Billie August (director) & Ann Biderman (screenplay)
A SIX year old Inuit boy falls to his death from the roof of a multi-storey apartment block in Copenhagen. What had caused this youngster, who feared heights, to go there at all? Smilla, a scientist and the lad’s neighbour knows instinctively that it can’t just have been an accident.
Herself part Inuit, having grown up in Greenland, Smilla has seen snow in all its forms and knows that the tracks running in a straight line to the edge of the roof are not those of a boy at play as those around her maintain. She suspects something far more sinister to be the cause of death.
Julia Ormond, as Smilla, leads the strong cast featuring Gabriel Byrne, Richard Harris, Jim Broadbent, Robert Loggia and Vanessa Redgrave. Smilla’s frustration with her life constantly bubbles, barely suppressed, beneath the surface and in a strange way serves to emphasize her beauty. She was brought to Denmark by her father following her mother’s death and deeply resents him for that. "Iam tired of wondering why every day I am on this earth I'm an exile.", she tells her father towards the end of the movie. Smilla buries herself in her work as a kind of escape.
Flashbacks provide the backstory of how Smilla befriends her young neighbour, Isaiah, when he shyly appears at her door wanting to be read to. Initially she refuses to let him in wishing to maintain her self-imposed isolation from the world around her, but later she relents, even giving him a bath. Through a letter his mother gives her she is able to establish that a mysterious link exists between the boy’s death and the Greenland Mining Company. Isaiah’s post mortem reveals some disturbing marks on his body. Eventually, via several complex paths of investigation, Smilla discovers that the boy had apparently been victim to a ruthless secret medical experiment conducted by the head of the company (Richard Harris).
In the film at least, Smilla’s other neighbour (Gabriel Byrne) serves only really to add an air of mystery. An out-of-work mechanic he might almost appear to be stalking Smilla, though he claims he loved Isaiah too and wants to establish how the lad met his death. He provides a potential love interest for Smilla and although she does seek solace in his arms after he helps her with a particularly tricky part of her investigations, the film leaves it open to the viewer as to whether or not their relationship ever develops into anything more than friendship.
The stunningly bright scenery of Greenland at the start of this psychological drama is not carried through to the rest of the movie. Copenhagen isn’t portrayed as the elegant, vibrant city it is, but as the dreary grey place the unhappy Smilla sees it as. Most of the story is totally gripping, involving the viewer in Smilla’s quest to find out how Isaiah died and thereby perhaps gaining a sense of closure herself. However, sadly, the last half hour or so of the film fails to deliver on its promising beginning. The ending is weak, confused and seems to have difficulty in finding a satisfactory conclusion. That said, Smilla’s Sense of Snow is an unusual and bewitching story, very different from today’s more predictable, sometimes even quite formulaic plotlines. By this virtue alone, it is a movie well worth seeing.
19/03/07
No comments:
Post a Comment