Julie Ormond stars in this 1997 thriller as Smilla Jaspersen, a
Danish woman of Greenlandic descent who befriends a little boy who’s a neighbor
in her apartment building. Little Isaiah is also originally from Greenland, and
not only does Smilla take a shine to him, but she enjoys rediscovering her own
heritage by showing it to the boy. One day, Smilla returns home to find Isaiah
is dead--having fallen from the roof of their apartment building. The official
explanation is that Isaiah was playing on the roof and had accidentally fallen
off. Yet Smilla knew that Isaiah would have never gone up to the roof in the
first place because he was afraid of heights.
And when she examines the boy’s
footprints, left in the deep snow on the roof, Smilla--who’s a world-class
expert on the properties of snow and ice--instantly realizes that this was no
accident; Isaiah was murdered. When she begins her own investigation, Smilla discovers that even though
Isaiah’s death was ruled an accident, an autopsy was still performed on his body,
and it was done by a prominent specialist in artic medicine. And this was not
Isaiah’s first brush with doctors: the boy had been examined by physicians on a
monthly basis right up to his death. Digging deeper, the stubborn Smilla soon
finds herself a target as she uncovers a vast conspiracy with nobody left whom
she can trust.
Directed by Billie August and based on the novel by Peter Høeg,
Smilla’s Sense Of Snow is a great, gripping thriller that’s extremely enjoyable,
thanks mainly to Ormond’s marvelous performance in the lead role. Head-strong, somewhat misanthropic and very blunt, Smilla is clearly a woman who
marches to the beat of her own drummer, and Ormond’s performance makes her a
fascinating character to watch. She’s the perfect gadfly for a mystery story
like this; the one person who ignores all supposed "common reason" and still
tenaciously chases after the real truth no matter what the consequences.
It
helps that Ormond is surrounded by an equally great cast of actors, including
Gabriel Byrne as her battered, but determined, love interest; Robert Loggia as
her father; Vanessa Redgrave; Jim Broadbent; Tom Wilkinson and the late Richard
Harris. The story takes an almost unbelievable turn into science fiction territory near
the end, yet the film is so intelligently handled and tautly executed overall
that I was willing to follow Smilla to the ends of the earth, if need be. The
DVD has some pretty sparse special features, with just a making of featurette
and trailers, and no commentaries. But Smilla’s Sense Of Snow is well worth
owning, thanks to its uncompromising heroine and her dogged quest for the truth. --SF
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