When the Light Breaks

A film from Iceland no longer is a rarity. In the last decade this tiny country had developed something worth mentioning a film industry.

In many Icelandic films the beautiful nature is one of the attractions. I do not say the only attraction, but one of them. "When the light breaks" is only situated in Reykjavik, and this is not the most picturesque city on earth. Director Runar Runarsson rightly felt he could do without scenery in this interesting film.

"When the light breaks" is the first film I saw from Runarsson, but I knew his name from "Volcano / Eldfjall" (2011). Runarsson did not have much luck with "Volcano". It is about much the same theme as "Amour" (2012) from Michael Haneke, which was released around the same time and got all the publicity. I read somewhere that in fact "Volcano" is the better movie, but I cannot verify this.

The Icelandic title of the movie is "Ljósbrot" , which literally translated means "light refraction". It stands for the light of the sun during a sunrise. Eventually it was decided not to use this literal translation but the more symbolic / psychological "When the light breaks" to get the English title.

The film begins with a sunset and ends with a sunrise, essentialy capturing the one day in between. Both the opening and the ending scene are accompanied by the requiem "Odi et Amo" of the Icelandic composer of film music Johann Johannsson (1969 - 2018).

The ending scene is very poetic, the reflection of the sunlight on the sea at first sight appearing as a lava flow, which is not a strange association with an Icelandic movie. There is another very poetic scene near the beginning of the movie in which it only gradually becomes clear that the stroboscopic lights are in effect lights on the ceiling of a tunnel as seen from a moving car.

The film is about two women, both of them having a relationship with the boy that dies in a traffic accident in the beginning of the movie. One is his official girlfriend (Klara played by Katla Njalsdottir) the other is his mistress who would soon had become his official girlfriend ( Una played by Elin Hall).

The problem of Una is that for the outside world she is "only" a friend and that she can not show her grieve in full in order not to hurt Klara. During the film the emotions are going from:

trying to hide the grief (Una); suspecting something (Klara;) accepting their common grief (both).

There is a scene in which the faces of the two women are melting into each other. Of course this is a film quotation to the famous scene from "Persona" (1966, Ingmar Bergman). This quotation is however not just a wisecrack for film buffs, it accurately illustrates the essence of the movie.

Elin Halls gives a terrific performance in this movie. She is a redhead with a face that is not so much beautiful as fascinating. It reminded me of Robin McCaffrey in "Four weddings and a funeral" (1994, Mike Newell), although McCaffrey didn't have anyting like a leading role in that movie.

A beautiful film with normal effects, i.e. The material is made up of real human beings, not digitally generated things. The story revolves around a love trio in Iceland. Elín Hall and Katla Njálsdóttir are in love with the same man. With the former, their affair is a secret, and the man is supposed to break the news to the latter the following day. But he dies in an accident. In a surprising scene, the film shifts into the fantastic for a few seconds. We then follow the mourning of the group of friends where the two girls cohabit, with difficulty, more or less well, without anyone knowing. Of course, Elín Hall's grief can't help but sink in, unexpressed. From this starting point, the director unfolds his film, which is always passionate about small things, small gestures, simple moments. The fact that the group of boyfriends and girlfriends are students of performance art also contributes to the interest of the story, even if the dramatic scheme could have unfolded in any milieu.

The film is sprinkled with contemplative shots to great effect. These shots, often transitional, replace the music in a way, not to overload the drama, but to soothe and aerate (the mise en scène contains no music).

Finally, the film also relies on the magnetism and plasticity of Elín Hall, who is present in every shot.

A beautiful work, which knows how to be both atmospheric and trivial.

Ljósbrot is small, slow, quite reticent words-wise yet extremely eloquent in the choice of its visual representation as well as the choice of the balance between its sound and silences.

We are welcome to Iceland, the land of the never setting sun in the summer; the land of fire, which is powerful and dangerous; the land of vastness and freedom both physical, geographical and the freedom of self-expression. This context feels so important in the film, where a girl called Una loses her loved one to the fire and then faces her own feeling of jealousy and the necessity to cope with it. We can see the pain, but also the magical moments of flying, uniting and accepting. A beautiful, delicate work.

This is not a bad movie, not by any means, it's touching, well made, and beautifully filmed. But after a while, the amount of takes that seem unnecessarily long - showing a face or the back of a head for a duration that seems like a small eternity - made me question the artistic merits of that approach. The longer it went on, it seemed more like the padding, stretching of a movie which has a rather simple story (I don't mean that in a negative way, simple stories can be among the best) in order to get to feature length. I couldn't help myself but think that it would have made a better short film than what it is now.