Falcons
Another European Co-Production, this time between Iceland, Germany, England and Norway. Set in Iceland and during the second half in Germany, with Icelandic, German and English dialogue, this is a film that on one hand starts out engrossing before it shifts gears and becomes anti-climactic...
Another European Co-Production, this time between Iceland, Germany, England and Norway. Set in Iceland and during the second half in Germany, with Icelandic, German and English dialogue, this is a film that on one hand starts out engrossing before it shifts gears and becomes anti-climactic.
Keith Carradine (fantastic in ‘Southern Comfort’, ‘Nashville’ and ‘McCabe and Mrs Miller’) plays Simon, a man on a suicide mission to Iceland where he wants to retrace his steps from 30 years before and visit his last living relatives, before retreating to the stunning landscape and blowing his brains out. On route and mainly due to the influence of landscape and animals, he meets Dua, who, as it turns out he believes is his daughter from his previous visit. The local police sheriff conspires to rape Dua and in doing so angers Carradine who warns him off by grazing his arm after shooting a double barreled shotgun at him. The cop gets pissed off and decides to set fire to Dua’s uncles house (who is in hospital with after suffering a heart attack) as revenge, as well as shooting the old mans dogs. Simon and Dua decide to leave Iceland by boat with only Dua’s uncles rare falcon as a potential source of money to assist them on their escape. As the falcon is a protected species they have to smuggle themselves out of the country and decide to head to Germany. When they get there, we get a brief glimpse of reunified Germany and meet some guys who want to buy the falcon. Events start to take a turn for the worst and leads into an altogether different direction, which I shall withhold from those who want to see this film.
Initially, the story ponders life and death and encompasses the fates of the 2 protagonists, firmly in the realm of the stunning landscape. Animals bring them together and in the case of the sheriff further apart. Carradine begins to see that he may have found a reason to live after all, especially when he starts to believe that Dua is his daughter. This part of the story is told through Carradine and his recording of his voice on a tape recorder, where we find out why he wants to kill himself and ultimately why he wants to carry on living. This device was put too much better use in the Wong Kar-Wai film ‘Happy Together’, and appears to be little more than a way of filling in a lot of back story, as well as a way to propel the flimsy narrative forward. The dialogue seems to become more ludicrous as the film progresses with line like “Being in prison is a bitch but being an ex-con, that’s a killer”, as he narrates into his tape recorder. Carradine seems to drain all the emotion out of his character, which may be fine in real life if he was suicidal, but in this film it should be the anchor, as his redemption at the end plays like a fools journey. Instead this role is left to the music, which conveys the bleakness of the landscape and his situation.
The Cinematography is exceptional, especially during the Icelandic half of the film and the Sound design firmly places you in the environment, with the sounds of birds and animals coming at you from the back speakers. However, the story is another damp squib, it fails on both a narrative and plot level and gradually drains any emotional connection with Carradines character by a lack of focus on his characters arc. Although European co-productions are not always a disaster, this is the unacceptable face of the criteria involved in making a film across boarders. If they are to receive German funding they need to go and film in Germany, hence the story is controlled by financial regulations to get the funding. Film makers tend as a whole to make their best films in the Countries where they are most familiar, where they don’t need to make preposterous plot twists to take the characters overseas. Not all co-productions have these stringent regulations but this film seems to have that imposed on itself. ‘JFK’ for example was partly funded by Canal +, the French equivalent of Film Four, and ‘Ghost Dog’ was an English and French co-production. However, Falcons seems to start in one direction and twist in another and this made it very unsatisfactory from this reviewers stand point. Funders tend to offer a wealth of advice when it comes down to the story development stage but as they are not the artists, they should choose their film makers with a better understanding of the film making world and not just as a means to make a film as commercial as possible. The commerciality in this film becomes very clear after the bleak and interesting start to this film. The suicide theme fades away and a part thriller emerges, with the 2 characters on the run in need of selling their Falcon on the black market.
This a shame to say, as I really enjoyed the other Fridirik Thor Fridriksson film that I have seen, called ‘Cold Fever’, a film firmly placed and executed in Iceland. ‘Falcons’ captures the bleakness of the landscape but adds little to the understanding of what it is like to be Icelandic, other than the fact that it is freezing and bleak. The recently excellent ‘Noi, Albino’ seems to contribute a much better understanding of this Country and the characters that make up the population of a small Icelandic community. However, that said, the film does have more going for it than the standard Hollywood releases, capturing a mood and feeling of the landscape that does stay with you after the film has finished.
The DVD has only trailers as extras but the film itself is crystal clear and although the copy I saw had only 1 sound option (Dolby 2.0), the 2 key attributes of this film are fully realised on this DVD, that is the sound and image. Although I can’t imagine this being on anyone’s must own list (after seeing it), I would recommend that you track it down and rent it out. After all it is not every day that you have the opportunity to experience a small piece of Iceland, a Country that rarely hits the news or has any exposure in the UK. From this point of view alone it is worth checking out.
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