Two Icelandic films by cinematographer Bergsteinn Bjorgulfsson made as splash at Molodist Monday and Tuesday: “The Deep” (to be screened on Oct. 25 at 11:30 p.m. in Kyiv Cinema), an incredible true tale of shipwreck survival in the Arctic and “XL,” a kaleidoscopic 60-ish story of the vast excesses of a Parliament Deputy who wallows in alcohol, food, sex, and drugs.
Iceland is a fascinating place of rock,
glacier, steam, and lava; isolated in the mid-north Atlantic with a genetically
related population smaller than the one of Kyiv neighborhoods Kharkovskiy and Poznyaki.
The country is 100 percent geothermally heated and hydro-powered. After the
2008 crisis, they booted out the politicians and banker/criminals, defied the
IMF and simply defaulted on their massive debt… and are the better for it. Icelandic
movies tend to be quirky, offbeat, and unique (like Scottish), as is their land,
and have been prominently featured at previous Molodist festivals.
Directed by Baltasar Kormakur “The Deep”
is a story of a hellish 1984 shipwreck in freezing seas just off of Iceland.
The movie is Iceland’s 2012 Oscar entry for Best Foreign Language film.
Gully, only one fisherman who impossibly
survived in five degree sea for six hours, is played by the talented Olafur
Olafsson as a low key everyman saved by his layer of body fat – indeed the only
good thing about being fat, one floats like a cork and can resist serious cold.
Incredibly he then landed on and had to
cross a deadly lava field.
“He got to the island – huge waves on a
rocky shore, there were these huge cliffs, and he had to swim back out!”
Olafsson explained.
Lava can be like broken pavement, or
impassable piles of razors blades; it is basically glass – even cold you can
break through big bubbles and slash your leg to the bone; hot – your shoes turn
to taffy. “That’s what it was like – piles of razor blades, and after walking
on lava for two hours (without shoes) his feet were down to the bones, through
all the meat.” Not to mention extremely old air and snow.
The verisimilitude is amazing: the
battle with the sea is filmed at the actual location of the sinking.
“It’s a low budget (movie) and we
couldn’t do any CGI. We were doing it at the real place, with big waves, we
sank a real boat – actually it sank twice without us planning
it.” The first time, the dried out boat had shrunk enough that water leaked
between the planks on their first voyage, “It was really, really low and we
just managed to save it… The second time we had an engineer who said we could
put it on its side. Baltasar (Kormakur) wanted to open a hatch to have
Olaf get out, the engineer said ‘no problem’, the other (salvage) guy said,
‘Don’t open it – it’ll go down!’ Baltasar stunted it himself, opened the hatch,
the water rushed in and almost sucked him in – we barely
managed to get away and it just sank. Took two days to raise it again.”
Kormakur actually tied himself to the
floating filming platform, got in, and held the actor in the water to keep him
within the frame during 3-4 weeks of frigid aquatic filming. The speed of the
sinking after they snag their net is shocking – fishing truly is about the
deadliest profession: no rescue gear can be deployed – the raft is rusted
closed anyway. While 80% of Iceland lives by the sea, losing men to the
bottomless deep is a constant fear.
Gulli was hailed as a hero, and a
medical marvel – no one had ever survived even 45 minutes at that temperature,
let alone 6 hours, but he was confused and beset by survivor’s guilt – he
allowed himself to be tested for weeks to see what made him so special.
“Apparently his fat was like seal fat,
not human, and very efficient”, expounded cameraman Bergsteinn Bjorgulfsson.
“Gulli didn’t want the film made – it was the memory of losing all his friends.
But it was a story that needed to be told. These fishing boats going down with
everyone on it… so many times in Iceland,” explained Bjorgulfsson. “It was
screened for the people of Westman Islands (eight kilometers off Iceland), who were all for it.” Historical
footage of Gulli, who is fishing again, rolls during the credits.
In “XL,” the film directed by Marteinn Porsson, an Icelandic deputy
is forced to go into rehab after a public brawl. This is as unchained and wild
as “The Deep” is controlled and constricted. Bjorgulfsson, who worked in the
“XL” crew as well as in “The Deep,” described how he shot the swirling
distorted liquor and drug fueled point of view scenes – he strapped the camera
to his head as he pawed the various women.
Leifur, the lead (again pictured by Olafsson from “The
Deep”), is a fat, hard-drinking, womanizing, lusty character who still manages
to remain charming and sympathetic. This movie definitely isn’t for everyone,
but does show a certain side of the Icelandic character.
Icelanders have a reputation as careful
and cautious people, but “XL” puts that in grave doubt. “That’s what alcohol
and drugs make you do, that’s the result,” explained Bjorgulfsson. “You do
things you wouldn’t, or shouldn’t do. Bad things.”
Michael Hammerschlag is a freelance journalist in Kyiv.
