Miss Smilla's flair for snow (film)

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Movie
German title Miss Smilla's flair for snow
Original title Smilla's Sense of Snow
Country of production Denmark , Germany , Sweden
original language English , Greenlandic
Publishing year 1997
length 121 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Bille August
script Ann Biderman
production Bernd Eichinger ,
Martin Moszkowicz
music Harry Gregson-Williams ,
Hans Zimmer
camera Jörgen Persson
cut Janus Billeskov Jansen
occupation
synchronization

Fräulein Smilla's feeling for snow (international title: Smilla's Sense of Snow, Swedish: Fröken Smillas känsla för snö, Danish: Frøken Smillas fornemmelse for sne ) is a Danish- German-Swedish thriller by Bille August from 1997. The The screenplay by Ann Biderman is based on the novel of the same name by Peter Høeg from 1992. The world premiere took place on February 13, 1997 in Germany.

action

1859 in Greenland: A fishing Inuk waits rigidly above a waterhole in the vast ice desert when a meteorite hits some distance away and creates a tidal wave that buries the Inuk and his dog team.

Cut to the present: In snowy Copenhagen, the little Greenlandic boy Isaiah Christiansen, who lives in precarious circumstances with his alcoholic mother, falls from the roof of a house to his death. His neighbor Smilla Jaspersen, with whom he has recently become friends, reads his footprints in the snow on the roof and, contrary to the official version, is convinced that he did not play on the roof, but fled there from danger. From then on, because of their friendship, she feels obliged to clarify the matter.

Smilla Jaspersen is an unemployed, withdrawn scientist. She was born in Qaanaaq as the daughter of the Greenlander Qaavigaq and the Danish doctor Moritz and grew up under the Inuit. After her mother's early death, her father brought her to Copenhagen , but she has considerable difficulties adapting to European values ​​and lifestyles.

Jaspersen learns that Greenland Mining was paying Isaiah's mother a sizeable widow's pension, and concludes that Isaiah's death was related to a previous expedition by the company to Greenland that killed his father in an accident. Isaiah had accompanied his father on the expedition and since then has been examined monthly by a doctor who also carried out the autopsy of the dead boy, but withholds information from it.

Gradually Jaspersen confides in her neighbor, the "mechanic", who was also friends with Isaiah. He supports her investigation. After a few advances on his part, she falls in love with him.

Isaiah had a hiding place in the basement of the stairwell, in which Jaspersen finds a tape cassette behind a loose wall tile . Since the cassette was exposed to the magnetic field of the fuse box for some time, there was hardly anything to be heard apart from noise, so she went to a specialist, a blind Greenlander, who had particularly good hearing and the technical equipment to filter out the noise. Based on the noises, he suspects that the admission was made in a hospital. He can also recognize voices, even individual words, which come from the East Greenland dialect , which he hardly understands. Jaspersen then asks him to prepare the tape technically in order to make the recording easier to understand. When she returns to pick up the cassette, she finds the specialist murdered and is herself the target of a bomb attack. She barely manages to save herself and is found by the mechanic who takes her home with him.

Through some connections she learns that a new expedition is being prepared, and with a few tricks she manages to take part in the trip. On the ship, with the help of the sailor Jakkelsen, she penetrates the strictly locked rooms of the scientists, where she can watch two informative videos. According to this, a meteorite was found in the Arctic that generated energy in an unknown way and reanimated deadly parasites believed to be extinct, which have apparently been preserved in the ice over the millennia. Isaiah's father was infected with the parasite during the previous expedition and died, while Isaiah himself, also infected, was not even weakened by it - his monthly examinations were supposed to find out why.

When it gets too precarious for Jaspersen and Jakkelsen on the ship, they decide to secretly flee to an oil rig where the ship is docked. However, this attempt fails, Jakkelsen is stabbed to death while trying to escape. But Jaspersen surprisingly meets the mechanic and learns that he works for the secret service and should watch the boy.

In the cave in which the meteorite is located, a fight breaks out, in the course of which the head of Greenland Mining, Dr. Tork, can escape, but is injured. The mechanic blows up the cave. Before the weakened Dr. Tork goes down in the pack ice , he confesses that he threatened Isaiah and pursued Isaiah to the roof because he wanted to get to the tape cassette that was explosive for him.

background

The film was shot in Copenhagen , Kiruna and Greenland . Its production amounted to an estimated 35 million US dollars . In Germany over 1.7 million moviegoers were counted.

synchronization

role actor Voice actor
Smilla Jaspersen Julia Ormond Susanne von Medvey
mechanic Gabriel Byrne Rolf Zacher
Dr. Andreas Tork Richard Harris Gert Günther Hoffmann
Prof. Loyen Tom Wilkinson Reinhard Glemnitz
Moritz Jaspersen Robert Loggia Wolfgang Hess
Captain Sigmund Lukas Mario Adorf Mario Adorf
Nils Jakkelsen Jürgen Vogel Jürgen Vogel
Birgo Lander Peter Capaldi Christian Tramitz

Reviews

James Berardinelli wrote on ReelView that the thriller was "unconventional" because of the locations and the independent woman as the main character. The character of Smilla Jaspersen is "fascinating", but his numerous aspects are insufficiently represented. Berardinelli praised the performance of Julia Ormond and Richard Harris, but criticized the other actors, especially the "lifeless" acting Gabriel Byrne.

The Lexicon of International Films notes: "A respectable and also exciting thriller, which, however, does not understand how to transfer the sensitivity of the literary original into the cinematic medium."

Awards

The film was the opening film of the Berlinale 1997 and took part in the competition for the Golden Bear .

The German Film and Media Evaluation FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the title valuable.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.ofdb.de/film/3146,Fräulein-Smillas-Gespür-für-Schnee
  2. ↑ Filming locations of Miss Smilla's Feel for Snow
  3. ↑ Economic data for Miss Smilla's flair for snow
  4. ↑ Miss Smilla's feeling for snow in the German synchronized files; Retrieved November 1, 2008
  5. ^ Review by James Berardinelli
  6. ↑ Miss Smilla's Feel for Snow in the Lexicon of International Films

Web links