Nói Albinói

Dagur Kári is a young Icelandic director for whom film is just one means of artistic expression. His debut film, Nói Albinói (Nói the Albino) takes us to the snow-covered landscapes of the West Fjords in the extreme of North West of Iceland, to a small community where the pace of life is too slow for one of its inhabitants, a young seventeen year-old albino called Nói.

Nói lives with his grandmother. His father, Kiddi, lives elsewhere, drinks heavily and seems trapped, his life lacking any direction or purpose. Nói feels the same frustrations with his surroundings – places don’t come much more remote than the West Fjords of Iceland, so what could be worse than being an outsider in the far-flung reaches of the world. It’s not just his appearance that marks Nói as an outsider, although being a bald-headed albino certainly sets him apart from his classmates at school – it’s more Nói’s attitude that marks him as a bit of a misfit. At school, they can’t figure out if he is a dunce or a genius – he doesn’t attend enough classes for them to work it out, but perhaps he’s just too smart to even put up with the nonsense they teach. The final straw for Nói’s teachers comes when he leaves a dictaphone to attend class in his place and is expelled from school. After that Nói takes up jobs as a taxi driver and a gravedigger, but continues to dream of a life outside the remote town, viewing images of Hawaii through an old Viewmaster. He meets a young girl working in the local café-bar and they plan to run away together. But events beyond his control leaves Nói more isolated than before.

As a film, Nói Albinói is fairly inconsequential – a series of anecdotes and events based around an unusual character in an unusual place – but it’s strange enough to be interesting and curiously funny. It isn’t that there is anything exceptional about the events that take place – the character and the location are too outlandish and disconnected from most people’s reality for the viewer to identify with it in any meaningful way. But while the film never connects its simple events into a conventional narrative or even a character study – it’s a little too strange to even work as a study of teenage angst, isolation and dislocation – it captures a mood though its other-worldly location, its cool imagery and a haunting, unusual score (composed and played by the director himself) that build up into an experience of sorts. With its use of mostly amateur and part-time actors, the film has a certain whimsical charm that you will find in Aki Kaurismäki’s films and Otar Iosseliani’s Monday Morning, populated by eccentric characters existing in a community where time, fashions and experiences move at a different pace and on a different level of reality.

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DVD
Video
In a word – flawless. This is the best picture quality I have seen on a DVD this year. Crisp, clear and stable, there is not a scratch or mark to mar the cool colour schemes. Colour tones are limited, the director choosing a blue and green colour palette to wash the film in, and the effect is superb. There is a fine level of detail through the film and a pleasant natural level of grain. There may be some quibble about the aspect ratio, which is curiously about 1.75:1, but it really makes little difference to the compositions.

Audio
Surprisingly for an Artificial Eye release, we have the choice of a Dolby Digital 2.0 and a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. The Dolby Digital 5.1 track makes use almost entirely of only the front and centre speakers, with some deeper subwoofer reverberation in places. The Dolby Digital 2.0 mix is somewhat stronger however, with better stereo separation. However, Dagur Kári expresses a preference in one of the interviews for a soundtrack that sits more central with the image, capturing the claustrophobia and isolation of the situations, so the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, being unusually less spread-out would probably be closest to the director’s intentions here.

Subtitles
English subtitles are optional.

Extras
Commentary
Not advertised on the packaging, the DVD includes a commentary track with the director Dagur Kári and Ásgrímur Sverrisson. As far as I am aware, this is only the second release from Artificial Eye to include a commentary track (Roberto Succo being the other) and since the director remarks elsewhere that he doesn’t want the film to be over-explained and would like to keep some things ambiguous, you might wonder why this film, which is actually quite straightforward and needs little explained, contains a commentary track. The commentary, in Icelandic with optional English subtitles is very dry but reasonably informative on choices made in casting and filming. Sverrisson prompts the director every now and again for details to keep things going, but there are a few long gaps in the commentary.

Deleted Scenes (14:41)
Three deleted scenes are included that, according to the introductions that the director gives, were removed because they didn’t fit in with the flow of the film. Quite why these scenes were felt to be any more inconsequential than the ones remaining in the film is a mystery. Personally, I think the longest scene – Nói being arrested for drink-driving a taxi – is as good as, if not funnier than anything in the actual film. The deleted scenes are presented in 1.85:1 letterbox and the quality is fine.

Interview/Making Of Documentary (19:31)
This is a good ‘making of’, based around an interview with the director, he discusses the look and sound of the film and his intentions with portraying the character of Nói.

Interview with Dagur Kári (29:58)
The director speaks perfect English in this interview, which is again very informative, but there is a lot of repetition from the previous interview and the commentary track. He does go into more detail about his approach to filming and a bit more about his music. The interview questions are edited out – a practice I’m not fond of – but it works ok here.

Biographies
Biographies are included for Dagar Kári – which since it is his first film is quite brief – and Ásgrímur Sverrisson.

Overall
This is one of the best-looking DVDs I have seen Artificial Eye put out – in terms of image quality, sound and extra features it really is a superb package. The film itself however will not appeal to everyone, being rather slow, unusual and inconsequential and the extra features on the DVD far surpass usefulness for such a film. If however you aren’t expecting too much of the film as a conventional narrative and are open to just letting the whimsical mood of the film sink in, Nói Albinói is a pleasant and diverting experience.