In the Icelandic equivalent of Terry Zwigoff’s “Ghost World ” (2000), director Dagur Kári pulls off a big film with sets containing little more than snow and ice. Tómas Lemarquis plays Nói Kristmundsson, an albino genius with an attitude in a very small town in a very remote part of Iceland. His only source of income is jimmying the local slot machine into paying out a jackpot bonus every now and then and his only friend is controlled by a neurotic father who won’t let him go out at night and howl at the moon with the rebel Nói .
Nói is being raised by his grandmother who is a few cubes short of a tray herself. She wakes her charge in the morning by firing the family shotgun out the window in his bedroom. His father, a part time taxi driver in a town with no apparent need for a taxi, devotes himself to the time-honored Nordic tradition of drinking the long nights away in the winter, as well as many of the long days in the summer. Possibly burdened with intelligence himself, he has failed to find a way out of the tedium of the town’s isolation and he has failed in every way a father can. The boy’s mother is nowhere to be found.
When Nói wants to get away from it all, which is frequently, he hides out in a cellar-like space he has made for himself beneath his grandmother’s house. This is the only place he can be himself. As the movie progresses, Nói is being backed into a corner from which there is no easy way out. As he grows mature he finds it increasingly hard to shut out the reality around him. He is different than the others in the town—there is no place for him there, but he doesn’t know where to go. Like Jim Carry in “The Truman Show ” he has no sense of reality beyond the few icy streets of his native village.
Enter Íris (played by Elín Hansdóttir) a comely maiden recently returned to her father’s care reportedly to recover from some vague, but bad experiences in “the cities to the South.” We aren’t told exactly what these bad experiences entailed, but her father certainly is going to protect her from any further such negative traumas, as he has her locked up by nightfall. To Nói she represents a way out; a pathway to freedom. But she isn’t so sure. The two soon find their own ways of getting together in a town with no public spaces of any kind, at least none that are heated above freezing. As they find their way into each other hearts, Nói confides in her his secret: he’s busting out soon and she should come with him. But there’s a difference between Nói and Íris; she’s seen the outside world and he hasn’t.
In making an “American Graffiti” set in a frozen Mayberry, director/writer Kári shows he knows a lot more about American culture than simply slot machines. He has conjured up some very special scenes running the gamut of western archetypal experiences from being caught sneaking into the girlfriends room by her father to evading what would seem to be a certain drunk driving conviction. Although growing up weird, Nói always seems to find a way out. As luck would have it, the town he is trying desperately to shut out still keeps sticking up for him. Treating him like the village idiot with some kind of strange infirmity that will not let him simply sit in a cozy cell and watch the snow flakes fall outside.
Trapped in the fond embrace of the town folk, including his hapless father, Nói is frustrated by his emotionally bonding to a town that is smothering him. Faced with a future like his father’s, he knows he has to leave. But how? His attempts to conspire with Íris are thwarted; he has no partner in crime and is running out of options.
In danger of fading away against the frozen backdrop of the remote Icelandic fiord, Nói slips and slides his way through the icy streets as he fights his way through the boredom of each pale dawn. He probes for a weak spot in the town’s invisible walls, making lame attempts at a life of crime to get the resources he needs to leave. One day while he is in his cellar hide-away, the doors to the outside open cataclysmically and he is released. Not released physically, but released emotionally. The slate is wiped clean and he is free to go at last.
Director Kári explains that he was not simply making a movie about life in small town Iceland, but using the stark emptiness of the environment to emphasize the smallness of the life that Nói is being forced to leave behind. The gruff warmth of the community stands in stark contrast to the coldness that the protagonist finds in a future in his birthplace. The people want to help but they have no understanding for the young man with this curious infirmity of intelligence.
Like Jason Schwartzman’s Max Fischer in “Rushmore ,” Nói tries all the wrong ways out but prevails in the end, as youth always does. A paean to coming of age, the story of his release is both funny and touching. A victory for director Dagur Kári and star Tómas Lemarquis, Nói establishes Icelandic cinema on the forefront of the international film scene and represents a vibrant and truthful statement about youth the world over; indeed, about defining who we are and making our mark on the conformist landscape around us.
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