Inspector Erlendur (Ingvar E. Sigurdsson) finds more than he bargained for in tense thriller based on award-winning Icelandic book
JAR CITY (MYRIN) (Baltasar Kormákur, 2006)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Tuesday, June 21, 8:00, and Wednesday, June 22, 11:20 am
Series runs June 17-23
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
Writer-director Baltasar Kormákur’s adaptation of Arnaldur Indriðason’s award-winning novel Jar City is a bleak but compelling police procedural that focuses on a fact-based controversial government initiative that is cataloging genetic research on all Icelandic families. When an aging man named Holberg (Thorsteinn Gunnarsson) is murdered in his home, brooding inspector Erlendur (Ingvar E. Sigurdsson) heads the investigation into the death, leading him to a thirty-year-old rape, a dirty cop, a trio of criminals (one of whom has been missing for a quarter century), a woman who killed herself shortly after her four-year-old daughter died, and a doctor who collects body parts. The divorced Erlendur also has to deal with his troubled daughter (Augusta Eva Erlendsdottir), a pregnant drug addict who hangs out with some very sketchy company. Meanwhile, a mysterious man (Atli Rafn Sigurdarson) is up to something following the traumatic death of his young daughter. Kormakur weaves together the story line of the two fathers side by side — in the book, the unidentified man appears only near the conclusion, although who he is still remains a mystery for most of the film — centering on the complex relationship between parents and children and what gets passed down from generation to generation, both on the outside and the inside. Sigurdsson plays Erlendur with a cautious seriousness, the only humor coming from the way he treats his goofy partner, Sigurdur Oli (Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson). Iceland’s entry for the 2007 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and winner of the Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Jar City is a dark, tense intellectual thriller. Indriðason has turned Erlendur into a continuing character in such follow-ups as Silence of the Grave and Voices; we were hoping Kormákur and Sigurdsson would do the same, but instead the director has gone on to make such Hollywood fare as Contraband, 2 Guns, and Everest. Jar City will be screening on June 22 and 23 in the IFC Center series “Cold Cases: The Department Q Trilogy and the New Nordic Noir,” which runs through June 23 and includes such other cool films as Daniel Espinosa’s Easy Money, Henrik Ruben Genz’s Terribly Happy, and Morten Tyldum’s Headhunters.