When the Light Breaks (Ljósbrot)

 

Writer/director Runár Runársson

Runársson with actress Elín Hall

cinematographer Sophia Olsson

 

 

WHEN THE LIGHT BREAKS (Ljósbrot)                            B                                             Iceland  Netherlands  Croatia  France  (82 mi)  2024  d: Runár Runársson 

Things that appear black or white at first glance often have another side.  Even if something seems terrible at first glance, something beautiful can come out of it, if you take a closer look.  —Writer/director Runár Runársson

A no frills, low-key movie best experienced without knowing a thing about it ahead of time, taking place over a single day, between two remarkably filmed sunsets, where the Icelandic title Ljósbrot is that moment when the light breaks through in the morning.  At least initially this feels like an early Dardennes Brother’s movie, employing a very naturalistic style with the camera fixed on the back of the necks, but it quickly evolves into new territory, coming from a filmmaker whose works are all intensely personal.  A study of guilt, regret, and grief, both collectively and individually, yet anchored in everyday life, discovering it’s not just sadness, but a wide range of shifting emotions that stand out, a mix of beauty and sorrow, where humor and love may be found even in our darkest moments, where this is a ruminative film that creeps up on you, minimalist in form and style, carefully carving out distinct personalities, yet the centerpiece of the film revolves around a single character, Una (Elín Hall, short for Elín Sif Halldórsdóttir, an acclaimed Icelandic singer, songwriter, and actress, maker of four No. 1 singles, like her personalized cover of a David Bowie song, Elín Hall - As The World Falls Down (Official Video) YouTube, 4:33), an art student who is initially seen in the arms of Diddi (Baldur Einarsson), a fellow art student that we learn are in a band together, but we never see or hear them play.  Their relationship is kept secret, as he already has a smalltown girlfriend, Klara (Katla Njálsdóttir, who directs that music video and a collaborates on a music project together forming a pop duo called Mammaðin, mammaðín (@mammadin_), who is known to all the members of the band, so they meet in private, sitting on the rocks by the coast in a gorgeous sunset sequence, Clip from When The Light Breaks YouTube (1:02), discussing where they want to travel together, perhaps the Faroe Islands or Japan, but he leaves early the next morning, presumably to break up with Klara, informing her, “When I get back tomorrow night, we won’t have to hide anything anymore.”  But that moment never comes, as something unsettling occurs, which appears like a nightmarish dream sequence, especially the way the scene is introduced, where sleep gives way to a beautifully extended sequence of flickering lights passing above in the night sky, kind of like the yellow highway lines illuminated by car headlights in David Lynch’s LOST HIGHWAY (1997), but what gives it formidable artistic power is the hauntingly abstract nature of the images, unidentified at first until the camera pulls back, allowing us to see a darkened tunnel roadway with the lights passing overhead, accompanied by a starkly unique, solemnly ethereal piece of ancient music written by an Icelandic composer who grew up on the same street as the filmmaker and died unexpectedly at a relatively young age, Jóhann Jóhannsson - Odi et amo YouTube (3:12), part of a larger work based on what might be the most famous poem in Latin literature, Catullus 85 (I Hate and I Love) by the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus.  That extraordinary introduction happens before the opening credits, leading to the normal routine of a school day in Reykjavík before the news reports the biggest tunnel disaster in Icelandic history, as a fireball consumes the inside of a tunnel, where nearly everyone inside perishes.  No names are initially announced, so we see students crowding around TV’s trying to get the latest updates, with many on their phones reaching out to friends and family members.  When Diddi doesn’t answer his phone, some of the other students get concerned, especially Gunni (Mikael Kaaber), Diddi’s brother who is completely distraught, with Una seen comforting him, reminding him nothing is known yet, so don’t expect the worst.       

Premiering in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, from the maker of Volcano (Eldfjall) (2011) and SPARROWS (2015), which are about broken family relationships, and ECHO (2019), composed of 56 small vignettes, revealing how well he works in a small format, it was easy to get this film mixed up with Payal Kapadia’s 2024 Top Ten List #3 All We Imagine as Light (Prabhayay Ninachathellam), as both titles sound similar and were playing on the same festival circuit at the exact same time, with actress Elín Hall winning a Silver Hugo as Best Actress at the 2024 Chicago Film Festival.  Set against the backdrop of Iceland’s ethereal landscapes, working on 16mm with cinematographer Sophia Olsson, who the director has worked with on all his films since they met at the National Film School of Denmark, what unfolds is a deeply introspective study of human intimacy, a journey through mourning, memory, and the unspoken connections between those left behind, shining a light on a new wave of Scandinavian cinema that examines the intenseness of being human.  While the chaos at the school was confusing enough, it is nothing like the chaos they encounter when a group of friends gather at a Red Cross crisis center (actually the architecturally designed Harpa (concert hall) with its unique glass façade), which is positively mayhem, a national tragedy of epic proportions, with Una learning soon enough that Diddi has died, eyeing her friends from a distance, where it’s clear they are processing his death, leaving everyone in a state of disbelief and powerlessness.  As the day unfolds, Una drifts between friends, family, and solitude, uneasy in any company, and unhappy alone, with the actress capable of conveying a wide range of emotions with barely perceptible changes of expression, using little to no dialogue, having a unique ability to subtly show what her character is going through, mostly dealing with hidden feelings while tasked with pent-up emotions.  What follows resembles the activities of a wake, where there is genuine warmth, humor, solidarity, and the comfort of a group, with the members of the band assembling with Una and Klara, awkwardly thrown together by their friends’ collective mourning, still associating Klara as Diddi’s girlfriend, which only disturbs Una even more, as only she and Gunni knew the true nature of their more recently developing relationship.  As they drink Stoli (Stolichnaya vodka) shots in a bar, Diddi’s favorite drink of choice, they hug and comfort one another, yet all are obviously miserable, with Una only feeling more distanced due to her carefully kept secret, like some kind of outcast, finding it hard not to be resentful towards Klara, who is on the receiving end of shared emotional support as Diddi’s openly acknowledged girlfriend, leaving her having to deal with her own personal crisis alone on a roller coaster of existential feelings.  Gunni feels especially close to her for this reason, but it still stings, leaving her ever more exasperated and alone, having to keep everything to herself, which just gnaws at her, as Diddi was one of the few people who accepted her as she was.  Klara claims she was initially jealous of Una being the only girl in Diddi’s band, but he informed her she had nothing to worry about as she’s a dyke.  The androgynous-looking Una with her short-cropped hair and boyish clothes informs her she’s not a lesbian, but pansexual, more openly attracted to all genders.  Still, there’s a chilliness in the air between them, with Una simply avoiding her as best she can, but they’re hanging out with the same group of friends, which makes that difficult.  In a small country like Iceland, with barely 400,000 inhabitants (only 5 were in Diddi’s high school class), everyone knows everyone, so concealing a relationship is no easy matter.   

With the film exploring a complex mixture of shock, jealousy, and anger, secrets can isolate people, yet grief can ultimately reconnect them, as there’s something about the healing effect of shared suffering.  Befitting of a national tragedy, with Icelandic flags hanging at half-mast, a service is held at Hallgrímskirkja, Iceland's largest church, a modernist architectural marvel designed by State architect Guðjón Samúelsson ("Iceland's extraordinary, futuristic churches"), where the sweeping shots of modern, concrete and glass architecture in Reykjavík contrasts sharply with the natural element of the vast, panoramic Icelandic landscapes, with the group hanging outside afterwards discussing the performance art classes held at school, with Una recounting how Diddi kept drinking one shot of Stoli after another until he finally passed out, making a weird comment on a variety of issues, from substance abuse and personal degradation to youthful resiliency, as he somehow managed to survive the ordeal.  Klara finds that a waste of time, disparaging that kind of performance art, but Una is able to show her how art often leads to undiscovered perspectives, actually broadening one’s outlook.  It is curious that we never hear the music the band plays, but we do see them let loose at an impromptu party, drinking and dancing furiously to the heavy metal music of Hatari’s HATARI – HATRIÐ MUN SIGRA YouTube (3:00), which translates to “Hate will prevail,” a song that won Söngvakeppnin 2019, a Eurovision song contest.  It’s an interesting aside into youth culture, finding a ferociously downbeat subject matter to match their own manic yet morose energy.  Like Christophe Honoré’s first feature, Seventeen Times Cécile Cassard (Dix-sept fois Cécile Cassard) (2002), especially the use of heavy metal rock to express a continuously disorienting mood, this is a delicately restrained film about the stages of grief and how we handle and go through it in different ways, yet it leads to the emotional catharsis that unites us all in our mourning, where nothing is remotely the same afterwards.  As the party ends, Una and Klara, thrown together under the most unfathomable circumstances, are seen standing on either side of a glass window, with their co-mingling, double reflections merging in a Persona-like image, with Una suddenly realizing Klara may reflect another undiscovered side of Diddi.  The sparse script never allows moments of melodrama or emotional excess, and is mostly understated throughout, though there are plenty of hugs and tears, but Una, in particular, plays it pretty close to the vest, cool, but never emotionally aloof, always present in the moment, allowing her face to reveal her combustible inner turmoil.  At such young ages, they are still searching for themselves, finally taking comfort in finding someone else who knows what they’re going through, where words feel unnecessary, as they intrinsically understand this shared moment of grief, mirrored by a moment when the two women brush their teeth side by side in Diddi’s bathroom, with Una at first reaching for a familiar toothbrush, but she stops herself, using her finger instead, joined by Klara who does the exact same thing, while the knowledge that Una has been in this exact same spot before lingers in the air.  Their unexpected closeness is part of the grieving process, just needing someone near to help drive away the engulfing pain, as the Odi et amo music is heard again as light on the water is reflected in another abstract shot that comes to define the fragility of the human spirit.  As the two women wander off into a familiar landscape, nature takes its course, both swallowed up by the colors of another gorgeous sunset, clinging together in the sheer beauty of the moment, as orange hues gently hover over a tranquil sea, allowing the fleeting beauty of nature to speak the unspeakable in its profound silences, literally bathing them in the haunting grace of the moment.    

Blue Heron

 

Writer/director Sophy Romvari

director on the set

BLUE HERON          B                                                                                                       Hungary  Canada  (90 mi)  2025  d: Sophy Romvari

What drew me to this film, awarded the best debut feature at Locarno and best Canadian feature at the Toronto Film Fest, was the locale, having been to Vancouver Island in the Pacific Northwest, surprisingly at the exact same time frame in the late 90’s as the film, before the prevalence of cellphones and GPS, where one of the highlights was the abundance of indigenous art to be found, especially in the galleries of the small town of Tofino on the western coast, where the ruggedness of the terrain and the enormous Douglas Fir and cedar trees is nothing less than remarkable, growing three times faster near salmon rivers that enrich the soil, while also attracting thousands of eagles and grizzly bears, creating a harmonious blend of nature and wildlife.  This film, however, ignores that entirely and takes place mostly in the urban environment of Nanaimo on the eastern coast overlooking the Georgia Straight, just a ferry’s ride away from Vancouver, though, as is often the case in films, much of it was actually shot in North Vancouver.  Not to be confused with Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka) (2022), this is actually more along the lines of Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), or Jane Campion’s Sweetie (1989), but without the artistic firepower, featuring a morose, acutely disturbed teenage boy wreaking emotional havoc on his family, yet initially he just seems like any other moody, disaffected, and self-absorbed teenage kid whose anti-social rebelliousness manifests itself by inappropriately acting out, creating chaos out of nothing, drawing attention to himself and those around him, straining the family dynamic, yet he’s never viewed as a villain, always perceived as just a kid who’s also capable of displaying moments of tenderness.  Loosely diagnosed with “oppositional defiant disorder,” literally rebelling against authority, yet this barely scratches the surface, as intervention fails miserably, leaving the parents in despair, having to deal with an underlying anxiety that permeates their core existence, but leaving them feeling helpless by knowing so little about it, which is only magnified by the children’s inability to understand, knowing something is wrong but not knowing what to do about it, as there was limited knowledge and few available resources to address this kind of situation at the time, eventually recommending placement with a foster family, which lingers like a death in the family.  In reality, Romvari lost two older brothers in early adulthood, both struggling with mental illness, tragedies that may have inspired this film, forged out of grief and love.  Written by the director, shot by Maya Bankovic, subtly told from the point of view of a young 8-year old girl, Sasha (Eylul Guven), she is part of a Hungarian-Canadian family of six who move to British Columbia’s Vancouver Island in the late 90’s, where initially nothing out of the ordinary occurs, establishing a natural rhythm and flow, as characters move in and out of view as we get accustomed to the normal patterns of life, with an introverted photographer husband (Ádám Tompa) who mostly stays out of the fray by burying himself in work on his desktop computer, leaving a beleaguered mother (Iringó Réti) with way too much responsibility looking after the children on her own, leaving her frustrated, at her wit’s end, and emotionally exhausted.  He notably does bring the children into the dark room to develop photographs, as they watch with wonderment at what feels like magic when the images suddenly appear out of nothing.     

As we are lured into their familiar routines, going to the beach, watching cartoons or National Geographic animal episodes, making paper boats in the sink, playing in the sprinkler outside on the lawn, inflating water balloons, spraying one another with the garden hose, or jumping on the trampoline, no one personality stands out, but the oldest teenage boy Jeremy (Edik Beddoes), the only child born from the mother’s previous relationship, is much older and towers over the other children, consisting of two boys about the same age as Sasha, but as time goes on he gets to be a handful, never listening to his parents, ignoring them completely while acting suspiciously as his behavior grows more erratic, becoming increasingly dangerous, precariously walking on the roof, breaking windows with his hand, disappearing frequently for long periods of time, remaining aloof and isolated, barely ever uttering a word, with no interactions and no friends to speak of, mostly keeping to himself, viewed at the time as a “problem child,” a loaded expression from the 90’s.  Loosely based on her own immigrant experience, drawing upon her own family life, as her parents and three brothers all moved from Hungary to British Columbia a year before she was born, the director has been making short documentaries since 2011 before making her first feature, which enlarges the canvas, yet there’s an understated quietness to the film, filled with distance and space between incidents, where it’s not about narrative coherence but establishing an interior mood in a diary-like series of reflections on childhood memories where she literally bears her soul, shining a light on what was the elephant in the room growing up.  Featuring a “haze of a languid summer” atmosphere, reminiscent of Lucrecia Martel’s LA CIÉNAGA (2001), heavily emphasizing silence, ambient sound, and the emotional weight of memory, we follow the parents struggling to understand, not knowing what to do, yet we also get glimpses of reality through the eyes and ears of Sasha, whose own innocence is mixed with instability and uncertainty, where beauty and trauma exist side by side, as she starts to notice cracks in her family’s dynamics as they struggle to help their troubled teenage son, Clip Blue Heron subtitulado YouTube (1:21).  While there’s an ominous undertone beneath the placid surface, what remains questionable is whether this film is too distanced, never really allowing viewers in, so the characters may feel too far away to become emotionally invested.  Given that amount of personal intimacy, however, one of the scenes that stands out is a poignant, magical-realist epilogue toward the end of the film, a “last day” scenario within the childhood home for Jeremy, scored to the hauntingly elegant Adagio movement of Beethoven’s 5th piano concerto, Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat Major, Op. 73: II. Adagio un ... YouTube (9:23), offering a sense of grandeur to the uncomfortable, allowing for a poetic reckoning with a family’s painful history, which elevates the moment, remaining imprinted in our imaginations, revealing art can provide additional perspectives, but not answers.  Only late in the film do we learn that Jeremy is a unique artist, with precise, color-coded, architectural-detailed drawings that map city neighborhoods, literally exploring a subjective artistic world rarely, if ever, featured.

Thematically linked to Romvari’s short film Still Processing (2020), an extended artistic inquiry into her own family history, something she describes as “memory retrieval,” in this case concerning a brother with profound emotional and mental health problems, music is curated to reflect a haunting evocative score and personal nostalgia, as if sourced from her father’s home videos.  Despite the personal nature of the film, it never feels forced, and instead reflects the fragmented memories of lived experiences, where it feels as if information is intentionally concealed from us, leaving only small snippets of a larger picture, where it’s easy to get caught up in the simple pleasures of growing up in the pre-cellphone, pre-internet 90’s, balancing the concerned viewpoints of the parents against the freewheeling style of the children, where playing with the sprinkler in the yard holds a certain nostalgic fascination, but then a more distressing situation occurs when Jeremy is brought home in handcuffs by the police for shoplifting, Clip 2 Blue Heron subtitulado YouTube (1:45), opening our eyes to a distress signal, a cry for help, which largely goes unanswered, as therapy sessions are unsuccessful.  But then something radically strange occurs, as the entire movie gets re-contextualized, growing more experimental, knocking the audience off-balance, which is a daring move, with the film jumping ahead twenty years, where time literally collapses, without any hints or reveals other than the use of cellphones are prevalent.  Suddenly we see Sasha as an adult (Amy Zimmer), though nothing informs us of this shift, as she’s taken an interest in exploring this earlier segment of her life that she couldn’t understand at the time, becoming both an observer and participant within her own memories, thoughtfully searching for a bridge between our experiences growing up and our reflections looking back on it, exploring her father’s photographs and videos, always filming what she discovers.  Searching for a better understanding of her troubled brother, specifically interested in how treatment programs may have advanced in evaluating Jeremy’s condition, she films the opinions of actual psychologists and therapists, yet it remains ambiguous right to the end, revealing in an opening voiceover, “It’s true I spent most of my life being angry at him.  The older I get, the more I feel like I never even knew him at all.  My image of him now, I know, falls flat compared to reality.”  Clearly wrestling with something that cannot be fully understood, never providing any clear answers, yet always remaining empathetic, Romvari uses a pseudo-documentary style of filmmaking to pay an elegiac tribute to her brother’s life, veering into Terrence Malick 2011 Top Ten Films of the Year #1 The Tree of Life realms with the expansive music of Brian Eno, Brian Eno - An Ending (Ascent) (Remastered 2019) YouTube (4:21), which plays as an adult Sasha is seen walking along the water with the Jeremy of her youth, literally becoming the filmmaker the director has become before our eyes, but never directly making that connection, instead it’s merely hinted at through poetic imagery.  In this sense, the film bears a remarkable resemblance to the visual language and evocative time shift at the end of Charlotte Wells’ 2023 Top Ten List #7 Aftersun, as both films weave memory and imagination into attempts to understand a family member that remains forever outside our grasp.  The director, on Letterboxd, listed a number of films of influence, Films that influenced Sophy Romvari's 'Blue Heron', many of which reflect a 1970’s naturalism, home movie aesthetics, and intimate family dramas, citing the performance-driven focus of John Cassavetes, the zoom lens usage of Robert Altman, and personal, nostalgic memory-focused work, with her parents’ own creative backgrounds and home videos deeply shaping her style.  Interestingly, after each night of production she’d read at least one chapter of Ray Carney’s 2001 book Cassavetes On Cassavetes.  There’s also an Éric Rohmer Le Rayon Vert (Summer) (1986) magical moment with a flashing light image seen near the end (purely unintentional, it seems) that adds a mysterious presence, like a call from beyond, or a land of twilight, as if part of the netherworld of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s VAMPYR (1932).

Sophy Romvari's Closet Picks Criterion YouTube (3:43)