A White, White Day

Peo­ple react to bereave­ment in dif­fer­ent ways. In the wilds of Ice­land, a gruff mid­dle-aged police­man takes time off work to grieve for his wife, who died when her car went off-road in fog­gy con­di­tions. Ingimundur, played by esteemed Ice­landic actor Ing­var Sig­urds­son, is the sort of fur­rowed-brow, grey-haired, old-school type who doesn’t put his emo­tions on display.

Instead, he throws him­self into ren­o­vat­ing an iso­lat­ed prop­er­ty to make it hab­it­able for his grand­daugh­ter. The film’s title, we’re informed in an open­ing cap­tion, refers to the sort of day, ​‘Where you can no longer tell the dif­fer­ence between the earth and the sky,’ hence the dead can talk to the liv­ing. If that sug­gests some sort of super­nat­ur­al com­mu­nion, the sto­ry which sub­se­quent­ly unfolds is about an accep­tance of real­i­ty – how­ev­er bit­ter it might be – as a first step towards mov­ing on.

What’s remark­able about Hlynur Pálmason’s dra­ma is the way its ele­men­tal set­tings lend every­thing an oneir­ic qual­i­ty. Yet the scenes play out with a very real, vis­cer­al inten­si­ty, espe­cial­ly once Ingimundur uncov­ers an uncom­fort­able secret about his mar­riage and seeks an out­let for his anger. In this rugged land­scape, there’s one route in and out, so the road acquires a kind of myth­ic sta­tus, espe­cial­ly since the crash site is main­tained as a memo­r­i­al – and there’s a tun­nel through a moun­tain, which becomes a weighty metaphor for all the trou­bles bear­ing down on the protagonist.

Trou­ble is, in Sigurdsson’s fierce per­for­mance, the bear-with-a-sore-head approach to every­thing doesn’t appear to be get­ting him any­where, bring­ing brac­ing con­flict with his for­mer col­leagues at the police sta­tion, fright­en­ing his grand­child to a dis­tress­ing degree, and tar­get­ing his ire towards a male acquain­tance of his wife through her teach­ing job. The may­hem unfolds in some remark­able unbro­ken takes, yet Pálmason and Sig­urds­son nev­er lose sight of the heal­ing that’s tak­ing place behind the glow­er­ing looks and gun-tot­ing aggression.

The film’s grip tight­ens relent­less­ly, dis­play­ing Pálmason’s rapid­ly devel­op­ing con­fi­dence, after a first fea­ture, (2017’s Win­ter Broth­ers), which man­aged to hyp­not­i­cal­ly cap­ture the process­es of under­ground min­ing, but framed them with a saga of fra­ter­nal ten­sions which didn’t engage to the same degree. Here, we grasp ear­ly on through Ingimundur’s ten­der deport­ment towards grand­daugh­ter Sai­ka (utter­ly believ­able child actor Ída Mekkin Hlyns­dot­tir), that good­ness is cer­tain­ly with­in him, yet his errant behav­iour inten­si­fies the sit­u­a­tion, com­ing clos­er to a point of no return, unless he can some­how get through the bar­ri­er of his own rage and resentment.

Which brings us to Pálmason’s pièce de résistance, a cli­mac­tic music cue which is as unex­pect­ed as it’s effec­tive in fix­ing the tur­bu­lent feel­ings of the moment. It’s cred­i­ble in being from a record that Ingimundur might con­ceiv­ably own, but it also express­es a make-or-break emo­tion­al blow-out with such pre­ci­sion that the effect is tru­ly jaw-drop­ping. To know more, you’ll have to expe­ri­ence it for your­self. But then you do real­ly need to see this mar­vel­lous­ly con­ceived and sus­tained slice of life, which achieves an aus­tere Beck­et­t­ian affir­ma­tion of the ful­fil­ment of keep­ing on, even in the most per­son­al­ly daunt­ing of circumstances.