Cold fever

This film is indeed a beautiful film showing Iceland's many attractions as the previous reviewer mentioned, but it also draws very interesting parallels between the native beliefs of Icelanders, which in fact are quite similar to what prevailed across Europe before Christianity came(Iceland was settled by Vikings and was among the last places Europeans held to their pagan religion), and the Shinto practices in Japan. One accompanies the main character, a shallow, immature corporate executive from his comfortable Tokyo life to Iceland: where layer by layer he is stripped of comfort, certainty, even rationality, until he is brought to a place where he realizes a simple and profound humanity.

This film is funny, the cinematography is amazing, and it is spiritually enriching. How many films can you say all that about?

The first time I saw Cold Fever was May of last year. It was in a time when I was lost in life. That's when Cold Fever was coming on HBO. I sat there for 90 mins and I found the film very funny and quite moving. The way everyone keeps asking Atsushi, "So how do you like Iceland?" or the characters he runs into. Some of them include Laura, a woman who likes to "collect" funerals or American tourists Jack and Jill, who bicker all the time because they disagree on taking a vacation to Iceland. Atsushi first finds this trip as a burden because he was looking forward to going to Hawaii to play golf. Instead, he has to go to Iceland to perform a ritual by the river where his parents drowned. Then, throughout this journey he learns more about himself. He finds some of the strangest people you will meet...a cab driver performing a strange ritual, a girl who restarts his car with a sonic scream, and my favorites, the Islandic Cowboys. When he finally gets his mission accomplished of performing the ritual, he learns that sometimes a journey can take you places that aren't on any map. That is so true. I wanted this movie so bad that I finally received it from Amazon today. It is still as great as when I saw it a year ago. Check this out because it is brilliant.

Ten years later this very compact film still works its magic. Much has been said by many of the other contributors with one exception. It is not a film to be rushed. Rather you need to view at the speed the film dictates - not unlike "Paris, Texas. Like the swirling mists and snow it slowly envelops you. No frame is wasted. Even a casual remark in the aeroplane en-route to Iceland gives a link for the future.

Many different cultures have their cultural layers peeled back; American, Japanese, Icelandic and Norse mythology. It's up to the viewer to see what he or she sees.

I think the most telling scene in the film is the Icelander who befriends Hirata. Although he does not want to accompany Hirata to the ritual grave scene because of a 'spirit dream', he nonetheless is there to show him the way home. In so doing, he witnesses a universal value with Hirate - the passing of life.

There's much to be said for good small budget films. The story and direction have to be tightly constrained.

Something about this film has kept me thinking about it since I saw it in 2001. I had the fortunate opportunity to see it because, at that time, Des Moines (Iowa) had one of the best indie-movie rental places (Oddities), ever. Oddities just stocked walls of foreign films and rows of independent films.

Cold fever had the intriguing elements of a young Japenese businessman reluctantly, and by family obligation, traveling around Iceland. That was enough for us to want to check it out.

The story is tremendous. I love the style and the performances give by the actors. Friðrik Þór Friðriksson really captures the feeling of the main character on film. It is almost haunting how Hirata operates... how he meanders through the vastness of the landscape.

Great film, great ending. I wish they would get it on DVD along with other works by the director

Masatoshi Nagase (best known for his role in Jarmusch's Mystery Train, and also the Japanese films Suicide Club, The Hidden Blade and Electric Dragon 80.000V) stars as a Japanese man whose grandfather (cult director Seijun Suzuki, who appears for a couple of minutes) insists he spend his vacation performing traditional burial rites of his parents, who died while living in Iceland. Nagase flies to Reykjavik and proceeds to drive across the country in the middle of the winter to the remote spot where they passed. Though they don't go into any details on his parents' death, Iceland seems like a very likely place to die, since it's full of dangerous, unpopulated terrain. This is basically a road movie, where Nagase meets various odd people along his way. It's maybe a bit weirder than most - I'd say it's kind of one of those weird-for-the-sake-of-weird type movies. But Fridriksson does a great job of making his home country look like a world of wonder. "Iceland is very strange country" Nagase always says when someone asks him what he thinks of it, in English of course, since it's the common language between him and most Icelanders (I'd say about 80% of the dialogue is in English). The film doesn't really go anywhere plot-wise, and some of the episodes are more successful than others. The most notable flop is the long sequence where Nagase picks up a couple of stranded American tourists, Fisher Stevens and Lili Taylor. Those two are painfully annoying, especially when they talk to each other via their sock puppets. That's really some needless quirk. Overall, though, I was intrigued.