Smilla's Feeling for Snow [1997]

Julia Ormond's barely suppressed anger perfectly captures Smilla's inner ferocity, and she totally dominates this Bille August-directed film. Vanessa Redgrave plays a cameo role, and Richard Harris is a supporting character, but his primary role is to look menacing as he runs the mining company, which has a powerful secret. Clipper Miano, a 6-year-old Inuit, is wonderful as Isaiah, with his sad, little face and his needy reaching out. Gabriel Byrne, as an enigmatic mechanic who never goes to his shop, plays a role which fits the plot, but he himself remains a mystery throughout, despite his relationship with Smilla. The harshness of the Greenland setting, combined with the snow, the bleak grayness of wintery Copenhagen, the semi-darkness of most of the scenes, and Smilla's own remote coldness create a powerful mood and increase the suspense and unease.

The problem with the film, like the novel, is that the psychological study of Smilla, which is the most interesting and best-developed aspect of the story, gets waylaid by pyrotechnics and thriller effects. Explosions, complex medical technology, extinct life forms coming back to life in sci-fi manner, flashbacks of Isaiah's life (designed to tug at the heartstrings), and mysterious ships in the night turn what might have been a brilliant psychological study into a snowbound melodrama. The cinematography is gorgeous and effective, as is Ormond, but neither can save the film from its split personality. Mary Whipple


Liked it so much I tried to buy it   March 27, 2005
Sally-Anne (Leicestershire, United Kingdom)
19 out of 21 found this review helpful

Smilla is a native Greenlander living in Copenhagen. Her Mother was an Inuit who had taught little Smilla to hunt on the ice. Her father, an American, brought her to Denmark when her mother died. She resented the change, missed the ice and the way of life of her mother's people. The two things she loves are the vast, open ice fields and mathematics. To the people around her she is prickly and distant. One small boy did succeed in 'taming' her - making her his friend. Then the boy dies. It looks like an accident but Smilla can read his footprints in the snow because she knew the boy and she understands the snow. Whatever the obstacles, she is determined to find out what really happened to her friend.

It's a murder mystery with a small dollop of sci-fi thrown in. There are a few holes in the plot and I found the sci-fi element detracted slightly from the overall believability of the story. The acting is very good though, and I found Smilla's character in particular, realistic and interesting. I've watched the film twice on television and enjoyed it enough to want to buy the DVD. Unfortunately Amazon cannot supply a copy that will play on my region 2 DVD player. I'll have to read the book instead and hope that the DVD will become available in the future.


Wintry skies, loneliness and a little boy's mysterious death   October 23, 2002
Themis-Athena (from somewhere between California and Germany)
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

How many words for "snow" do you know? In most languages, there is only one ... or maybe a few, but not many different ones. But the Inuit language knows countless words for snow - different expressions based on its consistency, its aggregate state, on whether it's old or freshly fallen, and much, much more. And snow is Smilla Jaspersen's specialty; it's what she studies and what she knows better than anybody and anything. So when her only friend, an Inuit boy living in the same Copenhagen apartment complex as her is found dead on the pavement in front of their house, she knows something must be amiss; he can't have fallen off the roof, as the police quickly conclude: afraid of heights, he would not have climbed to the roof if not driven there in the first place, and he certainly wouldn't have run to the edge ... as his footsteps in the otherwise untouched snow cover on the roof, however, indicate.

Smilla, half Inuit herself and brought to Copenhagen against her will after her Inuit mother's death, is a loner, a rebel against society, hiding her fears and loneliness under a thick coat of armor of unapproachability and trying to be "rough all over." Unable and unwilling to ever lift that coat of armor, she takes refuge in science - her definition of longing are mathematics's negative numbers, the "formalization of the feeling that you're missing something." - Yet, this movie's Smilla is not the Smilla Jaspersen of Peter Hoeg's novel which the movie seeks to adapt ... although Julia Ormond's performance is not exactly coated with sugar, she is a far cry from the book's 37-year old woman who hates her Danish father for tearing her from her Greenlandic roots and open skies, and who hates the confines of the society in which he has made her grow up.

And as the story's protagonist changes in the movie adaption, so does the story line itself - unfortunately, not for the better. Even accepting that it would have been impossible to translate all the novel's subplots and subtleties onto the screen, what begins like a complex, introspective story about loneliness, the loss of home, and the unchecked power and ambition of a group of prestigious scientists, turns into your average thriller in the end - a huge let-down in an otherwise compelling movie.

Nevertheless, Ormond's performance as Bille August's Smilla (even if not Peter Hoeg's) is strong; and so, in all its quietness, is Gabriel Byrne's performance as Smilla's neighbor, the would-be mechanic. Atmospherically, the movie wonderfully projects Smilla's loneliness in the sad, gray skies and wet snow of wintry Copenhagen, as opposed to the crisp blue skies, white ice fields and limitless horizons of Greenland. For these reasons alone, the movie is well worth watching; even if those of us who have read the novel will have to leave aside a good portion of its contents to be able to appreciate the movie on its own merits.


Rubbish   August 21, 2003
10 out of 15 found this review helpful

I have not read the book so cannot comment on subplots and what was left out, whether it would have been better, etc, etc. Yet what has been left in is tawdry, tiresome, tacky tripe.

The film starts well with good atmosphere and a sense of mystery. However, it rapidly descends into a mess of subplots and 'evil villains' of the most stereotyped and shallow kind. Smilla herself manages to successfully transform herself from a believeable, lonely, insecure woman into a totally one-dimensional James-Bond style action hero, equipped with the latest in cringeworthy one-liners. The climax of the film with its sudden introduction of science fiction turns the whole thing to mush.

If you want snow, watch Fargo, not farce.


This is Great!!!!   November 27, 2002
5 out of 6 found this review helpful

I saw this film not really knowing what to expect as when you see a film with the word snow in the title it makes you think of christma. Well this is not a christmas story. The tale of a child dying and that death being tied up with corporate scandel makes for a compelling story. The cast is fantastic, from Julia Ormond taking a complete diversion from the roles she usually plays, to give Smilla a real depth and soul. The late but great Richard Harris is wonderful as the bad guy and Gabriel Byrne shines as the mysterious neighbour as you are never able to figure out who he really is or whether Smilla should trust him.
This is a wonderful and very enjoyable film!!!!