Mark Reviews Movies: WOMAN AT WAR

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 21, 2019

If the world is dying, is human activity is to blame? If that's the case, what is the responsibility of humanity to save the planet? If human beings in general seem unwilling to do anything about a global crisis, what, then, is the moral imperative of a single person to save humanity from itself? Such are the questions of Woman at War, in which a woman continually sabotages a local aluminum-smelting factory, believing that her actions ultimately will lead to change in her country and, from there, the world.

Co-writer/director Benedikt Erlingsson's film may sound dire and, perhaps, a bit self-important. It is dire, finding only a little hope in the resilience of people to survive as humanity destroys itself through war and the creation of a global environmental catastrophe, but Erlingsson is more concerned with examining the determination of the character at its center than making some political statement. When it does get to politics, the director and co-writer Ólafur Egilsson's screenplay isn't simply a blunt polemic.

When we first meet Halla (Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir), she is in the process of sabotaging the electricity lines leading to the plant—firing an arrow, with some line and a chunk of metal attached to the rope, from her bow. This isn't the first time she has disrupted the facility, and the local authorities in this part of the highlands of Iceland are prepared for such actions. She's ready for the police response, though, and makes a break for the hills, hiding among the environment, while emergency vehicles approach and a helicopter flies overhead.

She finds protection at the ranch of a local sheep herder named Sveinbjörn (Jóhan Sigurðarson). The farmer must know what she's up to, given the circumstances of her arrival and recent appearance of a police helicopter near his property, but he hides her anyway. His rationale is that the two must be related—second cousins or something like that—because of rumors about fathers philandering around the area. It's almost too convenient, even as an excuse for the farmer, and we suspect there's something else behind it. They're related, if not by blood, then certainly by belief and by the fact that what affects one person affects all of us in some, small way.

Erlingsson and Egilsson are consistently subtle in such character beats and even more subtle in how those moments help to define the film's overarching themes and goals. For example, there's a running joke—a rather dispiriting one at that—that gives us a sign of both the film's political commentary and its wicked sense of humor. Even though Halla is the obvious suspect and almost always within the grasp of the authorities here, the police are repeatedly distracted a Spanish tourist (played by Juan Camillo Roman Estrada), who, by way of complete coincidence, keeps being near the scene of Halla's crimes or escapes. Because the government labels the sabotage an act of terrorism, the cops seem far too hasty to detain a foreign man who speaks a different language and has a darker skin tone.

The Icelandic government and its officials are a regular source of satirical attack for the filmmakers. They're scared about Halla's activity because a deal with China is in the works. While the country's president is busy trying to impress some VIP visitors, pointing out how the local sights are reminiscent of a certain book/film series, his cabinet stands off to the side in a circle, plotting like the villains in a fantasy tale.

When Halla releases her manifesto, government officials twist her words to convince the public that her actions are a direct attack on democracy. With the inherent international attention to this local bit of industrial sabotage, the local police get some help from the CIA, leading to a shot of some cops playing with a drone and, later, their incompetence in using it against Halla's old-fashioned technology.

Erlingsson shows a deft hand in blending sincere ecological concern, pointed humor, and some clever, more thriller-oriented bits. The heart of the film, though, always remains with Halla, a woman who seems quite alone, despite having a twin sister named Ása (also played by Geirharðsdóttir), a choir of which she's the director, and an ally within the government named Baldvin (Jörundur Ragnarsson), who's paranoid about the various ways that his employer might be capable of overhearing his scheming with an official terrorist (They hide their cellphones in a freezer whenever they talk, and he worries if a copy machine might be connected to the internet).

Her loneliness is self-imposed. Halla doesn't have time or patience for the world, save for those who are willing to do something. She can't stomach what she sees as her sister's egoism, planning to leave for a temple to mediate and improve herself when the world is in danger. When an adoption agency informs her that she is to become the mother of a Ukrainian girl who was orphaned in war, Halla has to re-evaluate her role as a self-identified savior. Geirharðsdóttir's performance allows for the possibility that Halla is as egotistic as she perceives her sister to be, without losing our sympathies for her fight and, later, her dilemma.

It's fascinating to watch how the filmmakers gradually shift the story's central thesis, from one of sympathetic and ideological rebellion to one of what can only be called optimistic defeat. After a complicated climax and denouement, Woman at War ends with a shot of people struggling against the elements, simply to move forward. If the world is finished, maybe that's the only fight that matters.

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