SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW (director: Bille August; screenwriter: Ann Biderman/from the novel by Peter Hoeg; cinematographer: Jorgen Persson; editor: Janius Billeskov; cast: Julia Ormond (Smilla Jaspersen), Gabriel Byrne (the Mechanic), Richard Harris (Tork), Robert Loggia (Moritz Johnson), Vanessa Redgrave (Elsa Lubing), Jim Broadbent (Lagermann), Tom Wilkinson (Professor Loyen), Clipper Miano (Isaiah), Emma Croft (Benja), Bob Peck (Ravn); Runtime: 121; Fox Searchlight Pictures; 1997)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
There was a worm in the core of this turgid thriller that spoiled its taste. The moody production of Smilla's Sense of Snow is adapted from Peter Hoeg's best-seller. This is a film with so much unrealized potential, about the icy heroine of the story, the tough-minded half-American and half-Greenland Inuit, Smilla Jaspersen (Julia Ormond), who seemingly stepped into a hole in the ice before the film's finale and was ludicrously transformed from a captivating noir personality to a typical Hollywood action heroine.
Smilla's Sense of Snow presents a mysterious story relying on tense local atmosphere, enigmatic characters and twists in the plot, to spin its dark tale of a heroine looking to find her roots again. The Danish director, Bille August, who tries to be faithful to his fellow countryman's source material, presents a glossy and sleek looking film that inherits all the virtues and vices of the book, and comes up short in the end because it cannot overcome how utterly ludicrous the story becomes.
The film opens as a meteorite, in the Greenland of 1859, hits the ice and crushes everyone in the vicinity, including an Inuit fisherman, putting on a spectacular light show in the crushed ice, reminding me of the pyrotechnics one would see at a July 4th celebration. The film then switches to modern Coperhagen and the story involves the nefarious dealings of a the Greenland Mining Company, whose secret research, which turns out to be over parasitic worms coming to life from the fallen meteor, becomes the crux of the mystery. But the personal story is about Smilla being an Inuit living in a large modern city, using the boy's death as an excuse to find out who she really is.
Smilla is a troubled young lady, never fitting into living in Copenhagen, Denmark, where her father, an American doctor named Moritz (Loggia), brought her after her mother was killed in a kayak accident when she was six. She has remained detached from others in this claustrophobic urbane setting ever since leaving the spaciousness of Greenland, except she is drawn to a six year old deaf Inuit boy named Isaiah (Clipper Miano) who lives in the same apartment building with his alcoholic mother.
The mystery begins with Isaiah's puzzling death, which happens in the film's beginning. The boy falls off the rooftop of his apartment building and the only tracks on the snowy roof are his, as he heads straight for the ledge. But Smilla questions the police that his death is ruled accidental, as she notes the boy had a phobia about heights and would never go up to the roof to play alone. She also relies on her intuitions, as all her instincts tell her that Isaiah was murdered. As she investigates the boy's death, writing a letter to the district attorney to re-open the investigation and questions the medical doctor who did the autopsy, and then becomes convinced she is right after meeting with the mining company's secretary (Vanessa Redgrave), where she learns from her of a secret company archive in the basement. She even gets the unsolicited support of her nosy neighbor, who makes friends with her and even becomes her lover. He is called the Mechanic (Gabriel Byrne), someone whom she never quite trusts or knows what he does for a living, but finds him useful as she finds that she is onto a conspiracy, which puts her in danger and will eventually take her back to her roots in Greenland.
Her investigation uncovers that the neglected boy's father died in a mining explosion in Greenland, which resulted in the boy's recent arrival to Denmark, where he is being examined by the mining company's head doctor Professor Loyen (Tom Wilkinson), once every month, which strikes her as being very strange.
What should strike the audience as even stranger is how the film ends up in the same ice caves where the film opened up its story in the 19th century. The last 30 minutes of this, until now, seemingly plausible story, becomes unbelievable, as Smilla uses trickery to get herself on board the Russian ship Kronos to Greenland. Aboard, she further investigates the mystery of the boy's death by climbing inside a dumbwaiter taking her to where the mystery passengers on ship reside, where industrialist Andreas Tørk (Richard Harris), who is like one one of those cartoonish James Bond movie villains, lusting for power, greed, and fame, is confronted by our heroine who seeks only justice. This is how one would do it in a formulaic Hollywood film, thereby putting a damper on the terrific mood the film had just set. It was sort of like going to dinner and getting a whiff of some sensual aromas and looking at some appetizing food on display, but when getting down to the heart of the meal with great anticipation, suddenly discovering the meal is just not edible. If you can be satisfied with just the atmosphere and not the story or any character being developed adequately, then you might feel adequately nourished by what you saw. I wasn't. I was just swept away by the moody setting, the fine stoic performance by Ormond, and the potential for intrigue -- which, unfortunately, never materialized as it could have.
REVIEWED ON 10/17/2000 GRADE: C
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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