Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.10.2017, Qupperneq 38

Poseidon Has Left
The Building
New documentary ‘Atlantis, Iceland’ sinks
Words: Rex Beckett Photo: Still from the film
Music documentaries about Ice-
land have had a fairly spotty past,
and their titles are often met with
extended groans, so when I came
across the Australian-made title
‘Atlantis, Iceland’ in this year’s
RIFF program, I knew I had to
witness it. The de-
scription of the film
presented it as ap-
proaching Iceland’s
punk scene, which
highly intrigued me,
given that those are
my people. I knew
this one deserved a
chance.
The movie begins
with the basis of a
potentially interesting central sto-
ry about a nameless, faceless Aus-
tralian man fascinated by three
young Icelandic girls he had seen
in a movie years ago. The film’s ti-
tle eludes him but the images of
the girls haunts him. As he arrives
in Iceland, the country hits one of
the many recent political fracases
and the man’s inner activist punk
is galvanized to engage.
Bizarre narration
Unfortunately the film quickly cuts
away to poorly contextualized in-
terviews with local bands who re-
inforce old clichés, clearly spurred
on by poor questions. Answers
from Allie Doersch—vocalist for
Tófa, and an American immigrant
to Iceland—seem to suggest basic
questions about why she wanted
to move there. The questions gen-
erally miss opportunities to ask
people engaged in political punk
rock about even the basic electoral
process. Instead of examining the
culture of being quiet and lining up
properly at the polls, they simply
state: “So quiet, so polite, so Ice-
land”—proving that the interview-
ers spent zero time downtown on
a weekend night out. So loud, so
belligerent, so Iceland.
The filmmakers take one op-
portunity to delve into political
discussion by prodding the minds
of the masses at a Halloween cos-
tume party, where
the unnamed, intox-
icated speakers de-
liver cringe-inducing
repartee worthy of a
9th grade angst man-
ifesto. At this point it
feels like the movie
may have veered en-
tirely away from its
original plot. It even
seems to cease being
a music documentary. But it all
keeps circling back to these places
in sharply edited, recycled footage
and bizarre displaced narration.
Shit sandwich
One of the best parts of the mov-
ie is the inclusion of comedians
Hugleikur Dagsson and Jono Duffy,
who present one of the most realis-
tic, down to earth and non-clichéd
perspectives in the film. But again,
it comes out of nowhere, existing
in its own space. The scene ends
and immediately cuts away to the
banking crash of 2008 and the
Panama Papers scandal.
The film’s return to constantly
discussing how beautiful people
outside of Iceland think the coun-
try is, and the rising tourist inter-
est, comes across as grating and
smarmy. It’s glaringly false when
it’s claimed that Iceland is one of
the last “untouched” places in the
world, when huge sections of the
country’s natural landscape have
been decimated by heavy industry
(see: Káranhjúkur).
The movie best holds togeth-
er when it returns once again to
the central plot surrounding the
three girls in the movie. Eventu-
ally the mysterious man finds
that these girls were from Chris
Marker’s ‘Sans Soleil,’ but this an-
ticlimactic reveal topples the pro-
jected ideal of perfect happiness
that he derived from those images.
The mysterious faceless character
suddenly disappears from sight
and seemingly from actual exist-
ence. He has realised that there is
no Atlantis under this frozen rock,
and the shattered illusion shatters
the narrative. The movie’s bizarre
conclusion seems to abandon any
connection to its original aim and
what’s left feels like the kind of
sandwich you make when you’re
high—two pieces of plain white
bread on the outside and a lot of
bullshit in the middle.
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Events
Film
FILM
A confused Australian following his Icelandic dream
“The film cuts
to poorly con-
textualized in-
terviews with
local bands
who reinforce
old clichés.”