Noi Albinoi DVD Review

My hat goes off to Palm Pictures. They are far from the most prolific film label around but they choose their titles with care, digging up excellent, odd little films from around the world and give them quality releases. The latest Palm release to cross my desk is Noi Albinoi (Noi the Albino), 2002's award winning and much acclaimed character sketch from Iceland's Dagur Kari.

The film is the story of seventeen year old Noi, a misfit youth growing up in a remote Icelandic fishing village with his very odd grandmother and alcoholic, Elvis-fixated, cab-driving, karaoke-singing absentee father. The packaging boldly invites comparisons to the work of Wes Anderson and Richard Kelly and, though somewhat misleading in terms of content and tone, the comparison is perfectly apt in terms of raw talent and the distinctiveness of vision. In American hands this same basic mix of high school outsider angst and absurd humor gave us Napoleon Dynamite, in Dagur Kari's hands it gives us a much quieter, subtler and distinctly Scandanavian character study that is no less memorable.

The film establishes its tone and characters instantly. We first meet Noi as he irritably slaps off his alarm clock and rolls over for more sleep. When he fails to react to grandma's reminders that he is going to be late for school - again - she responds by firing a rifle out of his bedroom window to shock him awake. This does not seem like an odd occurance in the peculiar world Noi inhabits. When he finally rises Noi shovels a trench through the snow that has piled to the top of his home's door and heads to school where he arrives late for a math exam, which he simply signs his name to and hands in blank.

It would be easy at this point to simply write Noi off as little more than an immensely lazy buffoon, but there is more to him than that. He makes daily stops at the village book shop, where he shows a keen interest in Kierkegaard - not an easy read, believe me - and a shocking facility for logic puzzles. We soon have to ask ourselves is it that Noi is lazy or is it that he is gifted to the point that he has seen the limits of his fishing-town life and abandoned hope of ever making anything worthwhile of himself there? Either answer is equally possible - director Kari is deliberately vague on this point - but whichever is the cause Noi simply drifts aimlessly. Drifts, that is, until he meets Iris - the book shop owner's estranged daughter who has come to the village to escape some unstated problems in the city. Iris awakens some life in Noi, gives him a goal, and ultimately awakens the dream of escape to some better place.

This is the type of film that revolves entirely around the strength of the lead character and actor's portrayal. Luckily we are in solid hands here. In one of the disc's supplemental features the director explains that Noi is a character that first came to him when he was seventeen himself and that he has been developing ever since. As a consequence there's an unusual degree of honesty and nuance to Noi's character, a wealth of detail that brings him to life. Actor Tomas Lemarquis' portrayal of Noi is every bit as strong as the writing. Not once does his performance ever feel even remotely like acting. Lemarquis' Noi has a lived in, frustrated feel perfectly suited to the material. It's worth noting here that, despite the film's title, Lemarquis is quite definitely not an albino himself - the label is meant to be a figurative way to further isolate Noi from his community.

The film does not revolve solely around Noi, however, there is a full cast of characters here and they are all brought to life with the same degree of detail that makes Noi himself work so well. Throstur Gunnarsson is particularly strong as Noi's father Kiddi - a man you really want to hate but can't help but see some glimmers of good in - as are Noi's grandmother and the shop owner. And then there is the landscape, which is every bit as much a character as any of the actors. Stark and beautiful, Kari's Iceland - shot on location with dominantly natural lighting - cannot help but shape how we view and interact with these characters. It's a hostile, alienating land that is strangely beautiful at the same time and it has left an indelible mark on each of the characters.

The film is not all serious contemplation, not by a long shot. Kari's writing is filled with a subtle, gently absurd humor. There's grandma with the shotgun; a stint at the karaoke bar; Noi's interview with the school psychiatrist; the tea-leaf-reading welder; one of the worst-executed bank heists in history and a major blood-sausage mishap. The humor is dry to the extreme, played as straight as humanly possible, and frequently laugh out loud funny. It's in the handling of the comedic elements that you most clearly find the distinctions between Kari and his American counterparts. Even in the independent film world directors are rarely able to avoid going for the big laugh, the crazy stunt or extreme situation. In Noi, however, everything remains solidly character and reality based. There are some very odd moments, yes, but they rise out of the nature of the characters themselves rather than dictating to the characters.

For the DVD release Palm has given Noi a beautiful anamorphic transfer and a solid slate of extras. There is a fairly lengthy interview with the writer / director / composer - Kari's score merits mention as well - about the process of creating the film that gives some genuine insight. We're also given a trio of extended sequences that were cut from the film for various reasons. A strong film, well presented, Noi is well worth the time to check out.