SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1997 Scott Renshaw
(Fox Searchlight) Starring: Julia Ormond, Gabriel Byrne, Richard Harris, Robert Loggia, Clipper Miano. Screenplay: Ann Biderman, based on the novel by Peter Hoeg. Producers: Bernd Eichinger and Martin Moskowicz. Director: Bille August. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, violence, sexual situations) Running Time: 119 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Before SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW, the last time director Bille August gut hold of a mysterious, best-selling novel was 1994's THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS. If that thought doesn't send a shudder of dread through you at the prospects for SMILLA, you were probably fortunate enough to miss THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS. SPIRITS was a disastrous combination of mis-guided casting and even more mis-guided story-telling, and it lost all sense of Isabel Allende's magical realism. Peter Hoeg's _Froken Smillas Fornemmelse for Sne_ (Miss Smillas' Feeling for Snow) presented a similarly challenging combination of atmosphere, character and plot, and August, but this time around he has been much more faithful to the source material. Unfortunately, the result still isn't a particularly good film. As tense and evocative as SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW is during its first hour, it shares the fundamental flaw of the novel: a strange plot device which may leave you wondering if you've just seen "The X-Files" movie.
Julia Ormond stars as Smilla Jaspersen, an arctic researcher living in Copenhagen, Denmark. A woman of Greenlandic Inuit descent who has never felt comfortable in Denmark, Smilla has lived a life closed off from all other people, with the exception of a young Inuit boy named Isaiah (Clipper Miano) who lives in her apartment building. That one friendship is shattered when Isaiah is found dead on the sidewalk outside the building, the victim of an apparent accidental fall from the roof. But Smilla has a special sense of snow, and her instincts tell her that Isaiah's death was no accident -- he was running from something before he fell to his death. As Smilla investigates with the help of a neighbor (Gabriel Byrne), she finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy which will lead her back to the beautiful desolation of her icy homeland.
You'd never expect a film with the plot I just described based on the first scene in SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW. It shows a 19th century Inuit ice fisherman rudely interrupted from his labors by a crashing meteorite, which proceeds to create a tidal wave of crushed ice sufficient to supply the planet with daquiris for several decades. The moment is spectacular, but when the scene suddenly shifts to modern Copenhagen and the film becomes a dark, moody mystery, you might wonder whether you've just had an out-of-genre experience. More to the point, you might fear that August has snapped his cap.
Actually, August is simply preparing the audience for the radical shift still to come, a shift which wasn't nearly as radical in Hoeg's novel. For about three-quarters of its length, SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW is a fairly compelling character study anchored by a strong lead performance. Julia Ormond may be a bit young for Hoeg's Smilla, but she makes the character her own with an unapologetic toughness uncommon in female screen characters. Smilla's relationship with the neglected Isaiah is skillfully established in flashbacks, and though Smilla is not a particularly pleasant person her loyalty and determination win the audience over to her side. Screenwriter Ann Biderman has done a fine job of paring down the novel's often-cumbersome plot and its glut of conspirators, allowing the focus to stay squarely on Smilla and her relationships. Ormond's performance and August's direction capture Hoeg's lyrical, haunting psychological drama, a style reminiscent of _The English Patient_ author Michael Ondaatje.
But then there's that third act, and there's nothing August, Biderman or anyone else can do about SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW's unexpected metamorphosis from Michael Ondaatje to Michael Crichton except take it all the way overboard. The Greenland-based climax includes some splendid landscapes by cinematographer Jorgen Persson, and the arctic vastness suggests the coming of a resolution with an internal dimension -- Smilla coming to terms with her life, her land and her heritage.
Well, the resolution is internal, all right, only it's the interior of an ice cave, where villainous industrialist Andreas Tork (Richard Harris) is up to no good with some mutant parasitic worms and the same meteorite which spoiled the day of our old friend the ice fisherman a hundred years and five reels earlier. The finale is so utterly bizarre -- and so unsatisfying -- that it taints the entire two hour experience of SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW. Perhaps Bille August needs to choose something simple for his next project, a story which doesn't begin as an emotional journey and end as a cross between a James Bond film and THE BLOB.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 women's Inuit-ions: 5.
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