SAGA SHOP - Haust I Fall 2019

36 Icelandair Stopover BY TINA JØHNK CHRISTENSEN. Writer-director Hlynur Pálmason’s debut film Winter Brothers became a Locarno prize winner. But the 35-year-old director had a secret dream: He wanted his film to appear at Cannes in the Critics’ Week. His dream came true in May with his second film A White, White Day . The film stars Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson—named Best Actor at the Critics’ Week—as Ingimundur, a man who’s lost his wife and not only suffers from the loss but also from an assumption that she’d had an affair before her accident. It’s a film that could be described as both comedy and tragedy—and as a romance. We met the director at Cannes to talk about his experience. Was the experience of Critics’ Week what you expected it to be? It’s a real honor to be in the Critics’ Week. I was kind of hoping for that with my debut or my sophomore as they only take the debut or second film. I’m really honored and happy to be part of the selection because they have so few films. There are only seven films there. I’m honored because one of my favorite films was screened here many years ago. It’s a Spanish film called The Spirit of the Beehive by Victor Erice. I just remember a long time ago that I was looking at where it was screened and it said Critics’ Week, so it just had a nostalgic thing connected to it. I connected it to the spirit and it just felt like something that I wanted and something that felt right. What was it like seeing the film with the audience in Cannes? It went really fast. It felt like the film was half an hour long or something. It was so strange. Emotionally, I was not really experiencing the film like I was experiencing it while working on it. So it was like there were too many people around me that I knew. But it was really emotional and a good feeling. A DREAM COMES TRUE Icelandic writer-director Hlynur Pálmason discusses his new film A White, White Day and the Critics’ Week in Cannes. It was interesting to see the reaction of the audience and feel the atmosphere. There are a lot of scenes where there’s a fine line and balance between humor and seriousness, so people don’t know if they are supposed to laugh or not. I really like those kinds of moments of tension. I think it works, and the vibe was interesting. While there’s a very fine line between the humor and darkness in A White, White Day , it’s also very romantic. Is it like an Icelandic version of a romantic comedy? I don’t know. I think that everything I do is probably in some way about love or lack of love. I think my debut was very much about the lack of love—about not being wanted and the need to be loved and desired—and this film is more about love and hate at the same time. Loving someone and then hating the person at the same time. It’s also about grief, loss, jealousy and loneliness—can you talk about the themes that you cover? I knew that I was interested in the feeling of when someone passes or when you lose someone. All the feelings are left behind with the living; doubt, anger, grief, sorrow are left behind with the living. I thought that was kind of interesting because Ingimundur has to deal with all these feelings and the person who died is scot free. It’s almost like a curse for the ones living. So it was almost like a hate-poem to the dead—like a diatribe. This was some- thing that I found really exciting because it has the same feeling of being the same context— like being beautiful but at the same time being brutal—like never sentimental but beautiful at the same time. I love it when you can leave it open to interpretation. If you are cynical, you feel more like it’s brutal and if you’re a rom- antic, you feel that it’s more funny and beauti- ful, and I want it to be more in between. The film starts with an unattributed say- ing to the effect that when everything is white and you can no longer see the difference between the earth and the sky, the dead can talk to the living. Is this a saying in Iceland? It’s a saying from an unknown source on the east coast where I grew up. I like the idea of the white day. I like the idea of something being hidden. That something is there like a dark possibility or something that you cannot explain or fathom. I like having things like that. I think I like it because I have things to explore or something to dig deeper into. It’s something that I don’t understand. So this white day was just something that stimulated me. It stimu- lated the process of writing and developing the film because I really didn’t know what would happen that day. I had a feeling that there was something dangerous and uncomfortable but I didn’t know. That was sort of my writing and development process having this white day—it was so full of possibilities. How do you think that the Icelandic landscape and mentality affect the way you make movies? I read somewhere that the weather has shaped Iceland over the last thousand years, as well as the people and the Icelandic horse and so on. I think that the landscape around you does color you and it does shape you in a way. There’s a certain temperament in the weather. I think very much in terms of temper- ament when I make my films. I want my film to be a temperament. Your daughter Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir plays Salka, Ingimundur’s grand- daughter. What made you choose her and what was it like working with her? I love having family and friends around me, and the more family and friends that work with me, the better it is. If you really have devoted and good collaborations, I feel I can push harder because there are no egos. I can