Did you hear about Bjössi the house painter?

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Movies of 2020...

#47 : Héraðið (The County)

There’s a harsh Icelandic backdrop to this tough corruption drama: Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir plays Inga, a farmer who takes on the mafia who run the local co-op, trying to circumvent the monopoly by selling produce on the internet.

Woo hoo - the first film on the list I've heard of, if not actually seen (we've got a surprisingly long way to go before I've seen one of them, especially considering there was very little else to do last year!).  And I love a bit of Icelandic scenery - Trapped (or Ófærð, as I obviously prefer to refer to it) is well worth a watch if you haven't caught it.  They're also a massively chatty bunch, so what could possibly be more uplifting than a corruption drama about a lady farmer taking on the mafia, told mostly through the medium of grunts and meaningful stares?  It didn't help that initially the only version I could find was in Icelandic without subtitles, which I only realised after the calf had been born in graphic detail at the start of the film - so lucky me got to watch it all over again with some subtitles that didn't always work, but the amount of dialogue involved meant I managed to get the gist of what was going on for most of it.

And some bad shit was going down, my friends.  Although, it has to be said, it was going down very slowly indeed.  And then suddenly loads happens in 2 minutes.  And then we're back to meaningful stares and long silences.  But, actually towards the end, it gets surprisingly wordy for something populated with Icelandic types as both sides argue their case in a tense local association meeting (the very definition of exciting, I can tell you).  And someone wins in the end, but you wouldn't want me telling you who now, would you?.  Overall, it's well acted and the scenery is beautiful, but surprisingly little actually happens in the 90 minutes (and don't be expecting too many actual surprises either).  Overall, I'd say it's well acted and nice to look at, but not really fully deserving of your time.

If you're determined to ignore my wise advice, then at the time of writing it's currently available to rent on Amazon.

#48 - An unexpectedly good film
#46 - A pleasant surprise!