Nói albinói

Easily the most interesting and beautiful debut film of these last few years, with "Tan de repente" and "Verboden te zuchten" ; explicitly placed under the care of Kierkegaard ("if you hang yourself, you'll regret it, if you don't hang yourself, you'll regret it too"), Nói is as full of humour as it is desperate (with the exception of "love and getting away", Nói doesn't take anything seriously ; he's constantly playing : to avoid being sucked in by that seemingly absurd adult world which takes itself so seriously ; he dreams of escaping to Hawaii, looking at slides with a cheap viewing-box his mother just gave him for his birthday ; in this minimum world, everything is cheap...)… Frightful feelings of isolation and desolation, of being trapped on one hand ; but on the other hand, as absurdly funny (the parish-priest and Nói haggling over the depth of the tomb he has to dig in the cemetery ! and in Danish, Kierkegaard is the word for cemetery...) as it is anguishingly claustrophobic (Nói trapped, this time literally, in his secret cellar after the avalanche -- probably an allegory of his ever-increasing isolation)…

Filmed with Tarkovskian beauty (a permanent blue cast, at once gloomy, serene and unsettling ; blue maybe because it is the exaggeration, the saturation of white, the white of frost, the white of snow), it could be seen as the fateful tale (told more in images than in words) of a village "idiot" (in the Dostoievskian sense), or a "Stalker", as hemmed-in by (rather nice) people as the village is hemmed-in by (desperately beautiful) nature, doomed for absolute aloneness, into which, starting from mere difference and marginality (the "albino" bit), he will gradually "descend" (taking refuge regularly in that cellar being just another allegory of this) ; a journey to the end of the cold… tragic, but perhaps liberating… even if we can't, whatever we do, escape "fate" (the local fortune teller had rightly seen only "death and desolation" in store for Nói)… Starting rather realistically, the film gets more allegorical as it unravels (the avalanche turns out to have killed a mere 10 people : all those Nói had some contact with, and only those) ; in the last but one image, facing us, looking into his viewing-box, Nói looks like a robot, or a spaceman with his helmet on ; as for the very last image (the "real" view of one of the Hawaiian slides he used to look at : a beach of white sand, palm trees, and the gentle waves of a turquoise sea), it will probably be given as many interpretations as there will be viewers ; it proves once more that images, like words, don't have meaning(s) in themselves, but only relatively to the context into which they come inserted : here, the corniest touristic cliché becomes a thing of many meanings, an unfathomable mystery…

Like Aki Kaurismaki's "Match factory girl", in many ways a fairy tale in reverse...

You really have to like this kind of movie. The film mainly depicts the boredom and isolation that a teenager in a tiny distant village finds himself in. This will naturally result in a story where nothing really spectacular happens. This is of course necessary to depict the situation in a realistic way, but a lot of films in this genre tend to get boring themselves.

At least this film had plenty of entertainment to keep the viewer's attention. To begin with there's the magnificent imagery of the impressive Islandic landscape. But I'd mainly recommend this film because of the perfect mix of beautiful realism and tragicomedy.

All together a much more colorful result than many would expect from this kind of film and setting.

Although distant in time and space, this work is reminiscent of post-WW2 Italian neorealism, with a sprinkle of dry Nordic humour. The grandiose setting of Iceland's north-western fjord region is the real protagonist: that huge white cone-shaped mountain looms in the background, very similar to Dante's Purgatory mount, meting out penance and confining the souls living within its shadow. The actors - like in neorealistic movies - seem (but aren't) taken from the street, they look completely natural, they have jobs and behave like real people. The title character is amazingly expressive, despite his shaved head and eyebrows. With a fractional movement of the eyes and mouth he moves us to tears or laughter. The dialogues are scanty, but the continuity makes it all very clear: Noi is a child prodigy, who is tied to an inescapable, remote environment. He is at variance with his teachers, but loves - and is loved by - his disjoint family. He dreams of escaping to an entirely different world, a world of sunny beaches and palm trees, taking along the girl he is infatuated with. But deep down he knows his dream is doomed: there is no escape from his icy ghetto - almost.

In the spare and poetic "Noi the Albino," the title character is a seventeen-year-old gifted underachiever who lives with his grandmother in a dreary little village on the coast of northern Iceland. This would be a harsh, isolated environment for anyone to grow up in, but it is particularly trying for a misfit adolescent with few social skills and no real hope for the future. Noi, whose generally aloof, alcoholic father lives on his own in a different part of town, spends most of his time trudging purposelessly through the snowy streets of the village or holing up in the basement room he's carved out for himself as a kind of sanctuary from a world too utterly depressing to contemplate. Bored by school and bereft of friends, this young man drifts through life, dreaming of the day when he will be able to live on a very different kind of island in the South Seas, a location light years removed from this place where the interiors are every bit as stark and forbidding as the white-on-white world outside.

"Noi the Albino" is one of those films in which the very lack of anything significant happening becomes the central theme and message of the work. Noi lives a life that is so uneventful and boring that it would drive virtually any one of us to the brink of madness. We hardly blame him when we see him dozing through his classes at school or pilfering change from a mock slot machine set up in the local restaurant. Yet, despite the fact that virtually nothing of consequence happens, the film itself is a fascinating mood piece that seeps into our bones and makes us sympathize with the plight of the strange young man who occupies center stage in the drama. Most of the adults in Noi's life seem to sense his potential, but, for some reason, he is totally unwilling to tap into it. What's impressive about the film is that it doesn't try to explain why that is, though we sense it has something to do with the stifling environment in which he lives. Noi becomes emblematic of all people who lead lives of quiet desperation, tucked away in remote, virtually uninhabitable corners of the globe, far removed from the bustle and excitement that can be found only in places with large and diverse populations.

As Noi, Tomas Lemarquis gives a beautiful, subtle performance, creating a compelling and complex character using little more than body language and facial expressions. The final moments of the film are truly heartbreaking as Noi learns the value of what he has - even though, at that point, the realization comes too late.

Written and directed by Dagur Kari with an artist's eye for lyricism and austerity, this is a bleak but intriguing little film that will stay in your mind long past the closing credits.

Coming of age films are a common staple of Hollywood but as with many genres they merely offer variations on a theme. Noi Albinoi is a beautiful film in so many ways from the breathtaking landscape of Iceland to the often used but even more often forgotten ideal of carpe diem (sieze the day). Noi himself is completely believable for anyone who's ever been a teenager, he is an excellent reflection of the aspirations, naievaty and irrepresable emotions that everyone feels at that age. This film kept me amused and touched in equal measures all the way up to its amazing climax. A must see for everyone who understands that life's different when you're 17.