Smilla's Sense of Snow

Rating:
Summary: This Silent, This Secret Snow
Review: Though Peter Hoeg's novel is excellent, reading it was more like seeing the film of the
book. With the movie, I felt I was reading the novel it was based on. Hoeg's novel is of
much worth, and without it there would have been no film; many of the finest moments of
the film come from it, yet, the movie was so additionally contemplative, expansive of the
human qualities of the novel, so filled with characters, emotions and events, dark and
lovely, so utterly otherworldly, that it pulled me totally in as the book didn't. The film's
prologue starts over one hundred years ago, with a cauldron of nightmare screaming down
from frosty skies to crash into frozen ice Greenland. It is a perfect opening, for it says
listen and watch; you have never been here before. The rest of the film constantly proves it
right.

Julia Ormond is so superb as Smilla, she made me tremble. How could one not love her,
who does not trust love, this woman of dignity and intelligence, who champions a hurt
lonely child, and all losers and misfits, because she is as they? The film is a celebration of
logic and endless winter. Smilla's mathematical definition of longing is inspiring. I see
magnificence in math now, when never before. The movie could not work anywhere else
but in ice and snow. It is a major character. There are passages in the book that take place
in hot summer. They seem wrong.

It is a delving into something that is so gigantic that one feels the sky is going to be pulled
back and we shall see what is behind existence itself. But it never forgets the little six year
old boy who dies, and the people who surrounded him, hurt him, helped him. To Smilla,
regardless of how far from home, that is not her home, she travels, to her former home,
that is no longer hers, this is the flame in her mind, finding the murderer, because when
someone is killed, their soul is offended, and she wants the child to rest in peace. If there
is one overriding trait in Smilla, it is an intense loyalty. When the mystery is revealed, her
heart still holds the memory of this child above all else, for he remains the essence. How
could he not?

It is a dark world exploration of snow and secrets and a totally unblinking view of real
reality, and how such an injustice to a boy who never got to really live towers above the
unveiling of what nightmare fell from the sky so long ago, and killed a child in the 1990's.
It is of perfect, mathematical symmetry. Snow, ice, expansive wilderness, icebergs and
tundra blend with the warmth of humans beginning to heal, the humans needing all of the
seeming contradictions. It also is about a daughter (Ormond) and father (superbly played
by Robert Loggia) finally beginning to make peace with each other. The film is a tapestry
of the compact some humans make with other humans, so small against such vast lonely
breathtaking vistas, in order to survive . At the top of the world, there is freedom that is

dizzying and ultimately liberating.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent film
Review: To say that this film is a Danish X-File (and trust me, I know 'The X-Files' quite well) is to miss the point altogether.

This film, an adaptation of Peter Hoeg's brilliant book, is both a mystery solved by, and a personal journey undertaken by, one remarkable woman: Smilla Jaspersen. Julia Ormond plays Smilla with passion and yet with understatement - for Smilla herself is a mystery, a woman like no other you've met both culturally and in terms of her emotions and life.

Bille August's direction, Hans Zimmer's music, and the supporting cast add depth to this very fine movie.

I don't know what the reviewers were thinking - maybe that they'd get a shallow film adaptation of one of the many mere 'detective' novels that abound. Hoeg's work is literary, not genre, and the essence of the story is more than Smilla's amateur detective work, it is her reaching peace and reincarnation with her Inuit self killed by her surrender to Danish culture, and much more.

Watch this film. It's worth it.

Rating:
Summary: Ormond is Perfection
Review: Tough movie to adapt.....if you read the book you can understand the enormous job screewriter Ann Bierderman had on her hands.The best actress. the most beautiful actress. too bad she chose this movie to launch her "solo" career. As a result she is now behind the camera and I do not think we are ever going to see much of her on the screen again.

Rating:
Summary: A well-crafted mystery when taken on its own merit . . .
Review: When a young Inuit boy mysteriously falls to his death from the roof of an apartment building in Copenhagen, his neighbor (Julia Ormond) sets out to solve the puzzle armed only with the suspicion that his demise was not accidental -- a suspicion arisen from her singular impression of his footprints in the snow. With the help of another neighbor, known only as "the Mechanic" (Gabriel Byrne), Smilla takes on the head of a major mining corporation (Richard Harris) as well as the local authorities in order to put the boy's soul at peace.

If the vehement disdain that its critics have heaped upon it is any indication, then this movie may be a severe disappointment to those who have read the novel -- not too surprising since most movies so based are never as good as the book and vice versa. But whereas films of this nature will usually give viewers far too much information initially, leaving only a story line already surmised to plod resolutely to its conclusion, Smilla metes out the details sparingly. We discover new information only when the characters do and are blissfully kept in the dark about exactly what has happened and why until the very end. Due primarily to a superb story line as well as some noteworthy performances from its principal cast members, the movie grabs our attention from the outset and commands it throughout.

Smilla herself comes across as a complex, intelligent, and resourceful woman (a comparative oddity in films today) although she is a self-confessed loner and perhaps not the most pleasant of people. But by far the most compelling character turns out to be that of the Mechanic. Just as we begin to believe that he is trustworthy, one action after another sends us (and Smilla) back to our initial assumption that this is one ambiguous guy with plenty of secrets to hide himself. Yet we fall for his stuttering innocence over and over again.

Despite a few cheesy lines and some minor inconsistencies, when taken on its own merit "Smilla's Sense of Snow" is a thoroughly enjoyable and well-crafted mystery -- one well-worth watching.

Rating:
Summary: Great Sense of Filmmaking
Review: You definitely have not seen a film like this. After getting spoon fed junk for so many years, it was nice to watch a mystery and actually use my brain for once. The script constantly surprised me, and Ormond is terrific. This is the level of film that the James Bond series should be at now, instead of "Tomorrow Never Dies"-type fluff.

Rating:
Summary: Quite good movie
Review: »Smilla's Sense of Snow« is not as bad as everybody says. Maybe it's because I have not read the book before watching the movie, and I never intended to - but now that I've seen the movie, I might reconsider reading the novel too.

To me, as a Dane, it is a little disturbing that the characters speak british. But looking beyond that, this is a kind of different thriller where anything can happen.

Unfortunately, some things here and there do not really fit together, and from time to time Smilla is a little too fantastically heroic.

But apart from that, it is a quite good crime story.