On my third day at the Haifa festival, I watched two Nordic films about challenging journeys that confront their heroes with being mortal. One is full of very spectacular Icelandic landscapes, the other focuses on the hero’s face and hardly reveals his surroundings, and is precisely the most immersive and exciting of the two, and this is because, unlike “God’s Country”, he believes in the human spirit. “The Blind Man Who Didn’t Want to See Titanic” by the Finnish director Temo Niki tells about Yaku, a blind guy who is confined to a wheelchair due to multiple sclerosis. When he was still gifted with the light of his eyes Yako was a cinema lover, and this love of his affects the way he imagines the people he does not see. He calls the nurse who takes care of him Annie Wilkes (after the horrible nurse in “Misery”), and the terminally ill Serfa, whom he fell in love with during their phone calls (they met online), he imagines Cripley from “The Eighth Passenger”.
This is also the reason he didn’t want to watch “Titanic” – Yako admires James Cameron’s action thrillers, and the romantic film about Jack and Rose seems to him to be a betrayal. Thus, ironically, the film about blindness is also a film about cinema, or about cinema memories and how they inspire us. In his book about a physical limitation, the film adopted a stylistic limitation for itself, and it works within it in a fascinating way, drawing us into the point of view of its protagonist through the obliteration of the visual world around him (The same strategy used by “Son of Saul”).
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Jako captivates with his sarcastic humor, and his daring, and the film moved me to tears even before I read that Niki wrote the script especially for the actor Petri Poikulainen, who developed multiple sclerosis after eight years on stage, and is blind and paralyzed like the character he plays. Poikulainen has a sensitive face and kind eyes and his great performance won him many awards. (Additional screening: Friday, 2:30 p.m.)
As mentioned, “The Land of God” is also a travel film, and it is ambitious and wide-ranging while being ascetic and severe. As written in the opening titles, the third film of the Icelandic director Helinor Palmason Domain was inspired by seven ancient photographs taken by a Danish priest in Iceland in the 19th century. For some reason, those photographs do not appear in the film, which was shot accordingly (by Maria von Hauswolff) in the narrow frame of the early days of cinema (aspect ratio 1:1.33). “God’s Country” follows the priest Lucas (Eliot Cross Hove) who is sent to establish a church in the wild land under Danish control. He brings with him a bunch of books, carries a heavy camera on his back, and shows condescension towards the locals who have an unrefined physical presence. The interpreter’s drowning in the river, along with the cross that Lucas brought from Denmark, leaves him unable to communicate with Ragnar (Ingvar Sigurdsson, who is in every Icelandic movie you’ve ever seen), the local guide who leads him through glaciers, volcanoes and spectacular canyons. An antagonism was created between the two that would intensify and produce some dramatic events in the second part of the film, where Lucas wakes up in the house of a Danish man living in Iceland, and develops a relationship with his two daughters.
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“God’s Country”, which received rave reviews when it was presented at the Cannes Film Festival, works mainly as a symbolic text about colonialism and the loss of faith (if I understood correctly, the original name of the film in Danish and Icelandic is “Wretched Country”, and God is not present at all). Although each scene in itself is superbly staged, the drama of the characters is not developed enough and for moments I felt that their extreme actions (such as killing a horse) were not justified. It is a difficult film about difficult people, and the one who contributes grace and positive energy to it is Ragnar’s curious dog, who plays an important role in the climactic scene of the film, when Lucas delivers his first sermon in the new church. (Additional screening: Sunday, 12:00)
These two journeys brought me back to “More Than Ever”, a film by Emily Attif that I had seen the day before, in which the heroine also makes a journey to a Nordic country. Vicky Cripps, whose career has been on the upswing since “Hidden Threads”, plays Helen, who is terminally ill and has difficulty breathing. Her husband Matia (Gaspar Oliel) insists that she undergo a lung transplant operation that may extend her life, but she is not sure that she wants to spend her life in a hospital. As in “The Blind Man Who Didn’t Want to See Titanic”, the sick heroine makes contact with a young Norwegian man who publishes a blog about his fight with cancer, and goes to him to take a break. Bennett lives alone in a wooden house in the fjord, without reception or Wi-Fi, and after the initial shock, Helen surrenders to the peace of the place. It is the Norwegian part of the film that gives it its beautiful hour (and also the humor). The rest of the time it’s a not terribly interesting melodrama. The viewing experience is accompanied by the bitter news that this was the last film of Oliel, who was killed at the beginning of the year in a skiing accident. (Additional screening: Friday, 18:00)