I'd love to hear any thoughts people are having on this film. Please don't always wait for me to start a discussion on this blog; everyone is encouraged to post on anything they want, as long as it's related to contemporary European cinema in some way.
I found myself wondering about the folklore and mythology of Iceland as it relates to the film. The belief in disappearing elves is mentioned, and of course people and things disappearing into thin air is a prominent motif. Here are several websites I found that discuss this belief system in Iceland:
New York Times article on elf and gnome folklore in Iceland
Searching for Elves and Hidden People
An article from New York Magazine on Iceland's financial collapse and an ex-pat's attempt to debunk Vanity Fair's rumors, including one about elves
Wikipedia article on the Huldufolk
I really emjoyed this movie, I found the characters more relatable than the characters in some of the other movies we have watched. My only problem with the film stems from a cultural disconnect. Before viewing this movie, I had no knowledge of how deeply ingrained the "elf" is in Icelandic culture, so I was unable to pick up on references to the Elves, or Hidden People in the story (such as the various times that the old man vanishes). This left me feeling like parts of the film were unexplained for no reason, but since doing a little reading on the Elves, the story makes much more sense. This led me to wonder how many references we as viewers miss when we view films from different cultures. How much of the story can we really get without having at least a cursory understanding of the culture from which it comes?
ReplyDeleteFor me, not knowing anything about Icelandic folklore wasn't a problem, I guess I just attributed anything mysterious in the movie to choices made by the writer. From the beginning I felt there was a significant air of solemn mysticism, coming from the clear relationship the old man shared with nature, and his strange discord with city life, so I subconsciously welcomed any mysterious occurrences as confirmation of that connection. I guess the title had a lot to do with that, because I spent much of the movie trying to prove the title's validity, just something I often do when watching a film because titles can say a lot, or very little, they can be a major perceptual clue when the rest is arbitrary. These are all things I think about in my own art.
ReplyDeleteSomething else that struck me about this film is how far we have come from the times when families stuck together til the end, taking care of our elders who in turn teach their grandchildren the words of the wise. its really sad, i think, that the family structure has exploded like that, with aging parents in nursing homes and brothers and sisters, parents and children flung all over the country and the world.
This film has some really beautiful imagery. The scene that stuck with me the most over the course of the week was that of the old man dragging the woman's coffin through the tall grass of their home island. I felt as though she was his last hope for life, and her death brought about an end to his earthly stay nearly as conclusively as his own death did. His journey to the graveyard to bury her is truly epic. There is a great mix of tragedy and glory in his effort. This scene reinforced the notion that he could not have endured a long stay in a nursing home.
ReplyDeleteThis film was definitely something I could tell as being creatively Icelandic. I've seen Noi the Albino and both directors treat the landscape very similarly. There are a lot of long shots exposing the beauty of it all, similar to how Chinese landscape paintings capture the deafening awe of the scenery instead of the importance of people.
ReplyDeleteAmerican films that I've seen generally seem to be tightly focused on the people, sometimes so much that the environment gets lost. But the environment is just as important, like a character itself.
I feel the same way about the scene where the man makes a coffin for the woman and buries her. You don't usually see the act of bury a body portrayed in such an intimate way (with the obvious exception of Six Feet Under) on screen. We've made dead bodies so sterile and we've completely removed ourselves from dealing them. This man wanted to fulfill his friend's wishes to be buried where she grew up and he did not have a funeral home and casket suppliers and chemicals at his finger tips. He had to make use of what he had.
ReplyDeleteI was most interested in the sounds of living, which were emphasized throughout the film. For example, the film opens with a prominenet slurping of soup. When he reaches the city, these deteriorate and are replaced by jackhammers and cars. Once the couple reaches the North country, these sounds return with the fire, then the sawing and planing of slats for the woman's coffin.
ReplyDeleteGood points, all, especially about the cultural breakdown of the traditional notions of family, and the use of sound, and the emphasis upon landscape.
ReplyDeleteDespite having a fairly simple story and mise en scene, I find this film very layered and complex. This may be due to the variation in audience response, as such a film is bound to strike deeply at the psyche, and thereby touch all of us differently in terms of our own beliefs about the subjects of family, nature, aging, and death, among other things.
I'm interested in how this film seems to subvert any notions of genre; it is funny, but it's not a comedy. It's romantic, but it's not a love story. It's sad and disturbing at times, but it's not quite a standard drama, either.
I wasn’t especially fond of Children of Nature; however, I did try to analyze it for its content. It’s unbelievable to see how different the elder’s personalities become as they get older. Some positive and some negative. Everyone has their own outlook on life. The character Stella longed to go back to the old country where Thorgeir and her grew up which put life into a new perspective for me. This film has shown me that in the end we all wind up thinking about and longing for our youth. It also made me feel very depressed how invisible elderly people are in society.
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