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★★★★★
21 November 2018
A movie review of WOMAN AT WAR. |
“What I have done, I believe with all my heart is right,” Halla (Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir)
More action-thrillers with 49-year old female protagonists please. Halle is savvy about the tactics of the state. If Jason Bourne were a choir mistress/environmental activist taking on Icelandic heavy industry, that's what the character would look like. This is wry, wry as f*ck. WOMAN AT WAR is both funny and furious, as well as being utterly gripping.
Iceland. A lady with a bow and arrow knocks out power lines to a town, shutting off a polluting aluminium smelter. This is Halla's fifth time. A band accompanies her exploits. Nobody else sees them, except for one perhaps - someone equally sensitive and exasperated? Halla evades a helicopter patrol hovering so close to her hiding spot the audience holds its breath. Neat camera shot. WOMAN AT WAR is a stylish, unusual action flick, which has brains and a conscience. Tension ratchets up as the lead attempts to avoid detection.
More action-thrillers with 49-year old female protagonists please. Halle is savvy about the tactics of the state. If Jason Bourne were a choir mistress/environmental activist taking on Icelandic heavy industry, that's what the character would look like. This is wry, wry as f*ck. WOMAN AT WAR is both funny and furious, as well as being utterly gripping.
Iceland. A lady with a bow and arrow knocks out power lines to a town, shutting off a polluting aluminium smelter. This is Halla's fifth time. A band accompanies her exploits. Nobody else sees them, except for one perhaps - someone equally sensitive and exasperated? Halla evades a helicopter patrol hovering so close to her hiding spot the audience holds its breath. Neat camera shot. WOMAN AT WAR is a stylish, unusual action flick, which has brains and a conscience. Tension ratchets up as the lead attempts to avoid detection.
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The character of Halla is a big f-you to a society that ignores caring middle-aged women. Make them invisible at your peril. She is a tai chi warrior, with photos of Gandhi and Mandela on her apartment wall, and a pin badge of a breast on her coat lapel - free the nipple. This is just a mere slice of her fearless nature. There's a wonderful single take, as we follow Halla doing Zen martial arts around her flat while the news talks about the impact of climate change. She is wilful and resourceful. Wait till you see her wearing a dead ram to elude capture.
Like FIRST REFORMED (2017), WOMAN AT WAR is about privileged white people radicalised to tackle environmental damage. The targets of their ire: Corporations and governments. Halla’s aim: To hamper further polluting industrialisation in Iceland without casualties. What these protagonists do is clearly illegal, and the films do not encourage imitation. The movies want the audience to have a thoughtful debate afterwards.
Often the news has stories of how progressive Iceland is. This film reminds that every country has the greedy and immorally right wing in power. Witness how the government spin her manifesto, comparing her to terrorists. However, Halla is covertly working with a (scared) minister, Baldvin (Jörundur Ragnarsson), who shares her environmental concern. He bemoans psychopathic colleagues surrounding him all day. Baldvin is jittery. She is focused and determined. The authorities blindly hunt for Halla until the government seeks international help, including satellites. Like Batman in THE DARK KNIGHT, there are consequences for going outside the rule of law.
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WOMAN AT WAR also touches on racism and police profiling. The repeated arrest of a brown-skinned, Che Guevara t-shirt wearing Latin American tourist, Juan Camillo (Juan Camillo Roman Estrada), is an intentionally disquieting joke. What if he had been the protagonist, how would audiences react?
Complicating matters is four years after an application that Halla assumed came to nothing, she is now eligible to adopt: A 4-year old girl from the Ukraine, Nika (Margaryta Hilska), whose parents died in the war, and who was found next to her dead grandmother. This child has suffered deep trauma. The observations of the film are multiple.
WOMAN AT WAR is formidable.
