Sparrows
This review contains
spoilers about upsetting topics towards the end of the film.
Sometimes you’re enjoying a film and then a scene doesn’t
work, but overall you still have a positive reflection of the film.
Unfortunately Sparrows wasn’t one of these films.
For 80% or more of the film, it was really excellent and
then there was one misjudged scene but it was starting to win me back.
Unfortunately, the concluding sequences were so spectacularly misjudged that
there was no way back. Using extreme
sexual violence against a young woman as a plot point for character development
for a male character is rarely acceptable. The way in which Sparrows does this
is in the most awful, insensitive and risible way, coming out of nowhere, and
leaving me disgusted with how it is resolved. This comes after a scene earlier
in the film where the lead character appears to be sexually assaulted and which
left me uncomfortable, but which the film could almost cope with. But someone
should have stopped the final sequence. Whatever vague point the film seems to
be trying to make about young people being out of their depth and corrupted by
their surroundings could have been made in a dozen other ways, without
resorting to where the story goes.
Leading up to this, there was much that was good about the
film. It was beautifully shot and was a really interesting take on a troubled
father – son relationship. The character development of both was interesting up
to that point and the performances were good. The sense of place of small-town,
isolated Iceland came out really well, especially teenage boredom in such a
setting. What a shame that this was all thrown away, presumably because of some
senseless desire to shock the audience rather than by being true to the
characters and the film.
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