Atlantica - 01.12.2004, Side 21

AT L A N T I C A 19
“We have been so proud of our landscape.
You never thought just to paint yellow
lines on the road you could get America,”
Helga Stefansdóttir, costume designer for
A Little Trip to Heaven quips.
She nods out towards the set, where a pic-
ture perfect American diner stands road-
side with the backdrop of what look like
fallow fields. Never mind that if we look
the other direction, we see a breathtaking
vista with the active Hekla volcano and the
glacier Eyjafjallajökull.
It is the penultimate day of shooting for A
Little Trip to Heaven. The film, set in the
American upper Midwest, features Forest
Whitaker, Julia Stiles and a slew of accom-
plished American and British actors, many
of whom took a pay cut to work on the
character-driven thriller. And to work with
Baltasar Kormákur, the director of 101
Reykjavik and Hafid.
A day on the set watching Mr. Kormákur at work immedi-
ately answers my obvious question: why shoot Minnesota in
Iceland? The answer is that Kormákur has a gift for convey-
ing the mood and atmosphere of a region—a strong enough
gift that he can create the region as necessary. I can attest to
the effectiveness of the set: unless I look away from the set,
I feel like I am in one of the Minnesota towns I frequented in
graduate school.
It helps that three assistants are struggling to bring a 1970s
AMC Pacer back to life.
“Forest was out driving it. We’ve driven this thing all over
Iceland. Finally, he hit a puddle and it drowned,” the man
under the hood tells me.
Just then an American gaffer begins laughing. He points
at the massive roadside Jesus billboard with the slogan
“Providence has favored our undertakings,” a set piece for
the movie. An Icelandic police cruiser has parked just under
the billboard.
“It didn’t take them long to figure that out. Just like an
American speed trap.”
As shooting is wrapping up, we have agreed to avoid distract-
ing cast members and act only as flies on the wall. The cast
members, evidently, haven’t been told this.
HELGA STEFANSDÓTTIR
EMERGES FROM THE
WARDROBE AND MAKE
UP BUS; BOTTOM LEFT,
ACTRESS ANNE REID
PREPARES FOR HER
SCENE; ACTOR FOREST
WHITAKER IN CHARACTER.
➔20
Sleepy American Town...
with Glaciers
009 Airmail Atl 604.indd 19 23.10.2004 15:54:19