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Title: Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
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Jens Jørgen Fleischer | ... | Inuit Hunter (as Ona Fletcher) |
| Julia Ormond | ... | Smilla Jaspersen | |
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Agga Olsen | ... | Juliane Christiansen |
|
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Patrick Field | ... | Policeman |
| Matthew Marsh | ... | Detective | |
| Gabriel Byrne | ... | The Mechanic | |
| Jim Broadbent | ... | Dr. Lagermann | |
| Tom Wilkinson | ... | Prof. Loyen | |
|
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Charlotte Bradley | ... | Mrs. Lagermann |
| Richard Harris | ... | Dr. Andreas Tork | |
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Charles Lewsen | ... | Pastor (as Charles Lewson) |
| Robert Loggia | ... | Moritz Jaspersen | |
| Emma Croft | ... | Benja | |
| Bob Peck | ... | Ravn | |
| Ann Queensberry | ... | Mrs. Schou | |
Based on Peter Hoeg's bestseller, this film is set in snowy Copenhagen where a small boy is found dead after he fell off a roof. Smilla Jasperson, a close friend who lives in the same house begins to suspect murder because she knows that the boy was afraid of heights and would not have played on the roof. As she begins to investigate, she is pulled deeper and deeper into a conspiracy that could very well mean her death. Written by Harald Mayr <marvin@bike.augusta.de>
A jagged and incoherent narration of an otherwise brilliant story. The movie can best be described as how children write essays, on the form... "Smilla did this. Then she found out that. Then she watched this. Then she did something. etc. etc.". Really not what one might expect from Bille August who is an otherwise excellent storyteller. Peter Hoeg is an expert author who includes plenty of pause in his novels letting you wonder yourself and fantasize as to what is going on on the sideline helped by a painstakingly accurate description of the characters. These pauses must be substituted with cuts in a movie, not leaving the audience time to ponder and thus there must be subplots to support the build-up of the characters. This is exactly what this movie is missing. It has no subplots.
The scenery is pretty and winter-twilighty. This could have helped show a Danish winter as it can be but failed and cast the movie with a depressing shade of grey.
The intro, however, was spectacular. Not so much the wave plunging through the pack ice - but the anticipating stance of the man waiting to harpoon a seal. When filmed from behind (where we could see the meteor dropping) he looked exactly like a tupilak figure. THAT was beautiful.