Smilla's Sense of Snow
Smilla's Sense of Snow
| 28 February 1997 (USA)
Smilla's Sense of Snow Trailers

Smilla Jaspersen, half Danish, half Greenlander, attempts to understand the death of a small boy who falls from the roof of her apartment building. Suspecting wrongdoing, Smilla uncovers a trail of clues leading towards a secretive corporation that has made several mysterious expeditions to Greenland. Scenes from the film were shot in Copenhagen and western Greenland. The film was entered into the 47th Berlin International Film Festival, where director Bille August was nominated for the Golden Bear.

Reviews
Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.
Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.
Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
samkan Lots of films begin well. SSoS begins exceptionally well. Aside from Orman being so attractive, there's so much potential; e.g., particularly the opening moments and it's potential relationship to the rest of the movie. And SSoS is able to sustain this level of suspense and intrigue for over an hour. After that, this viewer began to see that the filmmakers were unable to translate from the page to the screen as well with the tale's action-oriented, big-setting second half. Preposterous characters and events intrude. The last fifteen minutes of the work are - with due sincerity and sarcasm aside - laughable; e.g., stock footage of glacier shelving, iceberg birthing, etc., ridiculously interspersed with a sunny day where obviously nothing is happening. It's a shame. To say SSoS fizzles out is an understatement. Evaporates would be a better description.
aurora Movie plus: - the scenery - the boy - Julia and Gabriel - that a lot of the conversation was taken directly from the book. - the ending of the movie, I liked what the mechanic did - it wrapped it up a bit more than the book ending (and I had to cry while watching the final scene with the boy)Movie cons: - it was attempted but still Smilla's way of thinking did not cross over from the book to the movie - the driving scenes irritated me as it was fake - the boat scenes were too short - the living thing and the worms.. NO that was not how it was in the book (sorry for repeating myself) and it made the whole story a very bad SF one.Quite a nice adaption of the book, still the book is better... the way I watched this movie was reading the book a bit while watching the movie in bits during two days.Still I give it an 8 out of 10 and wish that somewhere in the future someone will try his or her hand on it again with more time and more danish and inuit actors.
jehaccess6 Julia Ormond can be a chameleon in her different roles. She can change her looks and persona until you don't seem to recognize her from role to role. Here she has rather short straight black hair and lots of eye makeup to make her pass for half Eskimo (sorry P.C. Police, Inuit).I was fascinated by her character, Smilla Jasperson, a socially inept mathematician and researcher who cares for no one until her neighbor's young child awakens her maternal instincts. The fact that Smilla is freakin gorgeous never seems to occur to anyone but her creepy neighbor who lives in her apartment building on the floor below.Smilla walks home from work one day, doubtless to avoid contact with anyone on public transportation. An ambulance passes her and stops at her apartment building. Her young friend Isaiah has fallen to his death from the roof of their apartment building. Smilla instinctively knows that this was no accident and sets out to find out who caused his death and why.Smilla needs financial help to pursue her investigation. She turns to her father Moritz Jasperson, a prominent and wealthy physician. The horribly miscast Robert Loggia portrays her indulgent father who enjoys the company of a wife younger than his daughter. The two women detest each other intensely. I suspect that the reason Moritz gives Smilla money so readily is to get the two women apart as soon as possible.The film offers some very interesting background scenes from Copenhaven as Smilla pursues her investigation. When Smilla calls on Elsa Lubing, a former accountant for Greenland Mining Corporation, she starts to see where to concentrate her efforts.Here we are treated to the typical Hollywood hatred and disdain for Christian belief. Elsa Lubing is a total whack job who only reveals what she knows after accidentally reading a passage of scripture that seems to indicate the justice of Smilla's quest.Smilla always seems to meet strangers that are willing to provide any required information or other support to prevent failure in her quest. This just-in-time altruism occurs repeatedly in the plot and quickly becomes grating. The screenwriters have obviously become too lazy to generate a more plausible flow of events.The plot quickly falls into the tired path of a virtuous investigator battling sinister and mysterious forces eager to silence them. I enjoyed seeing Julia take on the unfamiliar role of physical action heroine. She is involved in bomb explosions, car chases, break-ins, and many narrow escapes from capture or death. I especially enjoyed her confrontation with her snotty younger-than-her step mother. Julia did a lot of these stunts herself, you can always tell when they sneak in a stunt double.Smilla's quest takes her to Greenland aboard a ship chartered by the sinister Greenland Mining Corporation. She has managed to land a crew berth on the mess deck. It was interesting to watch Julia actually scale the side of the ship on a rope ladder. You can tell it was really her doing this fairly dangerous feat. The crew of the ship seems strangely indifferent to the presence of a gorgeous young woman aboard. After a brief confrontation in the crew quarters, no one takes much notice of her presence. Sailors have changed a lot since my Navy days!Well, they actually filmed in Greenland rather than faking it on a sound stage. That was about the high point of the last half of the film. The plot was so weak, contrived, implausible, etc. that it was hard to sustain any interest in watching the pitiful climax.This film lost its way about 1/3 through the runtime. I must rate this film the second worst Julia Ormond film role I have seen. The worst has to be her portrayal of a con artist in 'The Prime Gig'.
robwealer Parts were good but does not stand up on the whole. Very unrealistic and un-researched, asking the audience to swallow a lot of basic inconsistent crap, something that would get most continuity people fired in today's market. Eg. Why are they simply standing around an un-fenced off pool of deadly organisms in a pristine lab setting, not to mention that it's surrounded by slippery ice. Also, what was this GM's crime anyway? (He was likely doing what would have been done anyway by his own employees but with government regulation and observation.) The infection of the boy was not intentional. Not disclosing it was illegal but the child was treated/observed. Nowhere in this film is it mentioned or even properly implied that the boy might have been an experiment or that treatment was withheld purposefully so that they could watch the organism evolve in a human subject. It was implied though that the disease was untreatable and fatal in every case, that to disturb the "worm" was to invite catastrophe. That the boy was necessarily misused was not clear at all. Nor was it necessarily communicated that any kind of haste or greed was ultimately responsible for what happened, not at all. Director and screenwriter were asking a lot of the audience that should have been delivered by them. This also struck me as an exercise of moralization by people who were over their heads in the subject matter and taking their first run at it, making a lot of mistakes along the way and aimed at an audience whose level of candor/maturity was not up to the more rigorous detail and syllogisms of genuine ethical debate.Gave me a large headache.