Sister Rose Movies
Out of Iceland comes an extraordinary story of grief and understanding, violence and forgiveness, isolation and community, family and church, despair and hope, art and grace. Hera Karlsdottir is about twelve years old and is outside playing with her friends when her mother, Droplaug, calls to her to come in for dinner and to summon her older brother, Baldur, to come in as well. Baldur is about seventeen and is on the tractor, harvesting hay for their dairy cows. He motions to Hera but keeps on going. The tractor hits a rock and Baldur is thrown off his seat and into the harvester. He is gravely injured and dies in his mother’s arms as Karl drives them to the hospital.
Hera is changed forever. She begins to play heavy metal music on her brother’s guitar, and dressed in black like Baldur did. The family keeps his room as a shrine. She even plays heavy metal music in the barn to the cows that seems very confused, if not annoyed. As Hera becomes older she resolves to go to the city but cannot bring herself to actually get on the bus. She is sullen and disrespectful.
Droplaug and Karl are devout Lutherans and go to church, the center of their remote existence; they participate in the life of the community. When Hera says she will play at one of their gatherings, the people are shocked by the heavy metal music. Then Hera makes a tape and sends it to a band in the city. A new pastor, Janus, comes to the church. He is unmarried. He takes an interest in the family because he can see they are grieving. He reaches out to Hera and shows her his tattoos from his days as a heavy metal rocker. She misunderstands his interest. Not long after she embraces him and he gently turns her down. In her anger, she does something violent to the church community. What will they do in response?
Iceland has little arable land, less than 1%. The country has a relatively small population, so the farming community in the film consists of a few families. The dissonance caused by the death of a beloved son and brother is heightened by Hera’s anti-social behavior and the community’s lack of understanding of heavy metal music. For Hera, it is about pain. But there is one person who never gives up on her, the kindly Knutur, her childhood friend. After her act of destruction, she settles down a bit, and agrees to marry him, although he is no match for her passion, grief, or her love for heavy metal music. This is not the end of Hera’s journey, but the beginning.
If you know the films of Danish director Carl Dreyer, in particular The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and Ordet (1955), you know he is a master of black and white film, of painting with Nordic light on a stark landscape that reflects the inner reality of his stories and characters. Here Icelandic director and writer Ragnar Bragason and cinematographer August Jakobsson reach the same level of art. They tell a deeply human story of grief and the workings of grace in a community on a cold barren landscape. The filmmakers are able to shed warm light on the blessing of a community that never casts out anyone who is different or who has hurt them and is willing to wait for the wounded soul to return. METALHEAD is a Good Friday film with an Easter ending.
METALHEAD will be available on VOD this Friday, April 3 – Good Friday.
Please see METALHEAD on IMDB for a complete list of actors. In Icelandic with English subtitles.
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