Originally posted at ScottFeinberg.com
Submitted for Oscar’s Foreign Language category, the Icelandic film Of Horses and Men missed the shortlist for this year’s Oscars. That miss however doesn’t speak to the quality of this film. Told as a series of interconnecting stories involving a small town and their relationship with horses, a stunning film that plays like a book of short stories come to life. It’s a film with a timeless qualities and a strong story, and is certainly one of the best foreign language films to have screened this year.
Of Horses and Men succeeds on several levels and like most movies that starts with a solid script. Since this is an area of Iceland most audience members don’t know about, it was important that the film find a quick way to engage you with the world and keep the story humming along. The script, written by Benedikt Erlingsson, does this mostly through humor which sets the audience up for real gut punches when the movie turns serious at points. I doubt there will be a sequence in a movie as funny as when Kolbeinn’s horses gets mounted by a stallion, with him still on the horse and everyone spying on him. The best thing about this film might be that while it’s from a different country and told in four different languages, there’s an element or character that anyone watching the movie can relate to. Whether it’s the will they won’t they relationship of the two main characters or a girl’s struggle to prove herself amongst the men, there’s tangible elements to grasp. This helps ease over some of the more questionable decisions the characters make that sometimes threaten to derail a movie that has a pretty good grasp on the story it was trying to tell.
Of course, also aiding in making this movie very accessible to any audience are the visuals. Watching a film like Of Horses and Men makes you understnad why so many films are being shot there. This movie is breathtakingly beautiful and cinematographer Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson manages to make a character out of the scenery. The cinematography is particularly impressive given that it’s shot mostly outdoors on ever changing terrain. There isn’t a shot in this film that’s bad or out of place, with such intense care being given to the frame.
Director Benedikt Erlingsson also manages to use this beautiful framing to create some sequences that you’ll be hard-pressed not to remember. In addition to the aformentioned mounting sequence, there are several single take scenes that the director coreographs for the most intense feelings. He never once pulls back, forcing you to bond with the actors and the horses in equal measure through the highs and the lows. It takes a really deft directorial touch in order to accomplish this, and he does, getting you in touch with the character’s emotions and giving everyone in the ensemble their moment to shine.
I really enjoyed Of Horses and Men and hope that everyone gets the chance to check this film out whenever it is made available. Films don’t come more polished and fascinating than this one.