Is-slottet (this thread contains spoilers)

Watched a good movie?
RobB
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Re: Is-slottet

Post by RobB »

barrett wrote:BTW ,I've found an English translation of the dialogue for Is-Slottet on the IMDb board by Rob59...I wonder who that could be :shock: :mrgreen: ...
Some sad old git with too much time on his hands no doubt? :I :mrgreen:

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sound world
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Re: Is-slottet

Post by sound world »

Just watched it. What a haunting,beautiful film...don't know what else to say just now,bowled over. So much left unsaid,and beautifully paced.

Thanks to RobB for alerting us (and also for the handy online translation-'Dos cervezas por favor' is about my limit in Spanish and I didn't notice one occasion where either of the girls asked for two beers [b)] ).

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Re: Is-slottet

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Glad you enjoyed it. :)

Just found the printed out email which I received from Hilde Martinsen (who plays Unn) which she sent me on 28th February 2001. Part of it reads:

' The screenplay was made as you may know from a book by one of Norways most important writers Tarjei Vesaas. I think the book exists in english translation. Vesaas definately had a style of his own, which isn't the easiest I think to use for the base of a film, but I think the director Per Blom succded quite well in rendering the atmoshere and the difficult feelings and relaltionships. He was also execellent in helping us young girls in getting into the parts.

I also like the film quiet well myself, but it took me many years to be able to look at it objectively, without just thinking about how we had done this and that........I think it was a bit ahead of its time in some ways, I remember that it wasn't very populat back in the eighties.People just wanted action films like James Bond and Rambo back then. But I think it is much watched in high scholls nowadays, and they show it on TV now and then.'

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Re: Is-slottet

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sound world wrote:Just watched it. What a haunting,beautiful film...don't know what else to say just now,bowled over. So much left unsaid,and beautifully paced.
Yep. It's kind of hard to talk about this film, you just have to watch it. ^ ^
Ice, you were the one most tender with the rivers.
You, the roof of the waves, layer after layer after layer ...

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sound world
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Re: Is-slottet

Post by sound world »

I've been haunted by it all day. When Siss finds Unn's body,just the face under the ice,and the scene cuts to her lying in the bath looking terribly shocked,(and mirroring Unn under the ice,her face framed in the water),it's so moving. It's also the beginning of her own reawakening,the ice cracking,the time to stop worrying about her promise to Unn and to begin her own life,as the hymn in church just beforehand suggests.
There's so much to talk about in the film,but one of its great strengths is its simplicity and quietness.So I wont. :wink:
Unforgettable-and the music is wonderful. Quite Sibelian,or like some of Takemitsu's film scores,and sustained over most of the film (quite an achievement). The first section,which repeats several times,is particularly strong.

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Re: Is-slottet

Post by blue »

sound world wrote:I've been haunted by it all day. When Siss finds Unn's body,just the face under the ice
This is the scene that haunted me so much when I saw it, and I've never forgotten it. So powerful. I'd never seen anything like that before in a film, but in the years since I've seen similar imagery in other films (the end of 'To Die For', for instance), so I think it must have influenced film-makers themselves.
Ice, you were the one most tender with the rivers.
You, the roof of the waves, layer after layer after layer ...

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Re: Is-slottet

Post by RobB »

I don't think Siss actually finds Unn's body in the physical sense but there is that brief moment when Siss is exploring the ice palace herself that she has this momentary 'vision' of Unn's body trapped in the ice which is her initial realisation that Unn was definately dead.

There are so many wonderful scenes in this film.
Amongst my favourites,..... the playground scene where Siss is reduced to tears....just look at the confused expressions and reactions of the girls in the background.
The image of Unn standing alone in the playground (looking even more out of place and isolated when framed by the horizontal boards of the school house) and Unn's final moments in the ice palace as she looks up as the sunlight disappears.

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Re: Is-slottet (this thread contains spoilers)

Post by barrett »

I had the feeling that Unn was returning to the womb...as she enters the Ice Palace,shes framed in a gap that is obviously vagina shaped and its as if shes drawn more inwardly towards the womb...and at the end when Siss is laying in bed ,watching the curtains billowing in the wind,they also form a vagina shape...

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Re: Is-slottet (this thread contains spoilers)

Post by RobB »

Well,I must admit i've never noticed that connection before but its an interesting one.

After I'd seen the film a few time I read the novel it was based upon and as beautiflly written as the novel is,I much preferred the film. The novel introduces unwanted elements such as cars driving through the village whereas the films as an almost timeless/locationless quality to it. The pin-up pictures and the wireless and accompanying music does determine the era in which the film is set to a certain extent,otherwise it could have been almost contemporary.

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