Heartstone

Hjartasteinn

dear GOD this is a depressing movie. It's all good and fun, with great setting (and honestly iceland is so beautiful). The characters are interesting, the story isn't half bad, but man, when I finished it, I just didn't want to sleep anymore because I was suddenly depressed. These kind of movies are good for midday.

It seems that commenters are limiting their own scope of Christian as a character by diluting him to the surface of a queer child's identity, thereby completely erasing his personhood. Christian attempted suicide for many reasons. The pain that Christian endured was more than sexually driven but driven by the construct of a nuclear family, gender, abuse, alcoholism and finance. This was a poignant film about the process of learning empathy in all facets and the process of emotional development. The plot was driven by immature views of personhood and to reduce Christian's suicide attempt to sexual confliction is doing exactly what the characters in this film did to Christian. The kiss at the end was intelligent and demonstrated the power of love for one's friend and dichotomized with the rejection from Beth, the scene could not have been stronger. Great film, but one that can be dangerously misconstrued.

Very dated sensibilities. Here we have the pathetic young gay kid who attempts suicide because of unrequited love towards a straight friend. Has this filmmaker never been exposed to the New Queer Cinema of the 1990s? So much has changed in film. Yes it's well done but why??? This is the second melodramatic gay-themed film I've seen on this site whose description belies the content. Come on Kanopy personnel take a film class.

Scenery was stunning. Their idyllic and rugged land is broken by the very imperfect worlds that the adults and young teens create. It reminds me that we overcome our childhoods is nothing short of a miracle. In the end, this is another coming of age movie, with two teen boys trying to figure out their sexuality.

This movie is an achievement on all levels. Technically that wickedly beautiful land must have been an incredible challenge to shoot. The wind, the air, the light, the shadows. As for the actors, I was given a full meal of a person no matter what portion of screen time they were allotted. Desire, tenderness, rage and resignation. Breaking glass, rusty doors, weathered beams, bruised faces. Whispers and taunts, and love maybe.

Overall, I'm compelled to agree with Jonathan's assessment. Many of the themes touched on by the film are instantly recognizable as the negative values and behaviors traditionally associated with oppressive small-town life: the small-minded gossip, feral youth bursting with raging hormones and struggling with barely contained emotions, the distant, clueless and "selfish" parents who seem to provide little guidance, the wannabe young hoods, the exercise of questionable recreational choices, the needless cruelty among teens in search of a thrill, the dearth of self-reflection and ample states of denial. It's all here, but, sadly, hardly the sole province of small towns or even the 1950s. The injection of elements of danger into the plot could be seen as a cynical ploy to elicit an emotional response designed to divert the viewer's attention away from the fact that this might just be the standard angst-ridden, teen-driven melodramatic indictment of small-town life cited in the previous review. Still, the cinematography is pristine, the acting is realistic and genuine, and the landscape is used to great advantage. If we of today could only make life a little less complicated for ourselves as human beings, then life as depicted in Heartstone might yet become the historical relic we would have thought it should be by now.