Starring: Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson, Charlotte Bøving, Juan Camillo Ramon Estrada
Somewhere in Iceland there is a small and close-knit town populated by several horse owners. In this story, the various citizens and visitors to this town are explored as their relationships with their horses and their relationships with eachother in both comedic and dramatic ways.
Like most nations, there's a certain impression that Iceland leaves on people of foreign lands. Here in the UK, there's a perception of Iceland being a strange land. A small and remote nation on the westernmost fringes of Europe, its most famous subject the infamously eccentric, Björk. Of course Icelandic people can be as varied in personality as the people of any nation, but Of Horses And Men does live up to Iceland's reputation for parochialism and oddness.
What you get with Of Horses And Men is more of a conceptual piece than a traditional kind of linear cinema. A series of short stories all revolving around a small community and their relationship with horses, with the tales usually swaying between comedy and tragedy in about equal measure. Although it is a film about horses, it should be stressed that may not be a film for all horse lovers. The closing credits state that the cast are all horse owners and that, as to be expected, no horses were harmed in the making of the film, but those expecting a film of horses just ambling about may be in for a shock, especially with a rather graphic evisceration scene.
The humour in the film plays rather broadly and sometimes its intermingling with drama comes with its own pitfalls, where it can be uncertain whether events are being played for dramatic impact or part of some crueller and darker sense of humour. Still, the performances are likeable and even given the setting. It's surprisingly diverse with characters speaking in Icelandic, Swedish, German, Spanish and English (the last one being a lingua-franca) and the characters are colourful but the film is short (a spry 80 minutes) and very abrupt to end, so you don't get much of an indication of the characters beyond almost thumbnail sketches. Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson perhaps stands out the most with an indignant role that entertains.
With some brilliant and beautiful shots, and expert framing of shots in particular, Of Horses And Men is a very nice looking film and is charming and humorous in its own way, but its jumbled nature and noticeably brief runtime make the film really more of a somewhat fun little novelty than a fully satisfying cinematic experience.
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