I thought a lot about the mythologies and archetypes when I wrote the movie – and Pippi Longstocking. Then have the women always had a prominent role in the environmental movement. Thank you Sweden for Greta Thunberg!
When the icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson visit the Gothenburg film festival in January is the apocalypse theme of the year – and certainly fits his second feature film ”Woman at war” into the program.
raises his bow and arrow as a klimataktivistisk Robin Hood, when she cut the power lines in the highlands of the ”Woman at war”. Or as a contemporary version of Artemis, the Greek nature – and goddess of hunting, suggests Benedikt Erlingsson.
The skämtsamme the director becomes more serious when he talks about what he describes as the political theatre of the climate, as depicted in ”Woman at war”. When Halla spreads its insistent miljömanifest on Reykjavik’s streets gets the message immediately gimped in the media and distorted by the politicians. Everything is about the battle for the narrative, says Erlingsson.
Benedikt Erlingsson describes the ”Woman at war” as an upbeat action movie. Photo: Tomas Ohlsson
But in any apocalyptic depression he does not want to create, but rather an optimistic action movie.
” I wasn’t thinking about genre in manusarbetet but very much on the action during the actual recording. What is it that makes an action movie to an action movie when it comes to the film’s language? In short, I tried to make a wide and popular with audiences independent film about a serious subject.
– the Antagonist has many faces, it is not only an evil man chasing her. It was something that the Danish Film institute was very worried about when they read the script, they thought that I needed to create a monster. But the antagonist is the society itself.
The eye-catching setting of the ”Woman at war” serves as a reminder of what is at stake if environmental degradation continues, the Film’s ekoterrorist to the heroine narrowly escapes the police by hiding behind the stone mounds and licking their wounds in the hot springs. After the completion of the sabotage she puts herself prone on the ground for a moment mossnära mindfulness.
When the ”Woman at war” premiered at the Cannes film festival last spring, used the reviewers are not just ”Icelandic” as origin but also as adjectives.
– It is almost a fascist question, les Benedikt Erlingsson.
” I understand what you mean, nations are becoming the trademarks of the film. But I don’t want to analyze what it means, then maybe it starts to affect me. What if I were to try to live up to the performances of what it means to be icelandic?
Benedikt Erlingsson wanted to free themselves from the icelandic genre of ”men in crisis”. Photo: Tomas Ohlsson
– Yes, in the icelandic film, we have had a genre that we call the “man in crisis”. It has been our trademark for many years, but I have tried to detach myself from it. My last film was, for example, if a man and a horse in crisis, my new film is about a woman in crisis!
Erlingsson laugh but inculcates ago that there actually are some eccentric people of Strindberg also – there is no icelandic exclusivity. At the same time he says they want to do something else, and not only portray a kvalfylld man’s internal struggle. He talks about a longing back to the old stories, of knights slaying dragons, but utgjutelser about how they feel about their exploits.
“We have perhaps had enough of the psychoanalytic skitsnacket where people have their heads in their respective asses,” he says.
Please come to the Island and save us from ourselves
Strindberg, in all its glory – the icelander mentions two other swedes who their most important mentors: Peter Engkvist, artistic director at Teater Pero in Stockholm, sweden, and Marek Kostrzewski at the theatre academy in Malmö.
Erlingsson has a long background in icelandic theatre and has collaborated several times with his protagonist in ”Woman at war”, Halldóra Geirhardsdóttir. Together with Peter Engkvist they did include a reworking of the medeltidssagan of Gunnlaug Ormstunga in the 1990s. Now wanted Erlingsson make a fairy tale about the climate crisis.
the Heroine lives camouflaged as a well-adjusted middle-class. No one is looking askance at her when the police starts chasing the woman on the mountain, which makes the politicians nervous and jeopardize chinese investments.
Erlingsson may have done an icelandic film, but the climate crisis is a global story, and ”Woman at war” is no reseannons. A recurring figure in erling’s both films is a Spanish tourist, who happens to bad out and becomes misstänkliggjord of the surrounding area.
– It is a universal concept – blame it all on the alien! A journalist told me that he would not like to visit Iceland as a tourist, after having seen the movie. Which seemed silly since it is the tourists who saves the highlands, otherwise it would surely be exploited in any way. Please come to the Island and save us from ourselves, we are so stupid and we live alone on an island in the Atlantic ocean!