Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch 101 Reykjavik
2000 · Baltasar Kormákur · 101 Reykjavik on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Notice the low winter sun and long blue dusks throughout. (light)
Steuger builds the whole atmosphere from Reykjavík's wintry light, neon and sodium glow against snow and wet pavement, interiors close and lamplit.
Payoff: The city's own light seems to be keeping Hlynur exactly where he is.
Listen for the score's mix of British art pop and Icelandic edge. (sound)
Damon Albarn and Einar Örn Benediktsson score the film together, giving it a melancholy, modern pulse that runs under the deadpan voiceover.
Payoff: The music carries feeling the narration keeps trying to laugh off.
Notice how similar Hlynur's days look, bar, bed, and home. (structure)
The film compresses his repetitive routine into a loop, cutting on his ironic voiceover rather than on plot, so the days start to blur together.
Payoff: The looping rhythm makes his inertia something you feel, not just something he describes.
Watch how little Hlynur actually does in any given scene. (performance)
Guðnason plays him as watchable while doing almost nothing, letting irony sit on top of something closer to depression.
Payoff: His passivity is the whole performance, and it stays funny and sad at once.
Notice how crowded and charged the small apartment feels. (staging)
Mother, son, and the new houseguest Lola are staged in the same tight kitchen, sofa, and hallway spaces again and again.
Payoff: Ordinary domestic closeness starts to feel loaded before anything is said.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch how rarely Hlynur does anything, and notice how completely the film makes that watchable.