Devil's Island

The specter of 1960s British working-class films like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning hangs over Fridrik Thor Fridriksson's bleak drama from Iceland. Although the film's press materials try to it as a quirky comedy, this tale of a family living in a renovated U.S. Air Force hangar in the 1950s has more than its fair share the standard working-class tragedies: grandparents stuck in a loveless marriage, boozing and brawling teens, and a death or two for good measure. The lure of American rock 'n' roll culture is first presented as an escape, when divorced mother Gogo (Saga Jonsdottir) marries an American pilot and her aptly named son Baddi (Baltasar Kormakur) goes to visit her in the U.S. But later, it's seen as a curse when Baddi comes back having learned the American way of smoking, drinking, fighting in gangs, and demanding luxuries his family can't afford. The abandoned-military-base-turned-low-income-housing is an equally strong metaphor for the lure of America becoming an empty promise and makes for some great visuals: It's not quite the amphibious shack-town of Angela's Ashes, but it's a little more convincing. At one point, after the family has undergone the latest in a long line of tragedies, the fortune-telling grandmother curses God and wails: "Isn't there ever an end to it?" The movie's point, ultimately, is that all too often there isn't; poverty becomes an unending cycle for many of the families who must endure it. A birth here, a wedding there; these are the moments that keep one from giving up hope entirely. It's a strong statement, and one that we could all stand to hear more often, whether in Iceland or elsewhere.