Smilla's Sense of Snow

Rating:
Summary: Some critics just don't know their &*(&$ from their elbows..
Review: OK, the story is farfetched and fine, there are "weak" spots in the movie. But when you put together the performances, the cinematography and the soundtrack, you actually find a great mystery/thriller. Most people have problems with some of the character interactions, well that IS simply because of the nature of the social structure of some of the northern European countries.

Julia Ormond's portrayal of Smilla is excellent. Byrne's character is a little underperformed and the little Isiah is absolutely a marvelous casting job, especially considering how much he actually resembles Ormond.

Again, this adaptation of the bestseller is wonderful, thanks to the lovely Julia Ormond

Rating:
Summary: great acting by Julia Ormond and Gabriel Byrne
Review: One of the better films of the last years. Great film-making and lot of suspense, original plot, and above all superb acting by Julia Ormond and Gabriel Byrne. I hope to see more of them in the near future.

Rating:
Summary: BUY IT!
Review: Please do buy this video if you still have any doubts! It's worth it, trust me! The story is excellent, the actors are brilliant, and the end is... well, astonishing!

Rating:
Summary: "The way you have a sense of God, I have a sense of snow."
Review: Smilla Jaspersen, the daughter of an American physician father and an Inuit mother from Greenland, has a sixth sense about the snow. Far more connected, emotionally, to her Inuit culture than to the complexities of modern urban life in Copenhagen, where she currently lives, she insists on living on her own terms, uncompromising, independent, and constantly challenging authority. When Isaiah, a six-year-old Inuit child in her apartment building, "falls" from the roof, Smilla studies the snow and knows it is not an accident. Soon she discovers that the child has been having hospital tests once a month, that his father was killed in an explosion in Greenland while working for a mining company, that his mother has been collecting checks from the company--and that she herself is being followed.

Julia Ormond's barely suppressed anger perfectly captures Smilla's inner ferocity, and she totally dominates this Bille August-directed film. Vanessa Redgrave plays a cameo role, and Richard Harris is a supporting character, but his primary role is to look menacing as he runs the mining company, which has a powerful secret. Clipper Miano, a 6-year-old Inuit, is wonderful as Isaiah, with his sad, little face and his needy reaching out. Gabriel Byrne, as an enigmatic mechanic who never goes to his shop, plays a role which fits the plot, but he himself remains a mystery throughout, despite his relationship with Smilla. The harshness of the Greenland setting, combined with the snow, the bleak grayness of wintery Copenhagen, the semi-darkness of most of the scenes, and Smilla's own remote coldness create a powerful mood and increase the suspense and unease.

The problem with the film, like the novel, is that the psychological study of Smilla, which is the most interesting and best-developed aspect of the story, gets waylaid by pyrotechnics and thriller effects. Explosions, complex medical technology, extinct life forms coming back to life in sci-fi manner, flashbacks of Isaiah's life (designed to tug at the heartstrings), and mysterious ships in the night turn what might have been a brilliant psychological study into a snowbound melodrama. The cinematography is gorgeous and effective, as is Ormond, but neither can save the film from its split personality. Mary Whipple



Rating:
Summary: The Receding Horizon
Review: Smilla's Sense of Snow is a mirage of a movie. A janitor in designer clothes. A clown under Count Dracula's cloak promising a foreboding journey into self-loathing, murderous corruption and dark racial undertones. So when the film opens its beautifully embroidered chest and goes "BOO", you can't help but feel a severe lack of complacency.

Julia Ormond stars as Smilla Jaspersen, a half American and half Greenlandic loner living in a rather downscale neighborhood of Copenhagen. And for the purposes of this film, Copenhagen is painted as a desolate, icy and unfeeling place. It is a testament to the morbidity of Smilla that she feels her life in this grim metropolis is a betrayal of her origins. She longs for the even icier, crueler and primitive Greenland. Through the film's complex structure we see her in flashbacks as a six year old where she was part of a travelling Greenlandic tribe. So primitive was their lifestyle that the men ate from a fresh corpse of an animal, while she at ripe old age of six still suckled her mother's breast for milk. Now an adult she lives in antagonism with her emotions, and as much as she longs for Greenland, that is how much she despises her American father(Jack Warner) and his pathetic young wife(younger then she is) with whom she has an ugly almost violent relationship. I was surprised by Ormond's performance, unlike her other roles where her wholesome beauty was her biggest assest, here sporting jet black her, a Scandinavian accent and a rough demeanor, she is even more attractive.

One person does eventually break through to her, a meek Greenlandic boy who lives downstairs from her. The film's starts with the boy falling off their building's roof to his death. But on examining the ice track's on the roof(in one the film's several hints at the super-natural) she uses what the title refers to as her "sense of snow" along with her skills as a mathmatician to conclude that this was no accident. On the scene there is another neighbor The Mechanic(Gabriel Byrne) who also claims to have known and loved the deceased. Byrne's performance is less impressive because the plot requires his character's motivations to remain ambiguous.

The film then turns into a police procedural spearheaded by Ormond and resisted by omniscient villains who finally drive events to their ludicrous climax in Greenland. Even within the limitations of its unraveling plot which in the end amounts to nothing but silliness, the film wastes acting legend Richard Harris in a role where he has all of 5 lines.

I recognise that an enigma will always be more intriguing then any solution, no matter how carefully pieced together. That a silent stoic moron could be more interseting then a blabbermouth with a 170 IQ. I don't expect all thrillers to have the kind of payoff Se7en or The Usual Suspects had. But Smilla's Sense Of Snow is finally a frustrating experience because in its atmosphere, its sense of time and place and in Ormond's performance it is sometimes a great film, but then for a final 30 minutes of astonishing idiocy it systematically undoes itself. For every step director Augest takes forward with some uncommonly good character development, the ludicrous plot takes a step back. I almost want to spoil the film for those who haven't seen it, just so they can concentrate on what this film is good at. Intersting charcacters within an intoxicating atmosphere.

In one scene Smilla compares her love of Mathematics to a receding horizon. No matter how close you think you are to the truth, the horizon will recede and provide endless possibilities. Intially Smilla's Sense of Snow is similarly intriguing, like travelling through a desert and pondering weather that faraway image is a mirage or a lake. Then August goes and spoils it all by taking you to that image and shooting unambiguous sand for thirty minutes.

Rating:
Summary: Weird memories ...
Review: Smilla's Sense of Snow was released to theaters in America sometime in 1995, I believe. And if my memory serves me as well as I think it does, I think its trailer was attached to the movie Clueless, which we saw in the theater (the trailer for Empire Records was attached, too).

The trailer seemed moody and dark, even though snow was featured prominently throughout, but both my sister and I were somehow, and for some reason, fixated on this upcoming movie. But as soon as we got home we could NOT remember the name of the movie for the lives of us. And the movie was not a big hit because I don't even remember seeing a trailer for it on TV.

Years would go by and we would always ask people about this weird movie that took place somwhere where there's a lot of snow, and this strange movie where ... they were investigating some kid that fell off a roof. It was just so CRAZY how the images of this trailer haunted us for years! But we couldn't remember the title or the name of the actress that starred in it.

Sometime in 2003, I was flipping through the channels on TV one day and stopped at the Bravo channel ... and suddenly it hit me! That weird movie was playing right before my eyes! It was called Smilla's Sense of Snow! I didn't even have to think twice about it, which is really odd because the scene that was currently playing on TV took place on some boat, not outside in the snow at all, like in the trailer. It was just so weird! My sister wasn't at home, but I called her cell phone immediately and told her I finally knew what that movie was, and she instantly knew which one I was referring to!

Not long after we were in Best Buy, and we came across the DVD, which was on sale for 5 bucks. I wasted NO time buying it immediately!

And today I love it, and it's one of my favorites. And I think this is how I got fixated on snow/water in movies!

Julia Ormond, Gabriel Byrne, Vanessa Redgrave, and everyone else in the movie are fantastic, though towards the end the plot gets a little far-fetched. But that's okay! I can handle a little far-fetchedness!

Rating:
Summary: CAPTURES THE TENSION OF THE NOVEL NICELY
Review: That being said, it was inevitable that some bits from Peter Høeg's novel be rushed or left out completely - the book was nearly 500 pages, and very detailed. A film including everything Høeg wrote would wind up well over three hours long - not something that's easy to get viewers to sit through. As it is, August's direction combined with Ann Biderman's screenplay give us a pretty acceptable screen version of this thriller.

The cast includes some heavyweights. Julia Ormond in the role of Smilla, Gabriel Byrne as the mechanic, and the great Vanessa Redgrave in a small but important (more so in the novel) role as Elsa Lubing (a source of crucial information for Smilla) - all do fine jobs. Richard Harris appears as the industrialist Tork, and Robert Loggia as Smilla's father - their performances are a little harder to accept, especially Loggia's. It's not that he's not a fine actor - but in the novel, Smilla's father is Danish, whereas in the film version, Loggia's accent makes it impossible for him to be mentioned as anything but an American.

These are actually minor complaints - overall, the novel's story and spirit is brought to the screen well in this version. Ormond does an especially nice job capturing her character's combination of charm and coldness - the underlying psychological subtleties (hinted at in the film, laid out more thoroughly in the novel) are given a nice turn.

The story opens with Smilla coming home to see that a neighbor boy - her 6 year-old friend Isaiah - has fallen to his death from the roof of the building where they live. As she comforts his distraught mother, she's already wondering why the boy was on the roof, knowing that he had a fear of heights. As she begins to look into the case herself - much to the consternation of the Copenhagen police, who immediately rule the boy's death an accident - she finds more and more doors closed to her. Her determination to get to the bottom of things leads her through those doors (or, metaphorically, adjacent windows...) - and she begins to uncover more and more clues that lead her to believe that Isaiah was murdered. She enlists the aid of `the mechanic', another tenant in her building - and their relationship, much to her surprise, develops into a romantic one.

Smilla continues to pursue the mystery - uncovering corporate shenanigans, greed, corruption, murder and other niceties along the way. The film follows the story of the novel pretty closely, and builds to an exciting climax - it felt a little rushed to me near the end, but as I said, there's only so much time. Overall, this is a pretty nicely done adaptation of a suspenseful story, well-acted as well. Great entertainment.

Rating:
Summary: CAPTURES THE TENSION OF THE NOVEL NICELY
Review: That being said, it was inevitable that some bits from Peter Høeg's novel be rushed or left out completely - the book was nearly 500 pages, and very detailed. A film including everything Høeg wrote would wind up well over three hours long - not something that's easy to get viewers to sit through. As it is, August's direction combined with Ann Biderman's screenplay give us a pretty acceptable screen version of this thriller.

The cast includes some heavyweights. Julia Ormond in the role of Smilla, Gabriel Byrne as the mechanic, and the great Vanessa Redgrave in a small but important (more so in the novel) role as Elsa Lubing (a source of crucial information for Smilla) - all do fine jobs. Richard Harris appears as the industrialist Tork, and Robert Loggia as Smilla's father - their performances are a little harder to accept, especially Loggia's. It's not that he's not a fine actor - but in the novel, Smilla's father is Danish, whereas in the film version, Loggia's accent makes it impossible for him to be mentioned as anything but an American.

These are actually minor complaints - overall, the novel's story and spirit is brought to the screen well in this version. Ormond does an especially nice job capturing her character's combination of charm and coldness - the underlying psychological subtleties (hinted at in the film, laid out more thoroughly in the novel) are given a nice turn.

The story opens with Smilla coming home to see that a neighbor boy - her 6 year-old friend Isaiah - has fallen to his death from the roof of the building where they live. As she comforts his distraught mother, she's already wondering why the boy was on the roof, knowing that he had a fear of heights. As she begins to look into the case herself - much to the consternation of the Copenhagen police, who immediately rule the boy's death an accident - she finds more and more doors closed to her. Her determination to get to the bottom of things leads her through those doors (or, metaphorically, adjacent windows...) - and she begins to uncover more and more clues that lead her to believe that Isaiah was murdered. She enlists the aid of 'the mechanic', another tenant in her building - and their relationship, much to her surprise, develops into a romantic one.

Smilla continues to pursue the mystery - uncovering corporate shenanigans, greed, corruption, murder and other niceties along the way. The film follows the story of the novel pretty closely, and builds to an exciting climax - it felt a little rushed to me near the end, but as I said, there's only so much time. Overall, this is a pretty nicely done adaptation of a suspenseful story, well-acted as well. Great entertainment.

Rating:
Summary: it does feel kinda like an x-files episode
Review: The acting is solid, even impressive at times. And, much like x-files, the producers manage to do more with a limited budget. The story is good, up to a point when it eventually deteriorates a little into sci-fi "wierdness" but still holds your attention nonetheless. If you enjoyed almost any x-file, it's likely you'll enjoy this too ....

Rating:
Summary: uneven
Review: The book was very good but the movie version wasn't. Julia Ormond does her best acting (that's not saying much) as Smila. The audience needs to sympathize with Smila but she's so abrasive and self pitying it's hard to. Instead of returning to Greenland and her dead mother's Inuit culture she stays in Europe and sulks about it. Her only friend is an Inuit boy who was, she suspects, murdered. Her lonely task, for no-one, not even the boy's half witted mother seems to care about him, is to find out who did it and why.

Which leads me to the ending. It was one of the most unsatisfying, ubelievable resolutions I've ever seen in a movie. In all, Smila's Sense of Snow is a movie that could've been good but never quite makes the mark. Perhaps a different actress (Would it have been impossible to find a real Inuit or at least one who looked right?) Perhaps a more vigorous director, perhaps a better script and perhaps an ending that made a lick of sense could've saved this movie but none of that happened so we're left with a mess.