Filmkaraktären ”the choir director” always makes me a tad nervous. They are surely helpful and encouraging in the reality in film is often a preachy shimmer about them, which I usually dislike. The profession is to have any symbolic value, I guess, to say something important about the individual, something more and greater than they are standing and waving in front of a singing crowd. But here, as in many other films with the choir director, goes the point is lost. That 49-year-old Halla (Halldóra Geirhardsdóttir) is a cute and nice choir director adds nothing.
It is, of course, the contrast between the profession and her fritidssysslor to be an exciting clash. What no one knows is that please Halla really is Iceland’s infamous miljöterrorist ”Mountain woman” who for a enmanskrig against the exploitation of the country’s nature.
she saws down, and shatters elmaster and power lines out there among the Islands breathtaking green hills are odd enough and need, as well as not be stressed by that she likes to lead the singing. There will be cake on the cake. And more cakes are, unfortunately, on the way.
a large number of attacks she gets a letter in the mail that her adoptionsansökan approved and that she will go to the Ukraine to pick up a child – a little 5-year-old girl. At the same time as her twin sister will head to India to meditate in two years. At the same time as a Spanish cyclist happens to be bad, at the same time as…
Halldóra Geirhardsdóttir is both kind and merciless, and perhaps the most credible in a film where credibility is in short supply.
All these coincidences makes the movie sprawling. I wonder what story I should focus on – all feels a bit tillgjorda and undeveloped. Director Benedikt Erlingsson selected a ”thrilling” grip for the soundtrack does not make things better. The musicians are visible in the picture in season and out of season. A trio with a tuba, drum and accordion stands and play on a hill, in an apartment, along the way. Completely uncommented.
Is not the musicians in the picture is a Ukrainian kvinnotrio and sing – certainly very beautiful but also disturbing. If this would be a really good idea, would film history be full of movies with uncommented the musicians in the middle of the plot – think the opening of ”Apocalypse now” with Wagner playing the orchestra in the midst napalmen. Fun!
”Woman at war”. Photo: Scanbox
Benedikt Erlingsson broke through with ”Of horses and men (2013), which depicts the special relationship that can occur between humans and animals. Now when it is man and nature on the wallpaper, he must have known that the latter is too quiet and static, and felt compelled to pepper his script with all kinds of strange.
a few positive sides to the ”Woman at war”. Bergsteinn Björgulfssons photo is absolutely outstanding. When Hold is pressed against the ground, you feel almost how it smells, when she is hiding high on a hill, you feel the wind in their hair, when the man sees her immersed in a heat source also know I välbehaget. For all who want to the Island, you can spare you and the climate the ticket – to see the ”Woman at war” is set to be in place.
Although the acting is fine. Halldóra Geirhardsdóttir is both kind and merciless, and perhaps the most credible in a film where credibility is in short supply. However, I would expect much more of the Islands Oscarsbidrag.
See more. Three other and a little better icelandic films: ”the deep” (2012), ”About horses and men (2013) and ”men and sheep” (2015).
Link to the graphics
