A White, White Day is a stunning portrait of a grief spiral

A White, White Day isn’t the kind of movie many cinemagoers would usually see. But in a vacuum with few Hollywood popcorn flicks, you’ll be rewarded for your time.

A White, White Day is a curious movie.

Its final 20 minutes is a white-knuckle experience, in which its lead character, an Icelandic cop named Ingimundur (Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson), quickly unravels in the face of grief, paranoia and rage.

It’s the kind of movie sequence that makes your pulse race a little faster, while your mind tries to catch up with what you’re seeing, figuring out what it all means – how does this movie end in the wake of everything?

It’s particularly curious because that final act is preceded by 90 minutes of glacial pacing, where nothing seems to happen. But in this brilliant turn by writer-director Hlynur Palmason, the banality of it all was absolutely gripping.

It’s only later that you see the gears of how Palmason built a masterclass in structural tension. The run-up was barely discernible, but it was there.

A stunning portrait of a man in a grief spiral.

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Set in a small community in Iceland, A White, White Day is a thoughtful exploration of the pain of loss, and the dangers of not processing that grief in a meaningful way.

Ingimundur’s wife died in an accident two years earlier, her car careering through the railings on a treacherous stretch of road on a foggy day.

Ingimundur copes by getting on with life, renovating a barn into a home for his daughter and young granddaughter Salka (Ida Mekkin Hlynsdottir, the daughter of Palmason).

It’s a slow, laborious process, as evidenced by a beautiful early sequence in which the seasons change around a barely transformed building, which feels symbolic of Ingimundur’s emotional state.

When he’s given a box of his late wife’s belongings, he finds something that suggests she may have had an affair with an acquittance of theirs.

Ingimundur doesn’t know what to think. What he thinks he knows about his beloved has been shattered, while when being asked to describe himself by a therapist, it’s clear his understanding of self is perfunctory, cloaked in denial.

A White, White Day was Iceland’s entry into the Oscars this year.

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A White, White Day is a fascinating, engrossing character piece in which we are plunged into the despairing world of this person in enormous pain, and Sigurdsson plays him with such nuance, from the smallest, quietest moments to ones of explosive anger.

That intense focus works because Palmason positions the viewer within Ingimundur’s grief spiral – through long takes that force you to stay with his character or the occasional fracturing of Ingimundur’s emotional state with quick edits between tumbling rocks and flashes back to his wife’s car falling down the cliff.

But it’s not all bleak. The relationship between Ingimundur and Salka is full of warmth and hope, hinting at a future in which he could be restored.

No doubt this is an “arthouse” film which would usually find only a small, dedicated audience, but cinemagoers hungry for the big screen experience, and in a vacuum of few mainstream popcorn movies, will be rewarded if they give A White, White Day a shot.

It’s a moving, poignant story, that packs an emotional punch.

Rating: 4/5

A White, White Day is in cinemas from Thursday, July 9

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