A White, White Day (2019)
After being very impressed with Godland I was keen on seeing what else Hlynur Pálmason had made. This doesn’t quite hit the very high marks of Godland, but a very interesting film that touches upon many difficult and complicated emotions.
Time doesn’t heal all wounds, even though we might try. Ingvar E. Sigurðsson plays the role of a middle-aged stoic Nordic man who keeps his emotions bottled up inside. After he looses his wife to a traffic accident, he spends most of his time rebuilding a house for his daughter and her family. He is the most happy when he spends time with his granddaughter. But meeting with his therapist and a discovery about his deceased wife clearly stirs up some repressed anger.
I like how everything is slowly built and established throughout the movie. Some might call it slow cinema, though I didn’t find it that slow. Emotions are mostly held back and when they burst out, it is dramatic but not totally unexpected. Ingvar’s character ends up doing very questionable, even horrible things, but we still have compassion and sympathy for where he is coming from.
Like with Godland it is difficult to describe how and why this movie works, because it is very introspective and perhaps speaks to the way at least a lot of introvert Scandinavian men are known to handle our emotions in a very stoic and restrained manner.
Rating: 4