Dark Horse

After enjoying Noi Albino I was excited to see this movie when it popped up at my local art-house cinema.

I'm rather bemused by all the positive comments on it as it's really dreadful, a totally nose-dive for the director. Whereas Noi Albino is an impressive slight and tender vision of outsider culture, Dark Horse is a bad scripted and jarring attempt to render the same kind of characters.

Primarily the major problems are that the first half is supposed to be funny and isn't, while the second half is supposed to be profound and isn't. The blur between naturalism and style makes it very difficult to engage with the movie. The style on show is accompanied by the prerequsisite "glitzy" style music of mobile phone adverts, shorthand in our culture for ditzy art school cool. The jokes in the first half are strictly of the "here's a man trying to clean a wall, oh look! the water jet spray is strong so he's stumbled backwards variety". There is a barely a genuine laugh in it.

To make things worse, the director's vision of life is hopeless limited. The main character ends up giving up messing around with his life in order to have a baby and even ends up wearing a f**king cardigan into the bargain. Talk about black and white. Meanwhile another character wanders around doing absolutely nothing for the entire movie in what appears to be some kind of bourgeous satire. I turned to my girlfriend over an hour and a quarter and asked "who is that guy again?" Not a good sign with a major character.

This film is bad on every level. Badly shot, badly scripted, good actors wasted with flimsy characters. Silly worldview. Not funny.

It's little wonder that this film disappeared completely for two years before appearing on British cinema screens. It might have been better for the director if it had disappeared altogether. He's got a big whole to climb out of now and a lot to prove in order to confirm that Noi Albino wasn't just a happy mistake...

I never did get around to seeing Dagur Kári's first film, Nói albínói, but now that I've seen his second, I'll make it a priority. Dark Horse (as it was called at AFI Fest in Los Angeles) is a very funny, stylish, and genuinely touching comedy in the vein of Jim Jarmusch's early films, albeit livelier and less adamantly cerebral.

Daniel (Jakob Cedergren) is a graffiti artist who probably embodies the term loser more fully than anyone you have ever met. He's broke, lazy, irresponsible and dorky. This is a comedy, though, and appropriately, Daniel is a lovable loser. Morfar (Nicolas Bro) is Daniel's only apparent friend, an overweight dude who works in a sleep clinic and maintains aspirations of becoming a soccer referee.

The story gets underway when these two guys visit a bakery and the beautiful woman behind the counter (Tilly Scott Pederson) spontaneously declares her love for Morfar, who is so taken aback by her expression that he runs away. Immediately after, Daniel discovers that this chick is tripping on psychedelic mushrooms, casting some doubt on her romantic declaration, and he aids her in getting home. So begins a loser's love triangle which by the end of the film has very gracefully become about something else: the possibility of elusive, fundamental personal change, both for the better and for the worse.

Every member of this cast, down to the most peripheral supporting role, is terrific. The two leading men, in particular, are understated and yet deeply human. Kári's sense of the visual and the aural (he clearly cares a lot about sound) is very hip but always elegant. He shoots quirky angles in high contrast back-and-white, but every shot is about something; even his flourishes have purpose.

Most importantly, the script by Kári and his co-writer, Rune Schjøtt, gracefully treads that very risky territory between the offbeat and the naturalistic. His characters move through their lives whimsically and even the narrative structure seems vaguely improvised, yet there is a graceful evolution to the unfolding of events that, by the end, gives the classic sense of inevitability that we associate with the best film writing.

(It speaks volumes, I think, that the English subtitles were sometimes impossible to read because of the stark white areas in the frame, and yet I never felt that I missed a beat).

I don't see a U.S. release date indicated on the IMDb, but I can't imagine that Dark Horse (or whatever they're going to call it) won't ultimately find a distributor. This is that rare breed of crowd-pleasing art flick that any half-astute specialty studio should be fighting over.

This movie is first icelandic movie I have seen. Before I entered the cinema, I had no idea what the film was about. When I exit,my feelings were so complicated that I can't find the right word. This film is fully equipped with tiny details,which makes it deeper for focused viewers.Sometimes it gets out of the borders of absurdity,you find yourself laughing unconsciously. Sometimes you feel yourself so desperate,melancholic that you freeze in your seat,not knowing what to do.To tell the truth,this is what makes a movie see-able. Techniques used in the movie are seen before but director added some new details from himself. Repetition of some scenes is like emphasizing the importance of them just like in poetry or prose. Coloured scene is great. Turning point of the movie.

really liked this movie and looking forward to see it again.

I already saw this movie two times in the last two years - and I can say that all these great comments about it are more than justified. This movie is much more than just a comedy or a sentimental story - it has something almost supernatural in it - of course because it makes you think about life but also because it makes you 'feel' the story. The color moment was impressive, everything else was in the right pace and time. Movies like this are very rare in this century - for me this is not a movie but a masterpiece of art.

Of course masterpieces are not always understandable to simple people...

Although I appreciated the other comments submitted to this point, I saw this movie at the Cleveland International Film Festival and was terribly perplexed by what it meant to convey.

Initially it's a comedy, and a wonderful one at that. Then the characters get hit hard by life's events. Then they change. Unusual events occur, but we don't know why.

It's not until the end that we're left with the magical part of the story the movie is telling. As the main character, Daniel undergoes a slow but significant metamorphosis from a bum (but a lucky one) to a character who cares about others and has become responsible.

Although at first a minor character, the judge is a sort of doppelganger for Daniel. We first see him in the sleep clinic, then in the court where he pronounces Daniel's sentence. The near-collision with Daniel seems to trigger "the switch", where the judge then steals a gift for his child. By the time we see him staying at the airport instead of going to a meeting we're not even remotely surprised that he runs into Daniel. By the time his wife is confronted with the evidence of his theft the translation to bum is complete.

Now to see the movie paying attention to how and when the magic takes effect: is it the near-accident or when the elephants parade by? What about the flash of color? Is there something else?

A good watch to begin with and a better watch the second time around!