Ecology and Contemporary Nordic Cinemas by Kääpä Pietari;Kääpä Pietari;

Author:Kääpä, Pietari;Kääpä, Pietari;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic & Professional
Published: 2019-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

Giving the body its place in the process of imaginative involvement in a national community opens up a space in which to undertake the first sketchy mappings of a more holistic understanding of the nexus of culture, material world and affective belonging.

Thomson 2005: 152

As an attempt to represent a hybrid account of the human and nature as part of the same ecosystem, the film challenges our culturally-located sense of self by focusing on dislocation caused by transnational interaction. It then resituates this sense of confusion by providing repeated imagery emphasizing tactile and haptic connectivity through emphasis on sensory elements like wind, fog, snow and mud. The hapticity generated by the constantly shifting geomorphic environment and the repetition of self-aggrandizing questions (’how do you like Iceland’), aimed at the Japanese protagonist, foregrounds the self-conscious strengthening of a collective national identity by, first, mirroring it in nature and, secondly, by verifying its peculiarities through a transnational prism. The blurring of boundaries in the film evokes forms of identification that supersede or dismantle cultural priorities and thus deconstruct the self-evident role of nature in conventional ‘naturalized’ national narratives. Haptic hybridity and a transnational sense of affect combine to create powerful frameworks of cultural understanding.

Thomson’s discussion of Cold Fever is one of the first comprehensive ecocritical discussions of Nordic cinema and lays the groundwork for exploring Jar City from the angle of haptic engagement. The discovery of the murdered body of the criminal Holberg in a Reykjavik basement propels cynical detective Erlendur on a tour of not only the dark secrets of a mysterious family heritage, but also the national past. The connections between the death of the five-year-old Aude thirty years ago and the recently deceased body lead Erlendur to Orn, a geneticist mourning his recently deceased daughter who passed away from a genetic disease. Meanwhile, Erlendur discovers the role his own drug addicted daughter plays in Iceland’s criminal world. The interconnections between different generations and families shifts focus to the ways the genetic heritage and actions of individuals pass from generation to generation, causing unknown permutations and deep wounds that may be buried in the turbulent soil, but which break to light without fail. Orn works at the Icelandic Genetics Heritage Headquarters, which archives not only the genetic information of the different generations of the nation’s population but also the brain of Aude. The jar in which the brain is held is one link to the film’s English title as is the suggestion that the population of Iceland is like an experiment – it is small and secluded, making it an ideal specimen pool. It turns out that Holberg was the illegitimate father of Orn, who unknowingly transmitted the genetic flaw to his offspring, explaining the original English title of the novel on which the film is based, Tainted Blood. As Orn takes his own life after revealing that he killed Holberg, one particular line of corrupt heritage is put to rest.

The notion that detectives can unravel crimes decades in the past by studying the genetic composition of victims and perpetrators is a fascinating one.

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