VERDICT: This experimental short unnervingly explores the psyche of a young man wrestling with how to survive as an adult when bound by the long grip of childhood trauma.
The past is not a far off country in If I die, will I go home?
Indeed, in Peter Thor’s unreal evocation of someone battling with the lingering suffering of childhood abuse, personal history continually crashes unbidden into the present. A fragmentary internal portrait, it is a film that exists both outside of time and space and yet is constantly defined and warped by their insistence. Filled with arresting and disturbing imagery and an irregular editing rhythm, it perhaps most closely resembles mid-century works of European cinema that grappled with moral and psychosocial issues.
In Thor’s film, The Boy is played by Hogni Thor Thorsteinsson as a young man inhabiting a gloomy childhood space rife with symbols of a tumultuous past. From the stuffed toy he holds to his bosom to the painful marks that appear on his neck after a physical assault from his father, the boy tries to come to terms with what happened to him and the long-lasting results. Even in the moments in which the film leans into its more surrealist tendencies and creates startling if impenetrable imagery, the effect of its claustrophobic atmosphere remains pervasive.
It is a credit to the filmmaker that the film not only seeks to depict the ongoing impact of violence and mistreatment but to genuinely evoke its inescapability through tone. To say that If I die, will I go home? is tonally oppressive sounds like it would be intended to put people off but here it is very much a complement. And yet, Thor – and, through his performance, Thorsteinsson – manage to imbue the film with a glimmer of hope and of release. Suggesting that while the past might grip us tightly, we can also break free of its stranglehold.
Director, screenplay: Peter Thor Cast: Hogni Thor Thorsteinsson Producer: Tomas Noi Hauksson Cinematography: Aron Peter Olafsson Sound design: Jon Arnar Hauksson Venue: Stockfish (Experimental Shorts) In Icelandic 9 minutes
