Despite good intentions, the film of the Icelander Rùnar Rùnarsson is unable to reach the quality of great movies.
From the 23rd to the 28th of September, the Cinema du Parc (Montréal) offered a FOCUS programmation dedicated to the Scandinavian cinema. It is in this context that I had the occasion to watch the film of the Icelander Rùnar Rùnarsson that the critiques praised at numerous independent film festivals. The film tells the story of Ari, a 16 years old boy who has to move to his father place in the isolated Fjord countryside after having been living in the cities for years. Ari has a very difficult relationship with his father who is at the verge of alcoholism; and his childhood friends seem to have change a lot. It is in this context that the teenager will have to discover his path to adulthood.
Rùnarsson’s initiatory film has to merit to avoid the pitfall of the “glamorization” of the teenage boredom in countryside, which is a cliché that most of the films approaching a similar subject are always materializing. The director settles for the subtile depiction of the everyday life of his hero without trying to dramatize it or to awake a feeling of admiration from the spectators. The actors contribute to this effort through the pertinence of their performance, especially Ingvar Sigurðsson who plays Ari’s father.
The film also offers moment of grace where the photography, usually pretty banal and flat during the rest of the movie, becomes poetic and levels up the scene’s purpose to a quasi-spiritual level, especially when Ari, normally very silent, lets an emotion escape or sings with an angelic voice.
Besides, the last third of the movie goes deeper into melancholia and provides audacious shots that serve genius’ ideas. The last scenes’ propos are very dark, the mise en scene and the cinematography yet succeed in encapsulating them with softness. The contrast between this softness and this gloom colors the movie with a tender melancholia.
However, the last party’s charm does unfortunately not succeed in balancing the slowness and the banality of the rest of the movie. Rùnarsson’s film does not exploit enough theses moments of garce and these original ideas and fails to find a punchy rhythm.
Moreover, the camera does not magnify the Icelandic landscapes, yet sublime and potentially carrier of lyricism. That is a shame and this misuse is very frustrating as the banal presentation that the film makes of these landscapes prevents the opportunity to offer a even more melancholic and poetic dimension to the film.
Finally, the spectators remain unfulfilled. The rhythm is too slow and thus limits the transmission of emotions that Rùnarsson tries to create. The high quality of the last third of the movie makes us regret the fact that the rest of the film is not colored with the same obscure genius. This contest prevents the audience to understand what message the director really tries to communicate. Nonetheless, the film outlines a promising future for the Scandinavian cinema if this one succeeds one day in exploring more deeply its tendency for the bittersweet.
Sparrows:
Directed by Rùnar Rùnarsson
With: Rakel Björk Björnsdótir, Atli Oskar Fjalarsson, Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson.
In theaters the 28 September 2016.
