Noi the Albino

Although distant in time and space, this work is reminiscent of post-WW2 Italian neorealism, with a sprinkle of dry Nordic humour. The grandiose setting of Iceland's north-western fjord region is the real protagonist: that huge white cone-shaped mountain looms in the background, very similar to Dante's Purgatory mount, meting out penance and confining the souls living within its shadow. The actors - like in neorealistic movies - seem (but aren't) taken from the street, they look completely natural, they have jobs and behave like real people. The title character is amazingly expressive, despite his shaved head and eyebrows. With a fractional movement of the eyes and mouth he moves us to tears or laughter. The dialogues are scanty, but the continuity makes it all very clear: Noi is a child prodigy, who is tied to an inescapable, remote environment. He is at variance with his teachers, but loves - and is loved by - his disjoint family. He dreams of escaping to an entirely different world, a world of sunny beaches and palm trees, taking along the girl he is infatuated with. But deep down he knows his dream is doomed: there is no escape from his icy ghetto - almost.

Take an alienated, bald, Albino teenager named Nói (Tómas Lemarquis) in the frozen fjord of northern Iceland and blend together an estranged ineffectual father while a grandmother who does not say much is raising him and the story is destined to be tragic and dark. Although Nói is well intentioned, he lacks motivation and is prone to having spells of exceptional bad luck. He is disruptive at school if he bothers to show up at all. Ultimately he is expelled and his alcoholic dad finds Nói a job working for a priest in a graveyard. As the scenario unfolds, he woos another somber and beautiful teen named Iris (Elin Hansdóttir), who works as a gas station attendant and café clerk. His relationship to Iris appears to be the only thing going well in Nói 's life; still it is just a fragile illusion.

It is winter in Iceland, such that the fjord is cut off from the outside world, while surrounded by an ominous mountain, and buried under a shroud of snow. Beautiful shots of glaciers and chilly seasides allow the tedium of this desolation to be a lot more tolerable. If you have ever been in a dead town out in the boonies somewhere, this one is even more comatose by comparison. It is hardly surprising that everyone is so somber and alienated from one another during the dark three-hour days of winter.

Please remember that this is not simply another typical bored teenager film--underneath it all Nói seems to have real promise, although his motivation is virtually non-existent. The walls of snow and ice surrounding his village give the illusion of a natural prison. Nói's desperate plans to break out fail miserably during a ludicrous failed bank robbery and an aborted car theft, further adding to his despair.

The movie directed by Dagur Kári is largely bleak and sometimes slow moving, yet it is temperamental, seductive, and distinctive. There are no cheap thrills, sexy scenes, car crashes, or violence, however the cinematography and the unfolding human drama draw you in like bees to honey and hold you there to it's amazing finish. It is not until a natural disaster so totally shatter Nói's universe that the film begins to offer the hope of a new beginning for Nói.

Nói is completely believable for anyone who ever recalls being a teenager. He is the embodiment of a disturbing reflection of the aspirations, naivety and unmanageable emotions many teens feel at that age. This film kept me enthralled and touched in equal measures right down to its startling climax. This movie is a must see for anyone who appreciates that life is different when you are just 17.

[See the IMDb page for "Noi albinoni" for cast names: none are known in the U.S.]

When I first heard the title of this film a while back I wondered why a film about the composer, Albinoni, would be coming from Iceland of all places. Then I learned it's about a somewhat wayward teen living in a frigid, remote and lonesome village in Iceland.

Noi is a high school drop-in. That means he occasionally attends classes to catch up on his sleep (after being awakened by grandma with an effective but uncommon alarm). He's an albino but little is made of that, his mutation being essentially a metaphor for the opacity of his slow, largely aimless direction.

Noi lives with his grandmother but he has a not atypical buddy/adversary relationship with his taxi driver drunkard dad. About the only real emotion this kid shows is concern for his father's feelings when the polite but exasperated principal expels the teen: sending in a Panasonic tape recorder to sub for his classroom presence was the last straw for the threatened teachers.

Noi doesn't work and he basically spends his time doing very little not that there's much to do in the snowbound neighborhood. A very pretty bookseller's daughter, Iris, from the city, is visiting her dad and working in a usually empty cafe appended to a gas station. Noi pursues her with the languid inattention that seems to characterize his life.

This isn't a typical bored teen flick. Noi seems to have real promise and no motivation. The ice walls surrounding his village are a prison and he has no plans to break out other than a ludicrous failed bank robbery and a car heist to set him off on a road to nowhere. As a collection of sketches suggesting that natural boundaries have consequences for a kid with a different take on life, "Noi" is interesting.

Ultimately Noi must face a challenge dropped on him, literally, by a natural disaster. What if anything he learns from the experience is unclear. There's no neat ending to this movie.

The excellent cinematography highlights the barrenness of Noi's village. I almost sustained snow glare watching this short film.

And speaking of its shortness, I do wonder why this ninety-three minute movie had an eighty-two minute running time in France. What could there have been to cut? There's enough minimalism in the full version.

8/10

In the spare and poetic "Noi the Albino," the title character is a seventeen-year-old gifted underachiever who lives with his grandmother in a dreary little village on the coast of northern Iceland. This would be a harsh, isolated environment for anyone to grow up in, but it is particularly trying for a misfit adolescent with few social skills and no real hope for the future. Noi, whose generally aloof, alcoholic father lives on his own in a different part of town, spends most of his time trudging purposelessly through the snowy streets of the village or holing up in the basement room he's carved out for himself as a kind of sanctuary from a world too utterly depressing to contemplate. Bored by school and bereft of friends, this young man drifts through life, dreaming of the day when he will be able to live on a very different kind of island in the South Seas, a location light years removed from this place where the interiors are every bit as stark and forbidding as the white-on-white world outside.

"Noi the Albino" is one of those films in which the very lack of anything significant happening becomes the central theme and message of the work. Noi lives a life that is so uneventful and boring that it would drive virtually any one of us to the brink of madness. We hardly blame him when we see him dozing through his classes at school or pilfering change from a mock slot machine set up in the local restaurant. Yet, despite the fact that virtually nothing of consequence happens, the film itself is a fascinating mood piece that seeps into our bones and makes us sympathize with the plight of the strange young man who occupies center stage in the drama. Most of the adults in Noi's life seem to sense his potential, but, for some reason, he is totally unwilling to tap into it. What's impressive about the film is that it doesn't try to explain why that is, though we sense it has something to do with the stifling environment in which he lives. Noi becomes emblematic of all people who lead lives of quiet desperation, tucked away in remote, virtually uninhabitable corners of the globe, far removed from the bustle and excitement that can be found only in places with large and diverse populations.

As Noi, Tomas Lemarquis gives a beautiful, subtle performance, creating a compelling and complex character using little more than body language and facial expressions. The final moments of the film are truly heartbreaking as Noi learns the value of what he has - even though, at that point, the realization comes too late.

Written and directed by Dagur Kari with an artist's eye for lyricism and austerity, this is a bleak but intriguing little film that will stay in your mind long past the closing credits.

Coming of age films are a common staple of Hollywood but as with many genres they merely offer variations on a theme. Noi Albinoi is a beautiful film in so many ways from the breathtaking landscape of Iceland to the often used but even more often forgotten ideal of carpe diem (sieze the day). Noi himself is completely believable for anyone who's ever been a teenager, he is an excellent reflection of the aspirations, naievaty and irrepresable emotions that everyone feels at that age. This film kept me amused and touched in equal measures all the way up to its amazing climax. A must see for everyone who understands that life's different when you're 17.