KJARTAN RAGNARSSON AND SIGRIDUR MARIA EGILSDOTTIR IN OF HORSES AND MEN

Horses and woes in an Icelandic valley

Of Horses and Men is a movie rooted in a special place and makes much good use of the people and the horses found there. And so it's a feature that has a strong documentary element. But like others of this genre, it also has elements that are purely fanciful. We may doubt that a Latin American (Juan Camillo Roman Estrada) got lost here in a snow storm and saved himself by killing his short-legged local horse, gutting it, and hiding inside it till he was found desperate but alive the next day. It seems rather unlikely what happens to the middle-aged farmer Kolbeinn (Ingvar E. Sigurdsson). Courting a respectable horse-owning lady called Solveing (Charlotte Bøving), he is about to leave her dressed in fine riding clothes when she is mortified to see one of her young stallions break loose from a fence and mount Kolbein's pretty young white mare while he is mounted on her about to ride away.

There are several other events involving the local horses that are equally vivid, equally dire, and also slightly implausible, though each of these incidents doubtless brings in aspects of local life, such as a tendency to drunkenness and disputes over fences and the freedom to traverse public spaces, not to mention great skill at wrangling horses. Here and there a death occurs as a result of these adventures, or mishaps. And the gathering of the community in a small wood church for the farewell, with a few words spoken about the deceased, could be from a film by Bergman, but is equally rooted in all traditional Nordic life.

Each incident involves a horse, and begins with the camera peering into its eye and finding the main character of the tale reflected there. The film doesn't seek to penetrate into the mind of horses. It does show the close integration of these people's lives with their horses.

Bright exterior light and a sense of wide open space contribute to the feel of this film, in which nature itself is a stage. A certain staged artificiality is indicated at the very outset when Erlingsson archly and insistently shows us neighbors on far-flung sides of the valley viewing events with binoculars to see Kolbeinn trot smartly on his white mare to visit Solveing. Also stagy and a strong hint of Erlingsson's background in making short films are the vivid use of tableaux and the minimalism of the dialogue. The series of incidents shows that this is, basically, a set of related short films loosely linked together by location and the horses. Having everything happen with a horse is a little gimmicky, though, and doesn't truly unify the narrative in human terms. This segmented, and simplistic, overlying aspect of Of Horses and Men keeps it from being anything but a novelty as a feature film, however arresting and at several points shocking it may be. Nonetheless Erlingsson has conceived and executed each segment with the mind and eye of a fine storyteller, worthy of a Nordic Boccaccio. In its special way this is still a good film, exhibiting remarkable ingenuity in the staging, good acting, and striking use of locations. But it remains a film with oddities and limitations that withhold if from developing mainstream potential.

Of Horses and Men/Hross í oss 80 mins., in Icelandic, Swedish, Spanish, Russian, and English with English subtitles, debuted at San Sebastián in September 2013 after an August Icelandic release. It has won a number of nominations and some awards, notably Best Director at Tokyo, Best New Director at San Sebastián, and two FIPRESCI Awards elsewhere. It is the director's feature debut and was Iceland’s 2014 Oscar submission. It was screened for this review as part of the FSLC-MoMA New Directors/New Films series in March 2014. Showings at ND/NF: Saturday, March 22, 6:15pm – MoMA
Monday, March 24, 6:30pm - FSLC.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.