Directed by Dagur Kari
Review by Kevin Murphy
Considered next to the pallid images of Iceland’s winter landscapes, Noi is a remarkably colorful movie.
At a critical point about halfway through, Noi (played by Tomas Lemarquis) slouches in a chair.
Iceland’s white hills and gray skies lurk outside the window. But Noi’s bright flannel shirt, his shining bald head and the wallpaper’s pattern of palm trees come together and burst across the screen like a vibrant postcard sent from Paradise.
The scene registers Noi’s alienation, his desire for flight, and the deadpan, whimsical humor of this 2003 indie-flick.
That humor is found in small places that hit hard. Noi is in his grandmother’s den, the television turned to a Kung Fu movie. The martial artists’ flying grunts and smashing violence bound through the room. Noi’s absorption is still, silent and complete, and highlights his inarticulate struggle against his surroundings and community.
His struggle extends to his father, Kiddi.
Kiddi’s roughhewn wisdom and potluck philosophies provide some of the movie’s funnier moments. Kiddi adores Elvis Presley, tries to sing and play the piano like him, but flies into a pathetic rage when the piano fails to turn out the musical notes he is looking for. He is largely an absent father who tries to develop a relationship with Noi by sharing advice that is often soaked in vodka. The Elvis obsession is lighthearted and silly, but the movie’s humor has darker goals. As Kiddi continues on with his daily musings, his goofy disposition becomes a veneer that is gradually lifted to expose his sad and lonely life.
It’s hard to blame Kiddi for his ways. After all, he lives in Northern Iceland on the banks a frozen fjord. While the subject and drama of Noi is universal, this is primarily an Icelandic film. The landscapes are stern, stolid characters. Unspeaking, intemperate, mighty, they dictate life in this small town. And while I don’t particularly know what constitutes an Icelandic film, Noi falls into this category simply for its focus on the country’s harsh environment.
The universal aspects of the film are brought to reason by Noi’s classic adolescent struggles. He is a teenager bored by his surroundings and misunderstood by his elders. He lacks direction and has no plans, yet is wickedly bright and personable. The film combines the ancient ingredients of love, struggle, mentorship and flight to achieve its quota as a coming of age story. But by placing its hero in a dramatic, foreign setting, Noi takes the coming of age story to a different, more creative level.
Noi’s unique brand of character in underscored by the fact that he’s an Albino. As he mopes around town, struggling to understand his place and purpose in the world, Iceland’s extreme weather and his own rather alien genetic makeup take the universal struggles of adolescence and turn them into a completely personal ordeal.
But that ordeal, just as we think we understand what is happening, and why, is steered into the abyss by a dues ex machina ending that forces us to draw our own conclusions.
By the time the abyss settles, writer and director Dagur Kari has delivered a deft, penetrating glimpse into an arctic purgatory that brings a little warmth to people that live in the one of the world’s coldest places.
*Editor’s Note: Be sure to check out Noted in Spain, Charlie Geer’s commentary on an American writer’s experiences abroad.
