A Short (Spoiler-Free) Review of Héraðið/The County (2019)
“The movie could be also seen as an indirect attack on Iceland’s dairy monopoly.”
The County (2019) is a new film by acclaimed Icelandic director Grímur Hákonarson. He is known for Rams, which was a true revelation for audiences at film festivals around the world back in 2015.
As the director himself states, Icelandic cinema is becoming more and more appreciated on the international stage. That is why the world premiere for this film was held at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Similar to Rams, The County takes place in a rural community where all local farm operations are channeled into one major co-operative, willingly - or, more likely, unwillingly - on the farmers’ side. The main character, Inga, is a strong, independent woman portrayed by Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir. Inga rebels against the co-operative’s monopoly in the town and acts alone to change the situation. Both Rams and The County take place in the countryside, but while Rams gives the spectator an overview of traditional ways of living in rural Iceland, The County depicts a rural community that is willing to modernize and slowly becoming ready to leave its comfort zone in order to break through the typical isolationism of a place so far from the city, especially in a sparsely populated nation like Iceland.
The film is partially inspired by real events and has a quite credible background. In the 19th century, there was a strong farming co-operative movement in Iceland that farmers established so they’d get higher wages for their products, but it collapsed in the 1990s. The film is set in the northwest region of Iceland where you can find the last large surviving co-operative.
The movie could be also seen as an indirect attack on Iceland’s dairy monopoly. Milk is an important symbol throughout the movie, and it helps Inga express her discontent in one way or another (no spoilers!).
The first frame of the movie is the best description of the title itself; a long, static shot of Inga’s farm that becomes a recurrent picture of the countryside.
In my opinion, a thought-provoking aspect of this movie is the way the director creates a sort of Joan of Arc aura around his female heroine, who risks it all going against the most powerful institution in the area, an institution which she openly calls the “mafia.”
The Nordic countries are commonly depicted as little pieces of heaven on Earth. In contemporary Nordic and Scandinavian cinema, the concept of “almost nearly perfect countries” is questioned and this draws comparisons. For instance, in the case of The County, a small state like Iceland can be compared to a middle power such as Italy, which is renowned worldwide (alas!) for its corruption and organized crime. Inga does not only fight against the corrupt system but targets the patriarchal mentality of the inhabitants in a remote and quite conservative part of the country at the same time.
In the movie, Inga’s husband is incapable of standing up for his rights. He’s under the co-op’s influence, “a man of the co-op” who would do anything to save his farm and would never admit he had lived under tyranny for many years. As soon as Inga takes control of the farm, she tries to speak up, as she cannot bear the way the co-op treats people like herself. We can observe, from a feminist point of view, that the town’s spark of activism is actually ignited by one woman’s beliefs and determination to overturn a system based on a conspiracy of silence and threats, even if she works in a male-dominated environment.
One sign of Inga’s desire to move toward modernism resides in her use of technology and social networks. While her husband uses an obsolete cell phone to communicate, she constantly works on her computer, writing stories and articles that she posts on Facebook. Once more, the conflict between tradition and modernity is clearly visible.
To conclude, The County is certainly a vivid example of the constant positive development of Icelandic cinema which attempts to highlight problems that tend to be ignored outside of the country in a comedic and eventually dramatic way. The fact that films from Iceland are increasingly shown and appreciated around the world is an important factor that opens up new opportunities for collaboration and funding from international companies and organizations.
The proof of this internationalization will be Grímur’s next project, co-written with an Australian screenwriter. This project will be his very first full-length English-language film.
Will it be another overview of the countryside, maybe this time outside of Iceland, or will he move his magnifying glass onto a more metropolitan landscape?
I guess we will need to wait a while, since the director has recently become a father and his priorities have shifted a little bit! Until then, remember to go to the cinema, since UI students get a 25% discount on tickets at Bíó Paradís. Live long and prosper.