Jar City (film)

Jar City
Directed byBaltasar Kormákur
Written byArnaldur Indriðason
Produced byAgnes Johansen
Lilja Pálmadóttir
StarringÁgústa Eva Erlendsdóttir
Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson
CinematographyBergsteinn Björgúlfsson
Edited byElísabet Ronaldsdóttir
Music byMugison
Release dates
  • 20 October 2006 (2006-10-20) (Iceland)
  • 21 October 2007 (2007-10-21) (London Film Festival)
  • 20 September 2008 (2008-09-20) (UK wide release)
Running time
91 minutes
CountriesIceland
Germany
Denmark
LanguageIcelandic
Box office$748,315[1]

Jar City (Icelandic: Mýrin – "The Bog") is a 2006 Icelandic film directed by Baltasar Kormákur. It is based on Mýrin, a 2000 novel written by Arnaldur Indriðason and released in English as Jar City.

Kormákur is in the midst of producing an English-language remake, also called Jar City, which will be set in Louisiana.[2]

Plot

A world-weary cop comes to believe a recent murder of a middle-aged man is linked to a case of possible rape three decades earlier by a group of friends and a corrupt cop. Working through, he finds it linked to neurofibromatosis, a rare disease among Nordics. One thing leads to another and he puts the pieces together. A geneticist father loses his child to neurofibromatosis and his search for answers leads to his degenerate father and unravels many missing person cases during the decade.

Like the book on which it is based, the film is implicitly a semi-critique of the gene-gathering work of the Icelandic company deCODE genetics.[3]

Cast

Soundtrack

The score was composed by Mugison.

Track listing:

  1. "Til eru fræ"
  2. "Sveitin milli sanda"
  3. "Bíum bíum bambaló"
  4. "Erlendur"
  5. "Elliði"
  6. "Á Sprengisandi"
  7. "Fyrir átta árum"
  8. "Áfram veginn – Nikka"
  9. "Áfram veginn"
  10. "Halabalúbbúlúbbúlei"
  11. "Malakoff"
  12. "Bí bí og blaka I"
  13. "Myrra"
  14. "Kirkjuhvoll"
  15. "Bí bí og blaka II"
  16. "Dagný"
  17. "Heyr, Ó Guđ raust mína"
  18. "Lyrik"
  19. "Nú hnígur sól"
  20. "Sofðu unga ástin mín"
  21. "Ódur til Hildigunnar"
  22. "Svefnfræ"
  23. "Fræsvefn"
  24. "Svefnfræ, söngur"
  25. "Nú legg ég augun aftur"

Incidental music: Extract from George Frideric Handel's "The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba" from the oratorio Solomon

Prizes

The film was awarded the 2007 Crystal Globe Grand Prix at the 42nd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.[4] It also won the Breaking Waves Award at the 15th Titanic International Film Festival in Budapest with a €10,000 prize; the film was screened with the title Bloodline.[5]

DVD

A Blockbuster Exclusive Region 1 DVD was released in the U.S. and Canada. Otherwise, the film was not released commercially in America. It has also been released on DVD in Europe and is available on iTunes.[6]

References

  1. ^ "MýRIN (JAR CITY)". Box Office Mojo.
  2. ^ "Entertainment, Movie & TV News - Moviefone.com". moviefone.com. Retrieved 16 December 2016.
  3. ^ Lucy Burke, "Genetics and the Scene of the Crime: DeCODING Tainted Blood", Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 6 (2012), 193–208. doi:10.3828/jlcds.2012.16.
  4. ^ "I'd Tell You I Love You but Then I'd Have to Kill You". ioncinema.com. Retrieved 16 December 2016.
  5. ^ Alex. "Icelandic films clean up in Budapest - IceNews - Daily News". icenews.is. Retrieved 16 December 2016.
  6. ^ "Jar City", The Digital Fix (Film), 1 February 2009.