SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW
A film review by Ted Prigge
Copyright 1997 Ted Prigge
Director: Billie August Writer: Ann Biderman (from the novel by Peter Hoeg) Starring: Julia Ormond, Gabriel Burne, Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, Robert Loggia, Bob Peck, Jim Broadbent
An Inuit fisherman stands over a hill in a vast landscape that seems to go on for ever in the mid nineteenth century. After a couple seconds of nothingness where the man's attention doesn't meander at all, a large shooting star of some sort shoots down and hits the surface. Of course, the hunter's dogs are the first to notice it but as he looks up, the meteorite or whatever it is hits and a huge avalance of snow is created that begins to quickly move towards the hunter. He grabs his dogs and mushes them along as fast as they can go so they aren't eaten by the snow. But they are too snow and they are swallowed by the avalanche. Now what the hell just happened? Somehow the film moves to the present day in freaking Denmark and just lets this lie in the viewer's mind until they are good and ready to explain this spectacular looking and intriguing beginning. And somehow, the film has so much restraint that it builds up to its explanation in an interesting way. Somehow this film works.
The plot switches to that of a murder mystery done independantly with little outiside help from Smilla Jaspersen (Julia Ormond, in an interesting hairdo which looks far better than any she has had before). Smilla is perhaps the most complex action hero this mystery genre has seen in quite a while if ever. She is actually three-dimensional with character flaws and explanation for all of her actions. Brought up in Greenland, she has a phobia of closed spaces and a keen sense of snow. Of course, she is as cold as her snow and distants herself from everybody. She works by herself (except for her snow) and lives all by herself as well in an apartment building.
After a few shots of her working and walking home alone, the plot starts as she comes home and sees a corpse of a young boy on the ground. We find out he is half-Inuit and was the only close relationship Smilla has ever really had (nothing sexual really, but the pedaphilic undertones are tapped in a bedscene between the two - Hey! She was taking care of him 'cause his mom was a louse). In a series of flashbacks, we see how she let the boy into her life and taught him Greenlandic history. But now her world is shattered and she is told he fell from the roof while playing. For one, the boy had a fear of heights and the snow imprints show acceleration.
Smilla starts her independent investigation immeadiately and we discover things as she discovers them. She comes across bizarre characters and facts. One of these bizarre characters is her neighbor, known as "The Mechanic" (Gabriel Burne, excellent, as usual), who has a crush on Smilla and stutters when he's around her...of course, she catches this early on and makes an arse of him. He becomes her confidant and helper as he is very intrigued by it (or is it just one of those crush things?) but he becomes much like Cary Grant was to Audrey Hepburn in "Charade:" a man who seems to do sinister things and you just don't know if you can trust him. In one scene in particular, Smilla goes to have lunch with her American father (Robert Loggia) and finds "The Mechanic" having lunch with one of the supposed enemies - an industrialist or something (Richard Harris, also excellent as usual). When he confronts her and tries to explain what he was doing, he asks if she trusts him. In a perfect acting job, Smilla gives him a short look and says straight faced and subtely, "No," then walks away.
The third act (which caused me to lower my grade from ****1/2 to ***1/2) seems to be too X-Files-esque or Smilla-meets-Indiana-Jones as she becomes a somewhat action star, though she doesn't do any real stunts or anything. She stows away on a boat heading for Greenland (refuse to explain it - go see the damn movie and find out) and discovers something about prehistoric worms that can kill (???) and some shots are fired and a hatchet is even thrown. Of course, none of this is done by Smilla. At the end, Smilla watches as she uncovers the final facts in her mystery and the enemy drowns in the Arctic. She does nothing to cause his drowning (except not help him) and she sees how bleak knowing everything is. By the end, she has pieced together all the pieces of the giant puzzle and we discover what the hell the beginning meant. But we still feel kinda let-down because Smilla has almost destroyed her life in search for the truth. Perhaps the message is something like: absolute truth is not absolutely satisfying. At least that's what I got out of it. I could be wrong.
The things to reccomend about this film are the bleak and unerrving atmosphere that is sustained throughout the entire film, the way that the film pieces the mystery together as the protagonist pieces them, and the fantastic, Oscar-nomination worthy acting job done by Julia Ormond. She basically becomes Smilla Jaspersen and you won't see any bit of Guenivere, Sabrina or that lass she played in "Legends of the Fall." Smilla is a cold, three-dimensional character, and Ormond fills her pesonality to a "T" and makes her as fascinating as a real-life person.
MY RATING (out of 5): ***1/2
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