White Night Wedding is not your typical romantic comedy. Set on a scenic remote island off of Iceland, the movie does have some of the qualities expected in classic Hollywood fare, such as eccentric characters, passionate lovers, and a wildly dramatic wedding scene. However, unlike Hollywood, director Baltasar Kormákur chooses to realistically portray his characters, complete with the starkness of unhappy marriages, the skeletons of broken dreams, and an entire kaleidoscope of mental quirks which are near, in some cases, to insanity. The movie is loosely based on the play Ivanov, by Anton Chekhov, and as the movie unfolds, it becomes apparent that themes of debt and marrying for money, as well as the temptation of suicide, are carried over from Chekhov's work. The movie was critically acclaimed and won seven Edda awards in Iceland. It is no surprise White Night Wedding was so popular, as it's witty combination of love, despair, and lunacy are interwoven seamlessly on the breathtaking island of Flatey.
Love abounds in the film, in all of its varying stages. Indeed, as the movie progresses, we see it take the shape of puppy love between soon-to-be newlyweds, guilt-ridden love between an aging couple, and despairing, persistent love between Anna and Jon. Rather than confine White Night Wedding to a single, stereotypical romance, Kormákur depicts human emotions as they truly are: wild and changing as the sea surrounding the island of Flatey. All emotional extremes are mapped throughout the plot of this movie. The audience is captivated and saddened by Anna's desperate, and increasingly manic attempts to cling to her distant husband, while at the same time allured by Thora's flirtatious behavior and equally shocked by the dramatic discovery of their affair. We are simultaneously immersed in the marriage of Thora's parents, Larus and Sisi, who each are so wounded and blinded that they cannot comfort or support each other. Sisi is brutally absorbed in money, so much that her loyal husband Larus is left uncomforted to nurse his own unfulfilled dreams of becoming a famous opera singer. Throw in an uptight hairless priest, an overweight jovial best man, Thora's introverted, irritable sister, and a scrappy delusional golf-course owner, and the plot has expanded to encompass a motley group of characters all in the never-ending search of love and happiness.
Despair also plays a key role in the movie, as a stark contrast to the jovial celebration in preparation for the wedding. Frequent flashbacks to Jon's previous marriage with an unstable, and desperate wife blur the lines between present and past. Anna's depression and metal problems are constantly on the edge of the plot, and are depicted in the form of pill bottles and hysteria without a clear diagnosis. The pity we may feel for Jon coming home to a dead swan in the garbage and seaweed placed throughout the house is equally tempered by the sympathy we feel for Anna, who is abandoned and cheated on by her silent husband. It causes the audience to wonder where Anna's mental instability has come from. Is it possible Jon's neglect is the cause of her lunacy? We see a common theme of unrequited love surface. The more fervently Anna yearns for her husband to be present, physically and emotionally, the more he shuns her. As a final blow, after a failed attempt to seduce him to "roll in the grass naked" with her, she catches him doing exactly that with young, fierce Thora who is determined to marry Jon from the day she set eyes on him. Anna is driven to the depths of despair, and an ultimately tragic ending. The audience is left to wonder, will the same fate will someday befall Thora?
Finally, the eccentricities of the characters are especially prominent. Much like a dysfunctional family, the inhabitants of Flatey all share a wild white night before the wedding - which may be an allusion to the odd behavior of the characters in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. While Anna is the only person who is clinically labeled as mentally unstable, all of the characters exhibit strange behavior at some point throughout the night. From Sjonni's drunken revelry to Larus's nude opera in the sea, the audience finds themselves personally intertwined in the odd lives of Flatey's inhabitants. Through exquisite filming technique that balances between wide sweeps of scenery and intimate close-ups, many of the scenes in the film attain a dream-like quality which leaves the audience unsure of reality. In this way, while depicting and creating flawed, and brutally realistic characters, Kormákur uses filming techniques to create varying tones of surreal passion, grief, and chaos. The traditional Icelandic folk music perfectly complements the landscape to portray Icelandic culture and set this film apart from the stereotypical romantic comedy. Indeed, the passionate nudity, harsh suicide, and extreme quirkiness of the film all are qualities often absent in Hollywood but is a hallmark of starkly realistic Nordic cinema.
Love abounds in the film, in all of its varying stages. Indeed, as the movie progresses, we see it take the shape of puppy love between soon-to-be newlyweds, guilt-ridden love between an aging couple, and despairing, persistent love between Anna and Jon. Rather than confine White Night Wedding to a single, stereotypical romance, Kormákur depicts human emotions as they truly are: wild and changing as the sea surrounding the island of Flatey. All emotional extremes are mapped throughout the plot of this movie. The audience is captivated and saddened by Anna's desperate, and increasingly manic attempts to cling to her distant husband, while at the same time allured by Thora's flirtatious behavior and equally shocked by the dramatic discovery of their affair. We are simultaneously immersed in the marriage of Thora's parents, Larus and Sisi, who each are so wounded and blinded that they cannot comfort or support each other. Sisi is brutally absorbed in money, so much that her loyal husband Larus is left uncomforted to nurse his own unfulfilled dreams of becoming a famous opera singer. Throw in an uptight hairless priest, an overweight jovial best man, Thora's introverted, irritable sister, and a scrappy delusional golf-course owner, and the plot has expanded to encompass a motley group of characters all in the never-ending search of love and happiness.
Despair also plays a key role in the movie, as a stark contrast to the jovial celebration in preparation for the wedding. Frequent flashbacks to Jon's previous marriage with an unstable, and desperate wife blur the lines between present and past. Anna's depression and metal problems are constantly on the edge of the plot, and are depicted in the form of pill bottles and hysteria without a clear diagnosis. The pity we may feel for Jon coming home to a dead swan in the garbage and seaweed placed throughout the house is equally tempered by the sympathy we feel for Anna, who is abandoned and cheated on by her silent husband. It causes the audience to wonder where Anna's mental instability has come from. Is it possible Jon's neglect is the cause of her lunacy? We see a common theme of unrequited love surface. The more fervently Anna yearns for her husband to be present, physically and emotionally, the more he shuns her. As a final blow, after a failed attempt to seduce him to "roll in the grass naked" with her, she catches him doing exactly that with young, fierce Thora who is determined to marry Jon from the day she set eyes on him. Anna is driven to the depths of despair, and an ultimately tragic ending. The audience is left to wonder, will the same fate will someday befall Thora?
Finally, the eccentricities of the characters are especially prominent. Much like a dysfunctional family, the inhabitants of Flatey all share a wild white night before the wedding - which may be an allusion to the odd behavior of the characters in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. While Anna is the only person who is clinically labeled as mentally unstable, all of the characters exhibit strange behavior at some point throughout the night. From Sjonni's drunken revelry to Larus's nude opera in the sea, the audience finds themselves personally intertwined in the odd lives of Flatey's inhabitants. Through exquisite filming technique that balances between wide sweeps of scenery and intimate close-ups, many of the scenes in the film attain a dream-like quality which leaves the audience unsure of reality. In this way, while depicting and creating flawed, and brutally realistic characters, Kormákur uses filming techniques to create varying tones of surreal passion, grief, and chaos. The traditional Icelandic folk music perfectly complements the landscape to portray Icelandic culture and set this film apart from the stereotypical romantic comedy. Indeed, the passionate nudity, harsh suicide, and extreme quirkiness of the film all are qualities often absent in Hollywood but is a hallmark of starkly realistic Nordic cinema.