Reykjavík Grapevine - 16.06.2016, Síða 50

There had been Icelandic movies
before the 1980 release ‘Land and
Sons’, but in the Saga of Icelandic
Cinema they’d be the genealogies
setting up the real action. What
historians call the “Icelandic Film
Spring” begins with the formation
of the Icelandic Film Fund, the
state body whose grants still ef-
fectively underwrite the domestic
industry, giving local filmmakers
and technicians the opportunity
to gain experience while earning a
living.
The first Icelandic Film Fund
feature, ‘Land and Sons’ was well-
received by film critics abroad,
whose responses ranged from po-
lite to rapturous, and used a lot of
the adjectives (“sincere,” “worthy,”
“noble”) common to most reviews
of realist films depicting foreign
vistas and folkways. In Iceland, it
was a straight-up blockbuster—
over a third of the population did
their patriotic duty and bought
tickets in the first few weeks of
release. But most of all, ‘Land and
Sons’ is ground zero for Icelan-
dic cinema because the themes
animating the film—tradition and
change, rural heritage and the lure
of urban modernity—continue to
reverberate through Icelandic cul-
ture in an unwavering tone.
Adapted from a 1963 novel by
Indriði Þorsteinsson—father
of crime novelist Arnaldur—the
film was shot in the Svarfaðar-
dalur valley, inland from Dalvík,
and concerns Einar, who inherits
his father’s farm during the Great
Depression, as many of his debt-
burdened neighbors are selling up
and seeking their fortunes in the
expanding urban centres of a na-
tion on the cusp of independence.
The question for Einar, and for
the film, is whether the lure of the
land—of his own farm to work un-
til his dying day, like his ancestors
before him; of the pretty girl next
door; of the white horse he’s so
proud of—is a promise or a trap.
The film is an elegy to a past that
feels close enough to touch—the
landscape and annual sheep round-
up changed as little, between the
summer of 1937 and the summer
of 1979, as the hardy, homey rural
homesteads the filmmakers used
as sets. But despite the film’s senti-
mental appeal, its ending is almost
shocking for being so absolute.
Writer-director Ágúst Guð-
mundsson was a precocious cine-
phile, founding his school’s film
society in the 1960s, and scoring
invites to Czech Embassy screen-
ings of the European New Wave
films that would inspire him to
decamp for film school in the UK.
Shooting on leftover film stock,
with a bulky “blimp” set up around
the old camera to enable synchro-
nous sound recording, he achieved
an effectively dignified, accessible
style for the film, a sort of neoreal-
ism-by-necessity, with unobtrusive
setups emphasizing the stately
pace of country life in shadow of
magnificent nature.
Ágúst preferred to cast locals
rather than stage-trained Reykja-
vík actors for most of the support-
ing parts, though the leads were
professionals. As Einar, Sigurður
Sigurjónsson is convincingly
rootless, though he would subse-
quently find fame in the friendlier
confines of sketch comedy (and as
the Icelandic voice of SpongeBob
SquarePants). Sigurður returned
to drama and North Iceland in last
year’s Cannes prizewinner ‘Rams’,
as a dour holdout still working his
late father’s land, stubbornly keep-
ing the family line alive (the family
line of sheep, that is, if not neces-
sarily humans). In a way, the story
of Icelandic cinema begins with an
extinction—and it’s still being told.
How to watch it: Digital rental,
with English subtitles, available at
icelandiccinema.com; check your
local library
SHARE:
gpv.is/ls1
Words MARK ASCH
The Saga of Icelandic Cinema:
'Land & Sons'
Movies Retrospective50
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 8 — 2016
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