'Trapped' (2015) is a well written, acted, energetic and creatively projected dramatization of Icelandic island life, drafted from the perspective of a rurally situated police chief under considerable pressure. Casting has produced character portrayals which reflect considerable intensity and interest, leaving the audience quickly vested in the welfare and wellbeing of central characters. Overall, actors deliver consistently compelling and believable performances which further draws the audience into both the story and its likely oucome, demanding the viewer's attention.
Operatively, a body is discovered, a large interisland ferry is seconded, people traffickers, corrupt or unethical government officials, innocent and guilty parties, and a legacy of tragedy; all this forms the anchoring fabric of both the storyline and this island's social community spectrum. Unscripted, and absent of dialogue, the island's weather and climate also play a prominent role is situating characters in an locale of immediate threat and ever-present danger. At times, merely venturing outside, unprepared and unprotected, could be a life ended error.
Characters are presented and represented as entirely human, accessible and believable in their response and strategies for coping with the anxieties and urgencies of Icelandic island life and its inherent isolation and socio-economic precarity. Thus, within this community of intense need, privilege and under privilege, coping behaviours vary from the proactively positively promotive, to anti-social criminality, invoked by greed, selfishness and likely psychopathology - mental illness. Thereby, multiple stories are represented in the discourse of this production. Consequently, the dramatic social symbology of this community is quite compelling; and thus, arguably, realistically situated.
As with any well-crafted storylines; importantly, the audience is not taken for granted. To that end, we, the audience, are lead through a legacy of tragedy which originates with the unexplained death of a young teenage women, survived by her beloved boyfriend who escaped his partner's fate, who, unable to escape the building, was consumed by fire.
Questions and suspicion persist concerning how one of two in the same building survived when the other did not. Situationally, a mutilated body is dredged up by a trawler from within the harbour as the ferry arrives. Thus, the scene is set for the formal investigation of a non-accidental death of an unidentified individual of unexplained cause of death. Geographically, an intense Nordic storm isolates the island from outside police authority and support.
Operatively, a body is discovered, a large interisland ferry is seconded, people traffickers, corrupt or unethical government officials, innocent and guilty parties, and a legacy of tragedy; all this forms the anchoring fabric of both the storyline and this island's social community spectrum. Unscripted, and absent of dialogue, the island's weather and climate also play a prominent role is situating characters in an locale of immediate threat and ever-present danger. At times, merely venturing outside, unprepared and unprotected, could be a life ended error.
Characters are presented and represented as entirely human, accessible and believable in their response and strategies for coping with the anxieties and urgencies of Icelandic island life and its inherent isolation and socio-economic precarity. Thus, within this community of intense need, privilege and under privilege, coping behaviours vary from the proactively positively promotive, to anti-social criminality, invoked by greed, selfishness and likely psychopathology - mental illness. Thereby, multiple stories are represented in the discourse of this production. Consequently, the dramatic social symbology of this community is quite compelling; and thus, arguably, realistically situated.
As with any well-crafted storylines; importantly, the audience is not taken for granted. To that end, we, the audience, are lead through a legacy of tragedy which originates with the unexplained death of a young teenage women, survived by her beloved boyfriend who escaped his partner's fate, who, unable to escape the building, was consumed by fire.
Questions and suspicion persist concerning how one of two in the same building survived when the other did not. Situationally, a mutilated body is dredged up by a trawler from within the harbour as the ferry arrives. Thus, the scene is set for the formal investigation of a non-accidental death of an unidentified individual of unexplained cause of death. Geographically, an intense Nordic storm isolates the island from outside police authority and support.