White Night Wedding (2008)

White night wedding is a story about love, friendship and nature. Focusing on the loss of love between Jon and Anna (his first wife who is now deceased) and Jon's new love with Þóra. Coming up to his new wedding, Jon is haunted by the memories of his old wife, and finds that life is not all that different with one woman instead of the other.Love is woven through almost every character in this story, but produces radically different results. Naïve, young Þóra is completely blinded buy her love of Jon. She feels it is her duty to "fix" him, viewing him like a rickety house that she needs to restore to tip top shape. I believe she believes that she truly loves him, but will find much the same road ahead of her as his first wife. In the end, Jon is not all Þóra wanted and she is left to deal with the choices she has made. Jon himself struggles with love, but the world-weary man does not seem to have had much to begin with. At the beginning, we are presented with a seemingly loving man and a miscommunication between him and his wife. Jon seems to crave love as much as his wife needs it but seems to be incapable of giving it. We see this when his wife is distraught from hitting a bird and he is unable to give her comfort. After she had frustratingly hung up the phone, He continues to talk to the phone, saying 'dear' and 'sweetheart'. Though he may be putting on a show for the man in his office, it is most likely a show for himself and his ideals of love.There are two characters in this film that put their love of money before their love of people, Sísí and Séra Ólafur. It is not clear how much Sísí loves her husband, but what is clear, is that Sisi loves money. She lives for money and cannot understand those around her who do not do the same. She loves her daughter, and want acceptance from her, but tries to do so by giving her 'gifts' and the feast. This insults her daughter who wants nothing to do with money and who knows her mother cannot possibly understand her love for Jon. Séra Ólafur is entrapped by his love for money as seen by his new bike helmet and his frequent trips to the offering box. Séra seems to have pestered the small community of Flatey by the small continual joke the residences make about the money needed by the church. Séra's love for money shines through when on the day of the wedding, he beseeches god to not, make him do this wedding since he does not believe in it. After finding all the money flying around outside, he seems to have found his belief and goes as far as getting carried out to see to make sure that the couple gets married.Friendship is another major theme that is explored. The friendships between men mostly, since the women in this film all seem a bit unstable or blindly devoted to love. This friendship of the male characters is built up slowly in the film, and comes to a culmination on the white night, where Sjonni, Börkur, and Matthildur (tied there by her infatuation with Börkur) set up a late dinner for Jon. They all have a wonderful time drinking as Lárus shows up to provide Jon with the money to keep Sísí happy. Jon and Lárus have a heart felt conversation in which their friendship and respect for each other can really be seen. Nature is another main theme, specifically explored with Anna (Jon's dead wife). The first introduction the audience gets of Anna is when she is driving through the city looking anxious. This scene is cut with birds (specifically swans) that are flying around the city and landing in ponds. These two separate scenes literally collide when Anna hits a bird that had flown in front of the car. Anna is clearly upset by this, and it seems to be the turning point for her, where she decides to leave the city. While watching this, I viewed birds as Anna's spirit or emotional self. Clearly she cannot survive in the city and therefore must leave to be back to where she was from originally. The birds appear frequently on the island, and at very strategic times. When Þóra talks with Jon about leaving Anna, the birds in the background fly up in a great flock. When Jon and Þóra have sex, the thrushes are noisily disturbed and instantly Anna knows something is very wrong. Anna seems to be much happier and better on the island, connected with what she knows and the ocean, but Jon seems incapable of seeing it. When Anna kills herself, she takes a sinking boat into the ocean going back to nature and what she considers to be the mother of nature. While this film weaves interesting connections between love, friendship, and nature, the main character is extremely hard to identify with. He is ultimately unlovable, which might fit in with his struggle to love, but he has two women that are completely devoted to him. This works with Anna since the audience assumes that at one point he was a better husband from the comments that she makes. But with Þóra this intense infatuation makes her seem stupid and dull. I found the interactions of almost everyone in the story more dynamic and interesting than the relationship between Jon and Þóra. Overall though, it was an entertaining film that was both lighthearted and dark, keeping you glued too it trying to decipher fact from fiction.

Dare to dream!In White Night Wedding we meet a literature professor, Jon, who is preparing for his second marriage. The wedding is taking place on a small island called Flatey in Iceland that can only be visited by boat. Jon's soon to be wife, Thora, is one of Jon's former students and about half his age. They seem happy together, and everything should be set for a perfect wedding. However, it is not that simple, Jon has a couple of things he needs to take care of before the wedding can take place. He is in debt to Thora's mother, and she is threatening to call off the wedding unless Jon pays her. He is also haunted by memories of his first wife, Anna. In addition to this, he has to deal with his drunken best man.I believe the most important theme in this movie is dreams. Jon is in a stage of his life where he struggles to find purpose. He is suffering from his first marriage, he is not able to pay his dept to his future mother in law, and he has no job. Jon wanted to become a professor so that he could make a difference in the world; however, when he realized that his job was not what he pictured it to be, he decided to take a break from teaching. If Jon does not get his life together, he will end up as his future father in law, Lasus. Although Lasus is happy on the outside, his decision to sacrifice his dream of becoming an opera singer for marrying Sisi is clearly affecting him. I believe this represents the kind of suffering that Jon will inevitably have to suffer unless he gets his life back on track. At the end, Jon says, "If you're happy for more than ten minutes then you're an idiot." This statement emphasizes his awareness of having a dream and a goal to strive for. The director, Kormakur, did a phenomenal job representing Jon's memories of Anna in flashbacks throughout the movie. His way of jumping from the present to the past without warning the audience is an original way of portraying a story that is indeed built on the past. He dares to explore new effects that can make the story challenging to follow, but does it with such a perfection that the viewer wants more flashbacks to get a deeper understanding of Jon's actions.Other main themes in this movie are relationships and greed. We see a relationship that is falling apart in Jon's memories, a relationship with Thora that is insecure in Jon's present life, a forced relationship between Thora's parents, and a starting relationship between Borkur and Mathildur to mention a few. Greed is represented in Sisi. All she cares about is money, and she is determined to get back the money Jon borrowed to build a golf course. Sisi's greed is contrasted in Lasus and Jon whom are not motivated by money at all. The location chosen for this movie is a great representation of Icelandic culture. The idyllic climate and unpopulated atmosphere on Flatey confirms my stereotypic Icelandic environment. Also the acting in White night Wedding is phenomenal. The emotions brought to life are so natural and honest that you fall in love with the characters one by one. Borkur's passion, Mathildur's honesty, the priest's anger, and Jon's fare are some of the emotions that will bring the viewer on an emotional roller-coaster. I recommend this movie to everyone that has some interest in Nordic film. The themes of dreams, relationships, and greed are themes we can all relate to, and you will at some level be able to relate to the situations that occur in the White Night Wedding. Kormakur is a world-class director who is not afraid to explore new methods to create movies. Let the actors charm you and let the director challenge your mind. This movie is worthy of all its awards. Dare to see it!

I've loved Iceland since my layovers in Rekjavik on the way to France a couple times so I was looking forward to a film that would allow me to return to this beautiful place.And, as it turned out, the scenery was the best part of this frustrating tragicomedy.Am I the only one who thought Jon was attempting bigamy for much of this film? It was only toward the end that I realized the stuff about his first wife was only a flashback and not a concurrent soap opera.I found this to be the archetypal movie that doesn't know what it wants to be -- a profound mediation on the idiocy of irresponsible men going through menopause (a la Bergman) or a zany romp about love conquering all.All the stuff about Jon's mentally ill first wife was both heart-wrenching and tedious. I sympathized with her plight AND I tired of watching her strew seaweed all over the place. One character I did enjoy was Jon's future mother-in-law. I understood her extreme skepticism toward a graying deadbeat marrying her young daughter. I don't think she was obsessed with money; rather, she was identifying a critical flaw in the match.The final scene was both ridiculous and sad. Maybe the whole movie was. I'm just glad I got to see my dear Iceland again...

I saw this last month at the 2009 Palm Springs International Film Festival. This is the fifth film from writer/director and noted Icelandic stage director Baltasar Kormakur. Baltasar and Olafur Egil Egilsson wrote the screenplay as a loose adaptation of Anton Chekhov's stage play Ivanov and the film was developed simultaneously with a stage play that featured the same cast. This was Iceland's official entry as Best Foreign Language Film to the Academy Awards. It has won several awards in Iceland and worldwide and was one of Iceland's biggest domestic box office hits. The setting is on the remote Flatey Island off the north shore of Iceland. University professor Jon (Hilmirsnaer Gudnasson) has an impending marriage to Thora (Laufey Eliasdottir), a former student of his and a girl half his age and only one year after his wife committed suicide. Thor's parents Laurus (Johann Sigurdarsson) and Sisi (Olafia Hronn Jonsdottir) run the islands only store, hotel and tavern and have had a bad business arrangement with Jon. A great cast and a great performance by Thorstur Leo Gunnardsson who plays Jon's rowdy and overbearing friend Borkur who has arrived on the island for the wedding. Great character development central cast and peripheral characters in this romantic drama/comedy. Excellent cinematography by Bergstein Bjorgulfsson and editing by Elisabet Ronaldsdott with art design by Atili Gretarsson and Gretar Reynisson. I would give this an 8.5 out of 10 and recommend it.