Two parents perform a tense changing of the guard by their daughter’s hospital bedside.
Orn is late. He’d been poring over files in a data-collection center that amasses the DNA information of Icelanders.
Once his wife has gone home, he sings to his daughter at her hushed request. The melancholy lullaby he begins in the atmospheric thriller “Jar City” gives way to the heavier beauty of a policemen’s chorus intoning the same song.
So begins writer-director Baltasar Kormákur’s somber beauty, based on Arnaldur Indridason’s novel, set in Reykjavik, Iceland, and its environs.
Orn (Atli Rafn Sigurdarson) is trying to learn how he became an accomplice in his daughter’s terminal illness. His quest is a very personal crime scene investigation.
Initially, Orn’s tale seems to run merely parallel to the case of homicide detective Erlendur (Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson).
An elderly man named Holberg is found bludgeoned in his apartment. A photo of a grave site is the only clue.
Sigurdsson plays Detective Erlendur with a dour honor and an investigative remove. After helping a thug down a flight of stairs, he brings the guy a small pillow to prop up his broken leg after calling for an ambulance.
The fragmented narrative requires and rewards patience. Past and present become tricky issues as the movie moves forward, since forward is not the only direction it is going.
But from the start, Erlendur has something in common with Orn. He, too, is a father struggling with the loss of a child. Only, his daughter Eva (Agusta Eva Erlendsdottir) is an addict.
Fathers and daughters, the deaths and slow demise of children, the burdens of paternity and the ills of paternalism are themes filling “Jar City.”
Cinematographer Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson captures the stark beauty of the volcanic land in the North Atlantic. Steam billows. Waves pound the shoreline.
Terrifically acted, expertly shot and painstakingly paced, “Jar City” investigates deeper, darker themes. And Erlendur is a reminder that homicide detectives don’t save lives so much as exhume the meanings of violence.
Film critic Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com
“Jar City”
Not Rated. 1 hour, 34 minutes. Written and directed by Baltasar Kormákur; starring Ingvar E. Sigurdsson, Atli Rafn Sigurdarson, Elma Lisa Gunnarsdottir and Agusta Eva Erlendsdottir. In Icelandic with English subtitles. Opens today at the Starz FilmCenter.
