Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.12.2016, Síða 44

Movie Saga of Icelandic Cinema44
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 18 — 2016
“Christmas—the hardest day of
the year.” Hlynur (Hilmir Snær
Guðnason) is dreading the tradi-
tional Icelandic Christmas din-
ner, rendered in Baltasar Kor-
mákur’s ‘101 Reykjavík’ (2000) as a
soul-sucking trip out of the down-
town bubble and into the heart
of bourgeois darkness: a new
Scandi-modern house in Grafar-
vogur, full of interminable jæja-
ing about the weather, the Land
Cruiser, the shopping trip over-
seas. It’s only natural for Hlynur
to spend the afternoon hiding
behind his mother’s sunglasses,
sparking up a cigarette for the
pre-tween cousin watching TV
in the den, and fantasising about
taking a pump-action shotgun to
the entire extended family.
‘101 Reykjavík’ is many things:
the stylistically confident first
feature film by Baltasar Kor-
mákur, then an prominent actor
and now Iceland’s leading cin-
ematic exporter; a still unpar-
alleled reference point for the
downtown postcode’s mythic
nightlife, a ritual scroll of deca-
dence unfurling continuously
from Friday night to whenever ev-
eryone wakes up on Sunday. But
it’s also a Christmas movie.
“I drop dead each weekend,”
Hlynur says, as he walks through
blizzard-beaten streets to the
poi ntless ea rd r u m-bu rst i ng
sardine-packed oblivion of Kaf-
fibarinn, where everyone’s al-
ready slept with everyone else.
He kills his days eating cereal in
the bath, and watching online
porn—whether or not his moth-
er, with whom he lives, is in the
room. (There is a strong Oedipal
component to this pushing-30 un-
employed man-baby’s emotional
life.)
Baltasar’s adaptation of Hall-
grímur Helgason’s zeitgeist novel
of 1996 plays up Hlynur’s delib-
erately “un-PC” worldview, a mix
of impotent misogyny and witty
self-loathing; the holding pattern
is nailed down further by Hlynur’s
go-nowhere mates, played by Óla-
fur Darri Ólafsson and Baltasar
himself, brazenly and horribly
soul-patched. They go to Kolapor-
tið to haggle over the price of a
white plastic Christmas tree, and
host the all-night house-party to
which Hlynur takes his mother’s
close friend, seductive flamenco
instructor Lola (early Almodóvar
muse Victoria Abril), after watch-
ing the fireworks. (Baltasar builds
the New Year’s sequence wonder-
fully, capturing the mix of alien-
invasion carnival grandeur and
casual anarchy of Reykjavík’s
rolling, collective festive-season
fireworks show, mixing pan-
oramic long shots looking out over
Tjörnin from Vesturbær’s Catho-
lic church, with more intimate
views of parents and children set-
ting off firecrackers in backyards
and on sidewalks.)
‘101 Reykjavík’ is the climax of
an unofficial trilogy charting the
birth of the modern downtown
scene over two decades. ‘Rokk
í Reykjavík’ (1982; see Issue 9 of
this year) documented the punk
underground that emerged after
the lifting of the live music ban;
slacker farce ‘Sódóma Reykjavík’
(1992; see Issue 11 of this year) em-
bellished the alternate-universe
nightlife that popped up follow-
ing the legalization of beer. ‘101
Reykjavík’ feels contemporary:
fifteen-odd years along, the crush
at Kaffibarinn hasn’t abated,
though there’s fewer Awesomely
90s Britpop haircuts and jump-
ers to be seen these days. The
film arrived just as Reykjavík’s
proximity to London airports and
weekly Saturnalia were turning it
into “the new Ibiza,” in the wor-
ried words of Damon Albarn, who,
before composing the ‘101 Reyk-
javík’ score with ex-Sugarcube
Einar Örn Benediktsson, dragged
his Blur bandmates up here in the
summer of 1996 to record much of
their self-titled fifth album, and
spent so much time at Kaffibar-
inn that its then-owners started
letting him drink for free and
telling everyone he had an own-
ership stake—a marketing gam-
bit which, hand-in-hand with ‘101
Reykjavík’, cemented the bar’s
iconic status. Set around the end
of one year and the beginning of
another, ‘101 Reykjavík’ isn’t just a
story of coming-of-age or rebirth
or whatever—it’s the first Icelan-
dic movie of the 21st century.
How to watch: The film has been re-
leased on English-subtitled Region 1
and Region 2 DVDs, and is available
to stream from Amazon.co.uk.
SHARE: gpv.is/re18
‘101 Reykavík’
Words MARK ASCH
OPEN 7-21
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