Film review: The Last Paradise on Earth

Co-writer/director Sakaris Stora’s understated drama follows a familiar, even timeless plot arc, and yet the fine performances and strikingly chilly setting nevertheless keep it quietly moving. A co-production between Denmark and the Faroe Islands, this is one of the few widely seen movies (so far) in the Faroese language, which sounds something like Icelandic (with a few English swearwords, here and there).

Young Kári (Sámal H. Hansen) works at the local fish factory, a place that seems to be the main employer on the small island. He’s withdrawn and inexpressive, preferring to watch the world go by rather than engage with it, and he lives at home with rebellious teenage sister Silja (Bjørg B. Egholm), and his unnamed and hopelessly uncommunicative Dad (Hans Tórgarð).

The family members seem unable to converse for many reasons, but for Kári it’s mostly about how everyone seems to be leaving him, including Dad, who decides one day that he’s joining the crew of a fishing boat – and then just vanishes from the movie. Poor Kári is left to look after the increasingly angry Silja while he’s also dealing with the distinct possibility that his workplace is soon to shut for good, but then, of course, he suddenly (and almost accidentally) gets together with neighbour Elin (Esther á Fjallinum).

Our silent protagonist might be falling for Elin, despite (or because of?) the fact that she likes to talk about emotions, and life, and the future, and Kári, and we wonder what will happen when she, too, must leave (to study art in France). Why exactly does Kári want to stay? What is he repressing? Why can’t he explain what he really thinks to anyone? And isn’t it impressive that Hansen can manage such a complex and nuanced characterisation without saying much at all?

Stora’s tale touches upon a series of weighty and often grim themes (how so many will lose their jobs to automation, how the sea is no longer full of fish, how the village is seemingly closing down), and yet this is primarily about the characters, and their feelings. No matter how painfully they can’t put them into words.