Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.10.2016, Síða 42

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‘The Oath’ is something of a
palette-cleanser for director and
star Baltasar Kormákur, back in
his own backyard after a couple
years helming far-flung block-
busters. It also reflects the prac-
tical outlook of RVK Studios, his
production company: following
‘Trapped’, a reverse-engineered
Nordic Noir presold to most ma-
jor European broadcasts markets,
‘The Oath’, written by Baltasar and
‘Trapped’ cowriter Ólafur Egill
Egilsson, gives another supple
thriller premise a workout across
Unique Iceland locations. This
new film “could easily lend itself
to remake sales,” said trade pub-
lication Variety.
Baltasar has described ‘The
Oath’ in interviews as “the real-
istic version of ‘Taken’,” as it con-
cerns a straightforward middle-
aged man with a Very Particular
Set of Skills (here, Baltasar’s
Finnur is a brilliant heart sur-
geon, and his skillset involves
cutting people open and sewing
them up again), willing to Go to
Any Length to rescue his daugh-
ter. But there are also echoes of
Baltasar’s own ‘Jar City’ (2006) in
the setup, as upright Finnur, like
Inspector Erlendur, is unable to
keep his daughter from sliding
into drug addiction. Anna (Hera
Hilmar of ‘Vonarstræti’, Icelan-
dic cinema’s current go-to good
girl gone bad) is in love with her
supplier Ottar (Gísli Örn Garðars-
son), who comes complete with
Gísli Pálmi shades, bull mastiff
and underworld connections; to
sever their bond, Finner is willing
to meet felonies with felonies.
Baltasar, who first came to
prominence as an actor, is in
front of the camera for the first
time since 2008’s ‘Reykjavík-Rot-
terdam’, and directing himself
in a prominent role for the first
time ever; he’s said that it wasn’t
a challenge to switch between
jobs, as the film’s point-of-view is
so closely aligned with Finnur’s.
Indeed, Finnur—warned in the
opening-credits epigraph against
“playing God”—sets out to be the
author of the film’s actions, ma-
nipulating family members, col-
leagues and police and carrying
out his plans with the precision
of a storyboard artist. Baltasar is
a director who’s always seemed
more interested in the filmmak-
ing process itself than in any re-
current set of themes; you can
maybe see why he was drawn to
the high-achieving protagonist.
The film, whose two-month
shoot was the longest in Icelan-
dic cinema history, is a tribute to
its workaholic cowriter-director-
producer-star’s professionalism
and standards-raising attention
to detail. As Godard turned 60s
Paris into an effects-free sci-fi
dystopia by shooting ‘Alphaville’
in the city’s most futuristic-look-
ing locations, ‘The Oath’ is set en-
tirely within the capital region’s
most Scandi-modern locations,
with nary a scruffy intrusion into
the production design. Finnur
trains for triathlons by biking
through desolate snow-dusted
lava fields under a steel-gray sky,
while Ottar works out with all
the other tribally tattooed at the
World Class in Seltjarnarnes, with
its floor-to-ceiling glass win-
dows. All the clothes look straight
out of the Jör winter collection;
Ottar lives in a new luxury flat in
Grandi and Finnur lives at Bak-
kaflöt 1, in Garðabær, a marvelous
turf house by way of Frank Lloyd
Wright designed by Högna Sig-
urðardóttir, Iceland’s first major
female architect (and the mother
of the late French-Icelandic film-
maker Sólveig Anspach, whose fi-
nal film, ‘The Aquatic Effect’, just
opened RIFF—see our previous
issue).
The raw material of Icelandic
geography and society, is in ‘The
Oath’ sufficiently heavily distilled
to make a credible backdrop for
tightly plotted genre storytelling.
(This was true of ‘Trapped’, too,
though that was in world-weary,
phlegmatic police-procedural
vein that felt less overtly stylized.)
Yet for all its high-gloss proficien-
cy, the payoff ‘The Oath’ delivers is
a bleak one, an emotionally drain-
ing summation of the film’s take
on fathers and daughters, love and
control.
Now playing with English subtitles
at Háskólabíó every day at 18:10.
Words MARK ASCH
‘The Oath’
Movie Baltasar Kormákur42
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 16 — 2016
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