When the Light Comes

This film touches facets of human nature seldom seen on camera. The photography is top class but the two main actors give an amazing portrayal of their respective cultures until they just become two human beings with very human needs and meld.

Very human; very touching.

A young girl spends a winter with a trapper in a cold and dark Spitzbergen, in the far north 900 km of the North Pole not many films are shot. In this uninhabited desert temperatures drop easily to -50 degrees celcius in winter. The film begins that a young girl leaves for Spitzbergen, to spend a winter with a trapper.

This isn't really a 'vacation', especially when spending a whole winter here, you must know how to survive here. The girl in the movie leaves without knowing anything about how these trappers overwinter here. ( normally 6-8 trappers overwinter each year ). Authorities in Longyearbyen are very touchy about people who come here on their own ( you will have to carry a weapon, high insurances, etc.. ).

What the film is really about is the relation between the girl from Amsterdam and the Norwegian trapper. The great differences between the young girl and the older and shy trapper leads to many troubles. Over the whole the movie is quite average, but the great filming locations and the effort of director Coninx to make a romantic movie here ( apart from another film about polar bears ) makes this film very special.

When Ellen went to Spitsbergen, she went for adventure. She also expected Lars, her host, to be a rough husky adventurer, but was deceived as Lars turned out to be a silent clumsy tinkerer.

At the beginning this movie didn't seem very special to me. But along the way the psychology of Lars and Ellen was getting more and more interesting.

Then when the end came the movie took my breath away. Probably because this movie happened for real as well as how realistic it was filmed I could completely imagine myself in Lars' place (contrary to 'Hollywood hits' which are often too cinematic for such empathy).

Finally, the movie also shows how it's like to live in Spitsbergen: rough, but not adventurous.

I have read the book twice before I found the movie in my video store. I liked the book better, but I did like the movie very much. What a shame that the actress was a girl from Belgium, because of her accent. I loved the surroundings of the film set and really want to go and visit Spitsbergen myself! It is very beautiful there. The thing that I didn't like, was that it was supposed to be dark, but one good see, that a filter was used to make it dark.

I first saw "When the Light Comes" on television late night movies six years ago. Due to the usual timing problems associated with the late night presentation, the ending was cut off. I waited unsuccessfully since then for this film to reappear. Apparently, it's only available on DVD as a PAL European version so I had to wait until I found a Region-free DVD player so I could see the whole movie.

I'm glad I did because the ambiguous ending minimizes the film's other imperfections. Do the ending scenes with Ellen and Lars playing snow golf show that Ellen did return to Spitzbergen to live with Lars? Did Ellen return to Robert and are the ending scenes just Ellen's happy memories? The book might provide a clue but it's never been translated to English so North Americans who don't speak Dutch are left to ponder the ambiguous ending. Maybe people from the Netherlands are also out of luck as I can't locate a Dutch version either.

The European version DVD doesn't come with English subtitles, just in Dutch or German. That's a small impediment because most of the film's dialogue is in English. In my case, I could remember the Dutch dialogue from the English subtitles in the TV version. It consists mostly of Ellen's feelings in letters to Robert, which you can sense from the action and the English portions, boring stuff for a guy. As a bonus, the European version includes the story how the movie was made. This is mostly in the Dutch language but many scenes are in English because not all the crew and actors spoke Dutch.

Some reviews of the movie commented on Francesca's lack of experience when this movie was made. I think it worked in this movie as it could be a part of Ellen's initial awkwardness at the strange situation of a young woman being cooped up for months with an older man. Joachim Król is an experienced actor. I don't know how he was able to speak English with a Norwegian accent when he sounds quite German in real life. Check out his accent in English in the Special Features.

This is not a classic movie but it is much better than average. It's well worth the effort of finding a copy.