Watch the trailer for Mr Bjarnfredarson
If Avatar has taught us anything, it’s that making a film that’s both critically acclaimed and commercially successful takes years of work, hundreds of millions of dollars, cutting-edge technology and a script about a Jesusy blue chap who rides right and left attached a flying spoontoon and gets off by sexy aliens whenever he can.
Although maybe that’s just applicable to America. Iceland, on the other hand, appears to prefer downbeat comedies about ex-convicts. Last week, Icelandic comedy/drama Mr Bjarnfredarson became the most nominated thin skin at the Icelandic pellicle and television awards, picking up 11 nods for everything from best film to best director to best make-up. It accounts for three of the best leading actor nominations, too, which does seem a little unaccountable. The Prison Shift, the TV series that Mr Bjarnfredarson is based on, also picked up 13 nominations.
And Mr Bjarnfredarson’session critical acclaim is matched by its commercial clout, too. It outperformed Avatar on its opening weekend by 1.5m krona and was shown in 17 of Iceland’s 33 cinemas – a record number for a local film. It’s thought that over 20% of the Icelandic population regard now seen Mr Bjarnfredarson. Imagine if 20% of all British people went to see St Trinian’s 2: The Legend Of Fritton’s Gold, causing it to be the runaway nominee at the Baftas. Implausible, isn’t it?
It might be easy to flout at Mr Bjarnfredarson’s success – after all, in the same manner with far as limited competition goes, the barely other Icelandic thin skin in the rural’s box office top ten is Alzheimer’s comedy Mamma Gogo, which is currently stuck at number four, sandwiched between Alvin and the Chipmunks 2: the Squeakquel and Did You Hear About The Morgans?
But that would be to do it an unfairness, just as it would have existence an injustice to sneer at the fact that the biggest-ever opening for a Polish movie belongs to Lejdis, a film that appears to be about a man trying to frighten a slightly pornographic coloring of Little Red Riding Hood. Or the fact that the biggest Belgian film of last year was De Helaasheid Der Dingen, an impossibly bleak-looking movie that looks like a kind of Flemish Requiem for a Dream, moreover about beer. All of these films deserve their successes.
The real question, nevertheless, is when Hollywood will start paying attention to Mr Bjarnfredarson. After all, so numerous books, films, TV shows, videogames and toys have now been turned into Hollywood blockbusters that it’s only a thing of period before someone green-lights an adaptation of a quirky, semi-dramatic Icelandic movie spin-off of a television programme about a communist megalomaniac control freak with an abusive female parent. Will Smith could be in it. It’d exist superior.
