Dagur Kàri
Nòi Albinòi

Try having a world in your heart / and you can't express it with words / and the daylight splits the square / between a village that laughs and you, the fool who passes by / and not even the night leaves you alone / others dream of themselves and you dream of them...

To see him like this, Nói, he might seem like a fool. The fool of a village just steps away from the Arctic. Everyone knows him by now. In my opinion, Nói is misunderstood, because when he needs to be, he's straight, oh yes, he is.

Nói lives with a paternal grandmother who's not quite all there. Occasionally, he has some contact with his father, a drunken, swaggering braggart who was abandoned by his wife to boot. Maybe he's not exactly the brightest in school, where he often leaves the warm halo of his sleeping breath or a recorder to capture lessons in his absence. When necessary, he can be shrewd, quick, and even surprising. He knows how to tinker with lock picks and earn himself a double malt beer by manipulating the slot machine in the only bar. He also knows how to open a car door and start it using the electric contact trick. Perhaps these aren't exemplary actions, but a fool might never even dream of them. So, is he naïve?

But, when he manages to guess the color of invisible spheres to earn some pages of a well-kept porn magazine from the friendly bookseller, what is he? And when he's subjected to interrogation by a psychologist? It will be him who puts the professional in difficulty while simultaneously solving the terrible Rubik's Cube! Ah! Let's say that Nói is absent-minded. Not a fool. Even if the handful of houses buried in the snow think differently.

Nói has a timid heart with some free space where he's stored feelings. And some other little holes for desires. No one can stop a fool from dreaming. It's hard to find time for dreams when in the morning you're awakened by the looming presence of an ice hill. Ice that attacks you everywhere and wind that slaps you. It's also difficult to defend yourself from this harsh nature if the snow grips your ankles at every step.

Nói wants to dream and does so through a slide binocular. One of those red plastic souvenirs that was never missing from the backpack, coming back from the fifth-grade school trip inevitably made to Rome. Just like, at least for me, the Juventus scarf stuck at 22 league titles that I would have shown beaming from the bus windows while you passed the others in line at the toll booth. Or those half-meter pencils that never wrote with an eraser at the top that would only smudge, a bell and five miniature pencils.

Nói even finds time to reflect, and he does so in a hole made under a trapdoor in the cellar, covered by an efficient carpet that ensures privacy.

And love? Among the stalactites shot down by rifles, like an edelweiss, it blooms too. In the solid glass block of the gas station bar between a fleeting cigarette and a warm kiss stolen among stuffed animals, before the arrival of the caretaker who will let you discover Hawaii. Indirectly. It's there that Nói wants to escape, maybe with Iris. And for this reason, he will squander his account on a beautiful dress, even if he can't get rid of the sufficiently worn Adidas sneakers. The bottom of a coffee will, unfortunately, write an abominable destiny. And even when it seems like everything is lost, his willpower will spur him to jump the hurdle. With the help of a plump winking aborigine and those delicious palms so greatly desired. Just push the lever. And you keep dreaming.

The young director Dagur Kári crafts a beautiful film, shot in the icy Iceland with limited resources. What was supposed to be a cartoon is given a heart and a soul, materializing in a boy who's hard to classify. Surely good, harmless, wanting to escape even violently but can't. It's not in his nature. What surrounds him is quite stifling, people and places. Ordered, sparse but essential, cleaned just more than necessary but never superfluous or squalid.

Despite much of the film being dominated by a large use of cold colors, as if the country where it's set wasn't enough, the director, with a truly brilliant artistic touch, converts them in a precise moment. The only time a warm photograph is used is when Nói takes refuge in his very private den. It's the only time he wears a red Scottish fabric shirt, which replaces an ice-colored jacket (just for a change) and lights a stove to reflect. Accompanied by a truly delicate electric guitar arpeggio. Reassuring, I'd say. The rest is as cold as his life.

The film in Italy, of course, would have gone unnoticed if not for the fact that it was presented at the Turin Film Festival, not coincidentally the best Italian festival.

It won't be hard to love Nói. And it won't be hard to shed a few tears either.

But the fool on the hill / sees the sun going down / and the eyes in his head / see the world spinning round...