural hot
springs that Colin rejuvenates himself in;
or, as in many shots of landscape or the
honeycomb windows of Harpa, it is a
source of straightforward wonder.
Some critics have complained that the
film doesn't really attempt to understand
Iceland. But 'Land Ho!' doesn't insult
anyone by pretending that it does; and
if this is a problem, it's a problem partly
of Iceland's own making. The film's Ice-
land, with its sprinklings of Nordic quirk
over a landscape of unfathomable inhu-
man volcanic grandeur, is pretty much the
distilled essence of Iceland Export, the
national brand that has been aggressively
marketed during the build-up of the cur-
rent post-crash tourism bubble.
For that reason, it's a great choice to
open RIFF. The film festival is a two-way
gateway: it does its part for the integration
of Iceland in the global film community,
while at the same time its programming
brings a wide swath of world cinema to lo-
cal audiences. 'Land Ho!' allows Iceland-
ers to see their own downtown haunts
and national landmarks through foreign
eyes.
The old man is describing how impressed he was with Geyser. “A cum shot to the sky,” he
says, in his throaty good-old-boy accent. “Like the Devil's exploding.”
In 'Land Ho!', which opens the eleventh annual Reykjavík International Film Festival on
September 25, Iceland is the backdrop for unlikely couplings. The film is codirected by
Martha Stephens and Aaron Katz, two American filmmakers known for ambling, engaging
indies featuring plenty of regional specificity, low-key drama, and off-kilter performers.
Photo
Still from 'Land Ho!'
Words
Mark Asch
THE NUMBER 1 MUSIC STORE
IN EUROPE ACCORDING TO
LONELY PLANET
SKÓLAVÖRÐUSTÍG 15, 101 REYKJAVÍK AND HARPA CONCERT HALL
What To
Expect At
RIFF…
The Reykjavík International Film Fes-
tival features over 100 titles from all
over the world. Highlights include the
following:
In the feature competition, a dozen
emerging filmmakers vie for the Gold-
en Puffin, while the Golden Egg is up
for grabs in the shorts competition.
Mike Leigh, the English director
known for his working-class spirit
and unique collaborations with ac-
tors, is a Guest of Honour; he'll bring
his period biopic 'Mr. Turner', along
with a mini-retrospective of his work.
Rising Swedish auteur Ruben Östlund
will also appear with his festival fave
'Force Majeure'.
A sampling of other recent critical fa-
vourites leads up to the Closing Night
film, Richard Linklater's twelve-years-
in-the-making 'Boyhood'.
The documentary selection covers
everything from Mahmoud Darwish
to Jarvis Cocker, from art forgery to
global migration, with many ecological
and socially conscious docs grouped
in the A Different Tomorrow section.
For special events, the fest goes
walkabout in Kópavogur: a “cinema-
concert” pairs the metal band Sólsta-
fir with Hrafn Gunnlaugsson's 1984
Viking epic 'When the Raven Flies';
'Dumb and Dumber' screens at a
makeshift drive-in at Smárabíó; and
RIFF continues its tradition of films
screened in geothermal swimming
pools.
For complete information, check
out en.riff.is.
The American Indie
Filmmaker's Guide
to Iceland
The Reykjavík International
Film Festival's Opening Night
feature, 'Land Ho!', is a charming,
fascinating tourist's-eye-view
www.riff.isThe Reykjavík International Film Festival
runs September 25-October 5
'Land Ho!' at RIFF
P R E V I E W
FILM