When The Light Breaks: A review.
By Margot Paisner
When the Light Breaks is a drama film from Icelandic director Runár Runársson. As picked up on by Sight and Sounds BFI Review, the films original title, Ljósbrot — Icelandic for ‘Refraction’ — feels much more apt, let alone rolls off the tongue a bit better. The pastel smudged and freckle specked drama follows a group of art students processing the death of their friend in ‘one of Iceland’s deadliest road accidents to date’. Our protagonist struggles to feel the true weight of her grief, when having to pretend that the relationship between her and the deceased, had much less value than it did. The film is an exercise in restraint. Of dialogue, of music, of emotion, and of cinematography. It is bleak, its pacing slow, a Western audience may go as far as to say boring, and very clearly a piece inspired by its setting and surrounding. Leaving the cinema, it was hard to tell whether I wanted to enjoy it or really did, after a few days reflection, I came to a conclusion. Would I re-watch it or urge friends to see it? I don’t think so, this didn’t make the film dismissible, however. It is a masterpiece in the art of discipline and simmering tension that never quite bubbles to the surface in the way a modern audience of the instant gratification generation would want it to. For this, I very much respect it.
The film follows protagonist Una (Elín Hall) through the twenty-four hours where she must both process and conceal her feelings of grief towards her deceased friend and lover Didi (Baldur Einarsson). Didi and her were involved in an affair, one that was maybe a touch unsuccessfully depicted as ‘love’. The engine of the film is really pushed to start when Didi’s real girlfriend, Klara, played in a standout performance by Katla Njálsdóttir, shows up for his funeral and memorial service in their small university town.
The plot despite sounding rather fleabag-esque is what initially drew me to want to see the film, it poses an interesting question. How does one truly grieve when unable to grieve in the way they want to? Can something as harsh and sudden as death allow for deceit and secrecy? The film’s highest point lies in these unanswered questions and therefore eerily ambiguous dynamic between Una and Klara. The real focal point of the drama for me was watching the clogs turn in both Una and Klara’s heads, and wondering if they both silently knew what the other was hiding and thinking. The dynamic between them was set up by remarkable restraint in both how many scenes they were alone, and in how many words they exchanged. The audience is only given a bathroom scene where they hug, an electric scooter ride through the ghost town home, learning to fly together and them falling asleep wrapped in eachother’s arms – the red around their eyes from crying making the crisp blue of their irises even more striking.
The standout scenes are both attributes to the film’s cinematographer, Sophia Olsson. There is first a frankly applaud worthy scene outside Didi’s funeral where Una teaches the sceptical Klara how performance art is a proper art form through teaching her to fly. She points at the highest window of a magnificent cathedral and slowly makes Klara slowly walk back while staring at it, creating the illusion of levitation. This scene plays out for the audience through the eyes of Klara, so we too experience this flying and can’t help wondering if perhaps we are simultaneously Klara, Una and Didi in this moment. It is a near perfect shot, and a highlight of the film. The second time Olsson gifts the audience is through a scene at Didi’s memorial where Klara and Una’s faces, staring at each other through the glass windows of the house, (very Icelandic architecture) blur into one another and they become one. Both in their grief, and in their shared experience of Didi, and their position as two misled young girls.
The film definitely lacks a level of emotional tug, maybe this is just down to taste. Films of similar restraint and power in what is left unanswered had a much more profound effect on me, Anatomy of a Fall (2023) being one that instantly comes to mind. Perhaps the lack of fully fledged script, be this on purpose or not, combined with the movies short run time and our somewhat hazy understanding of what Una’s relationship to Didi really was- makes this film pop predominantly in its aesthetics and cinematography. It was not a religious cinema experience, but it was not entirely discardable as many reviews I came across thought it to be. A friend of mine maybe cruelly, but not un-disagreeably described it as the type of film you would hopelessly love had your best mate directed it for their student project.
