21/12/2012 - Baltasar Kormakur focuses on a real story which made history in his country to deliver a film falling halfway between survival movie and social drama

Presented during the Work in Progress line-up organised within last year’s Les Arcs Film Festival, The Deep [+see also:
trailer
film profile] has now been selected in this year’s official competition, adorned with the Snowflake label which singles out projects which the festival has helped to bring about.

Buoyed by a solid career in Iceland (Jar City swept the board at the 2006 Edda Awards and walked away with Karlory Vary’s Crystal Globe in 2007) as well as in Hollywood — he directed Contraband and the future 2 Guns with Mark Wahlberg — the actor turned producer and director Baltasar Kormakur has, on this occasion, turned his attention to a real-life event which made history in his country to deliver a film falling halfway between survival movie and social drama. During the winter of 1984, a sombre trawlerman kills his crew in the space of a few minutes off the Icelandic coast, with the exception of Gulli (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) who, at the end of a heroic 6-hour swim in icy waters, manages to reach the shore unscathed. The small life of this modest man is suddenly upended by this achievement and the drama which preceded it. He must now contend with a long line of scientists seeking to understand his extraordinary endurance, and with the shattered families of his companions who were victims of the sinking.

Shot in Icelandic with a national production team, The Deep is impressive for its effectiveness and wide distribution potential, which has very quickly resulted in an avalanche of sales between Toronto and the AFM, all orchestrated by Gilles Sousa of BAC Films, who bought The Deep in 2011 during Les Arcs’ Work in Progress screenings. This makes The Deep a serious contender in the Oscars race, having been chosen to represent Iceland, because even though the film explores a decidedly local event, its themes and on-screen adaptation ensure its universality beyond all doubt.

In line with the magnitude of the survivor’s exploit, the film’s mise en scène renders the characters likeable and credible in a very short space of time ahead of the sinking, which is itself shot with realism and effectiveness falling somewhere between that of Titanic and Das Boot. What follows is a lonely crossing, an icy dive into the hellish existence of a man with whom the audience shivers and trembles, despite being fully aware that a happy outcome awaits him. After the ephemeral happiness of terra firma comes the shock of a small community which is torn apart by the loss of one of its own, a social reality which catches up with our hero, who doesn’t have any semblance of a job and who has to accept his incredible luck without provoking the victims’ families. 

The Deep is a modest film about the responsibility heroes must unwittingly bear. It’s an incredible story told at a very human level, which is wonderfully enhanced by Bergsteinn Bjorgulfsson’s photography, which — much like the film — will rapidly win over an audience larger than normal for Icelandic productions.

(Translated from French)