Jón Ólafsson

The selection of films available from the back of the seat in front of you tends to shape the expectations you have about each film (rather than for example whether some of them won the Icelandic EDDA award). Maybe that is why Brim was such a nice surprise. Is it a noir? (I always seem to have difficulty with that concept). It is pretty dark, literally, at least. An old Icelandic trawler ridden with power failures. A captain who seems sunken into the sullen distractedness of private capitulation. He does not even care to sail far enough to hit grounds where fish actually might be found, and when he eventually does pick up the decisiveness to do that, things go wrong. A dead and delusional sailor appearing without a clear distinction between the flashback and the supernatural. The name of the film in Icelandic makes no sense. Brim is surf. Undercurrent makes much more sense, although it is difficult to understand what exactly the undercurrent is. There are many undercurrents, attached to each person in the film, with the possible exception of the mechanic. Actually, the point of the film is entirely unclear. A judgment made in the film about another film, which is said to be lacking in “motivation” seems to fit with this one. Brim is one of these rare films, which turns out to be quite good for reasons that usually would justify the opposite view.