Jar City (Mýrin)

**** out of ***** 

Iceland, 2006
Written and Directed by Baltasar Kormákur
From the novel by Arnaldur Indriðason

Starring Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson, Ágústa Eva Erlendsdóttir, Björn
Hlynur Haraldsson, Ólafía Hrönn Jónsdóttir

Genre: Crime

From the earlier moments of Icelandic whodunit Jar City, you get the impression that the movie was made by someone who doesn't like Iceland very much – certainly it's not a great advertisement for tourism to the island country. Everything is bleak, from the landscape, to the architecture, to the people. This is perhaps appropriate, given the tragedy played out in the story-line, an adaptation of the third book in a series of crime novels by Icelandic author Arnaldur Indriðason. In it, police detective Erlendur (also the protagonist of most of Indriðason's other novels) investigates the murder of an elderly man, discovering as he does so that the roots of the crime lie 30 years in the past.

The "jar city" which gives the movie its English title is a room at a genetics laboratory filled with preserved human body parts, a hangover from a historical collection of medical anomalies. In one of the film's most visually effective scenes, Erlendur visits this room to retrieve the preserved brain of a 4 year old girl, walking as he does so through a dimly lit room of these grotesque remains.

Similarly grotesque is a scene where Erlendur consumes an Icelandic delicacy – a boiled sheep's head, first cutting out a choice piece of flesh with a pocket knife (possibly the eye?) before removing and gnawing on the jaw. Despite these scenes, however, Jar City is relatively free from gore, and in fact mostly restricts itself to showing the simple business of police evidence gathering – the interviewing and footwork that enables a more and more complete picture of the circumstances behind a crime.

In that sense, Jar City is a refreshing alternative to most mainstream mystery films; there are no unlikely action sequences, no unbelievable heroics, and there's certainly no gunplay (although there is one solitary gun in the film) – it's all about the investigation. And even in that sense the detective isn't extraordinary – he's not Sherlock Holmes, merely methodical and patient.

Of course, he wouldn't be a fictional detective without some personal issues, and in this Erlendur doesn't disappoint: he's a cynical, chain-smoking divorcee (or possibly a widower) with a drug-addict daughter, who seems to be known to all the local criminals.

Apart from this one apparent concession to genre requirements, however, this is far from your average mystery film. Slow-paced, visually rich, and subtle, Jar City is well worth a look – both for mystery fans and for those who would usually shun them.

This film will screen in Wellington at The Penthouse on July 19 at
8:30pm and at The Embassy Theatre on July 21 at 8:30pm and July 24 at
4:15pm.