Woman at War * * * *

        I'm all for a cleaner planet and for keeping a keen eye on any corporation that might disregard their obligations when it comes to minimising pollution. I don't mind when people express their concern with the odd march either. But the woman in this Icelandic film tends to push it to the point of serious social irresponsibility, and could easily lose our sympathy.
         However, despite her conduct we come to realise - along with the protagonist -  that militant  environmentalism is not  really what her story about.

Kill a killer just to give birth to another

        She's a complicated woman.  She takes huge risks as she tries to knock out industrialists by cutting off their electricity supply but she is also a genteel choir leader with aspirations of adopting and raising an orphan child from a less fortunate background.
        As the story unfolds we meet two people that come to play a pivotal role - her cousin, a grumpy bachelor farmer, and her identical twin sister.
        Her sabotage activities and risk taking is actually quite exciting to watch. She has cranked things up to such a level that special forces are deployed whenever she strikes.  Yet, at the same time there is musical accompaniment, on site - literally.  Rather than having the music overlaid, the director has chosen to have the musicians in the scene, set up and playing in a field, or on the side of the road or in her home or wherever the scene set. It works like a treat.
        There is a wonderful twist in the end, with some indebtedness to Charles Dickens and Herman Hesse.
         I'm told the American stuff up, I mean "remake", is already on the way.  Go see the original now before it's suffocated by an inevitable, star-powered, vulgar mis reinterpretation.