Saturday, November 9, 2019

Woman at War 2018 (KONA FER I STRIB)

     Halla is an Islander woman in her forties.  She declares a one woman war on the local aluminum industry and their smelter.  She wants to prevent it from disfiguring the landscape of her country.  She is worried about the highlands of Iceland and she goes to extreme means in her opposition.  Halla disrupts the operations of the plant by purposely damaging electricity pylons and wires to cut their power supply.  Helicopters and drones are used to try to locate the person responsible for the outages.  Halla is too smart to be caught out in the open and she is successful in avoiding their surveillance.  Halla has an identical twin sister Asa and she is not involved in this war.  Asa is planning to go on a sabbatical to India to study with a guru.  Asa is into yoga and meditation.  There is a complication when paperwork that Halla submitted and forgot about from four years ago is approved?  The authorities would not suspect that Halla is the person creating the disruptions.  She doesn’t have a car, she rides a with a basket and she is a choir director?  
     There is no way to deny that this is a very weird movie from the beginning to the end!!  If there is a small secret door that you knock on to get the movies you watch, this would be hidden in that area.  I was amazed at the connection Halla has to the land of her country.  She lays down upon the landscaping to gather strength from the different types of ground cover.  There are some interesting elements added into the mix.  Juan Camillo is Spanish and he is always being arrested for something he did not do?  There is a three piece band included in random scenes with a drummer, sousaphone player and an accordion/keyboard player?  3 1/2* (I liked this movie)    

101 min, Adventure directed by Benewdikt Erlingsson with Halldora Geirharosdottir, Johann Siguroarson, Juan Camillo Roman Estrada, Solveig Arnarsdottir, Gunnar Bersi Bjornsson, Helga Bra Jonsdottir, Charlotte Boving, Iryna Danyleiko, Vala Kristin Eiriksdottir.


Note:  Imdb 7.5 out of 10 with 4,720 reviews, Rotten Tomatoes 974% critic 91% audience, The Guardian 3* out of 4* Peter Bradshaw, Roger Ebert 4 1/2* out of 5* Tomris Laffly, Amazon 4.3* out of 5* with 125 reviews, Metacritic 81 out of 100 with 24 critics (22 positive, 2 mixed) 5.1 out of 10 with10 reviews (6 positive, 4 negative).

Special Note:  Filmed in Iceland and Ukraine.  This was Iceland’s submission to the Foreign Language Film Award for the 91st Academy Awards of 2019.  Also submitted for the 76th Golden Globe Awards of 2019.

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