VALLEY OF SHADOWS By Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen World Premiere - Toronto Film Festival European Premiere - Rome Film Festival "The director shows bold assurance that helps paper over thin stretches in the narrative. He crafts a powerful sense of foreboding that should play well at the arty end of the genre spectrum, making him a name to watch." “There's real confidence in the filmmaking, creating a shadowy world that washes over you, in which a boy gets lost in his nightmares, perhaps learning that the monster all children fear is a force to be protected.” -THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER “An entrancing Norwegian gothic fable told with haunting visuals and striking tonal assurance” “It marks a strong debut for Norwegian writer/director Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen, as well as an enigmatic and magnetic addition to the atmospheric Nordic fold.” “Like noir, the horror realm has become one of Scandinavian cinema’s staples — and like many of the region’s best examples of both, Valley of Shadows has the potential to attract an audience.” -SCREEN INTERNATIONAL "Using the folkloric tropes of a deep, dark wood and tales of a beast terrorising the countryside, with his feature debut Valley of ShadowsNorwegian director Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen has crafted one of the year's finest, most deeply affecting psychological dramas." "Channelling a near-Tarkovskian sense of space, Gulbrandsen imbues every tree branch and every shaft of light with ethereal life, captured beautifully by his brother Marius' cinematography." "At once tender, eerie and surreal, Valley of Shadowsis a coming-of-age tale like no other." -CINE-VUE “Valley of Shadows is cinematic to its very core.” “A self-contained diamond” “The magic here exists in the pauses between shots”
Transcript
VALLEY OF SHADOWS
By Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen World Premiere - Toronto Film Festival European Premiere - Rome Film Festival
"The director shows bold assurance that helps paper over thin stretches in the narrative. He crafts a powerful sense of foreboding that should play well at the arty end of the genre spectrum, making him a name to watch." “There's real confidence in the filmmaking, creating a shadowy world that washes over you, in which a boy gets lost in his nightmares, perhaps learning that the monster all children fear is a force to be protected.” -THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER “An entrancing Norwegian gothic fable told with haunting visuals and striking tonal assurance” “It marks a strong debut for Norwegian writer/director Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen, as well as an enigmatic and magnetic addition to the atmospheric Nordic fold.” “Like noir, the horror realm has become one of Scandinavian cinema’s staples — and like many of the region’s best examples of both, Valley of Shadows has the potential to attract an audience.” -SCREEN INTERNATIONAL "Using the folkloric tropes of a deep, dark wood and tales of a beast terrorising the countryside, with his feature debut Valley of ShadowsNorwegian director Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen has crafted one of the year's finest, most deeply affecting psychological dramas." "Channelling a near-Tarkovskian sense of space, Gulbrandsen imbues every tree branch and every shaft of light with ethereal life, captured beautifully by his brother Marius' cinematography." "At once tender, eerie and surreal, Valley of Shadowsis a coming-of-age tale like no other." -CINE-VUE ����� “Valley of Shadows is cinematic to its very core.” “A self-contained diamond” “The magic here exists in the pauses between shots”
“Score from Zbigniew Preisner (a regular collaborator with Krzysztof Kieślowski) knows when to get out of the way, and when to make its presence unequivocally known. The Gulbrandsens take classic folk tales, steep their tropes in modern psychoanalysis, and put the results on display via expressionistic cinema. Gorgeously rendered on 35mm film, shot on location in the particularly foreboding western peninsula of Norway, it is hard to believe it is a first feature. We will be watching the brothers' careers very closely going forward, all the while leaning in, hard, to this frighteningly confident first feature.” -SCREEN ANARCHY “With Zbigniew Preisner’s haunting score, you’ll discover yourself teetering on the edge of reality and nightmare. Gulbrandsen lets this visual and aural aesthetic envelop us. Music fills our ears as the fog rolls in to turn an already fairy tale forest dwarfing anyone who comes near — and cinematographer Marius Matzow Gulbrandsen ensures we experience its scale — into a mysterious region holding werewolves and moose alike.” -THE FILM STAGE "Adam Ekeli is brilliant as the hyper intelligent and wildly suggestible young Aslak whose bewilderment and fertile imagination transform a simple wander through a misty Norwegian wood into a waking nightmare of Gothic horror proportions. The film is exquisitely captured from his gently sensationalist point of view." -FILMUFORIA ����
'Valley of Shadows' ('Syggenes Dal'): Film Review | TIFF 2017 9:59 PM PDT 9/14/2017 by David Rooney
Adam Ekeli in 'Valley of Shadows' A dark woodland symphony. Norwegian newcomer Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen penetrates the depths of a child's imagination, plagued by fear, confusion and loss, in his dreamy mood piece. An angelic-looking six-year-old boy is woken from sleep by a friend at the window who says, simply, "Come, I have something to show you." That invitation portends a troubling discovery: A number of sheep have been mysteriously slaughtered in the rural village where Valley of Shadows is set. The grim sight of the animals' bloody carcasses feeds the vivid imagination of the young protagonist — played with innocence, preternatural grace and haunting vulnerability by Adam Ekeli — in debuting Norwegian director Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen's brooding Scandinavian Gothic fairy tale.
More of a dark mood piece than a conventional horror film, this atmospheric Nordic fable tips its hat to Peter and the Wolf in a dense woodland setting seemingly suspended between dreamscape and unnerving reality.
Working as a seamless unit with his cinematographer brother Marius Matzow Gulbrandsen, and making majestic use of a melancholy, trance-like score by the great Kieslowski collaborator Zbigniew Preisner, the director shows bold assurance that helps paper over thin stretches in the narrative. He crafts a powerful sense of foreboding that should play well at the arty end of the genre spectrum, making him a name to watch.
Aslak (Ekeli) lives with his single mother Astrid (Katherine Fagerland) and with the deeply felt absence of his drug-addicted older brother, whose empty bedroom provides an echo chamber for Astrid's sadness and Aslak's incomprehension. When the impressionable boy's friend Lasse (Lennard Salamon) shows him the butchered sheep, he fills his head with stories of full moons and werewolves that are rendered more frightening by the graphic illustrations in an old-fashioned picture book, images that foreshadow the protagonist's physical journey into a forbidden, perhaps mythical world. Local farmers, however, attribute the sheep killings to the more common wolf, and begin putting out poisoned baits.
Bad news from cops concerning his missing brother only increases the turmoil in Aslak's head. Despite being convinced that a werewolf lies in the menacing woods on the mountaintop, he ventures in alone on a dangerous odyssey in search of answers — and of his runaway dog.
Location is fundamental to a tale like this, and the filmmakers chose wisely with a mountainous area on the Southwest coast of Norway. The gloomy forest full of ancient trees, with mist rolling through like waves, suggests a place shrouded in the unknown, in surreal suggestions of a primordial, hidden world. The movie is beautifully shot on 35mm, often with sepulchral natural light, and there's both simplicity and eloquence in compositions that place diminutive Aslak against a towering sea of trees. The vastness of nature is overwhelming.
In addition to Preisner's enveloping score, with its ravishing blend of orchestral and electronic components, and chorale passages that lend a religious solemnity, the director harnesses the evocative power of sound — chilling bird and animal calls, creaking branches, the elemental noise of wind and rain lashing the trees.
It's kept intentionally unclear how much time Aslak has been wandering deeper and deeper into the forest. Gulbrandsen also plays with our perceptions as to what the boy is really experiencing — he comes face to face with a magnificent moose; falls asleep on a boat that takes him down a mountain stream; has a strange encounter with a hermit living in an isolated cabin (Norwegian rock star John Olav Nilsen) — and what is happening in his mind. Is the enigmatic stranger a manifestation of his brother? Are the woods in fact malevolent or is he being kept safe?
The film's Freudian subtext is hinted at in the many shots of Aslak sleeping or stumbling out of bed, half-naked and defenseless, his head still thick with the fog of slumber. And he's often seen watching from a wary distance, behind doors, windows or stair banisters, as he struggles to fathom the adult world.
There are no cheap jump scares here, no jittery editing or sudden shocks. Gulbrandsen is more interested in layering ambiguities than in solving mysteries, and his script (co-written with Clement Tuffreau) keeps dialogue to a minimum. But there's real confidence in the filmmaking, creating a shadowy world that washes over you, in which a boy gets lost in his nightmares, perhaps learning that the monster all children fear is a force to be protected.
Production companies: Film Farm, Them Girls Film, Anna Kron Film Cast: Adam Ekeli, Katherine Fagerland, John Olav Nilsen, Lennard Salamon Director: Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen Screenwriters: Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen, Clement Tuffreau Producer: Alan R. Milligan Executive producers: Tom Kjeseth, Alexander Hagerup Director of photography: Marius Matzow Gulbrandsen Production designer: Maria Haard Music: Zbigniew Preisner Editor: Mariusz Kus Sales: Celluloid Dreams Venue: Toronto Film Festival (Discovery) 91 minutes http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/valley-of-shadows-tiff-2017-1039416
'Valley Of Shadows': Toronto Review BY SARAH WARD 9 SEPTEMBER 2017
A young boy finds evil lurking in the woods in this atmospheric Norwegian chiller.
SOURCE: TIFF - VALLEY OF SHADOWS Dir/scr. Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen. Norway. 2017. 91 mins.
An entrancing Norwegian gothic fable told with haunting visuals and striking tonal assurance, Valley of Shadows turns childhood fears into a ruminative and resonant horror effort. Predicated around a mysterious spate of sheep slaughters during a full moon, and playing with loss and grief in its wander through sinister woods, it marks a strong debut for Norwegian writer/director Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen, as well as an enigmatic and magnetic addition to the atmospheric Nordic fold.
Although the story stems from an original script, it boasts the air of a foreboding, Peter and the Wolf-esque fairy tale Like noir, the horror realm has become one of Scandinavian cinema’s staples — and like many of the region’s best examples of both, Valley of Shadows has the potential to attract an audience. Premiering at Toronto, and certain to garner interest from genre festivals at a minimum, this is an alluring feature capable of parlaying its preference for moody 35mm-shot imagery and scant dialogue into further attention. Indeed, the quiet, evocative approach worked for Sweden’s Let the Right One In, and it could again here with the right support.
Although the story stems from an original script by Gulbrandsen and Clement Tuffreau (Sam Was Here), it boasts the air of a foreboding, Peter and the Wolf-esque fairy tale. This literary theme lingers over the feature in other ways, such as six-year-old Aslak’s (Adam Ekeli) drawings of people and monsters, and the complex illustrations his ten-year-old pal Lassee (Lennard Salamon) leafs through when announcing that a werewolf is responsible for the ravaging. They’re both telling inclusions; while its detailed sights are far more sophisticated than a boy’s scribblings, the movie is grounded in its young protagonist’s perspective.
Frequently spied peering at the world with curious but cautious eyes, through windows or doorways, from stairwells or behind barriers, Aslak is intrigued by the animal attacks, which local farmers chalk up to regular wolves. Venturing near the woods, he is, however, wary enough not to go too far. Often left to his own devices as his mother, Astrid (Kathrine Fagerland), struggles with his absent older brother’s tragic troubles, he eventually steps well into the mountainous thicket after his beloved border collie runs off.
Though the towering foliage and the dense fog slowly blanketing the rural town are real, resulting from a stroke of savvy location scouting, where Aslak’s woodland experiences sit on the spectrum between dreamlike actuality and imaginative fantasy is left suitably hazy. Wearing a black (not red) hood, he calls his dog’s name, loses his way and attempts to locate shelter, before sailing down the stream to encounter a cabin-dwelling stranger (Norwegian rocker John Olav Nilsen).
As the roaming child not quite equipped to process everything around him, first-timer Ekeli is an arresting presence; that cinematographer Marius Matzow Gulbrandsen (Letter to the King), the director’s brother, simultaneously endeavours to evoke Aslak’s perception of his surroundings while keeping him in the frame is hardly surprising. It’s a delicate but effective balance, and one that’s crucial to the film’s success. This dual approach of observing the blonde-haired innocent standing out against grey interiors, and also seeing his inner stresses reflected in the landscape, thrusts the feature forward.
To provide a correspondingly enthralling yet disquieting score, Gulbrandsen enlists Krzysztof Kieślowski favourite Zbigniew Preisner, whose blend of piano and electronic instruments proves just as astutely crafted. Combined with its child lead, small-town setting and odd goings-on, it may all sound like a trample down popular culture’s current, Stranger Things-inspired horror path — and that comparison won’t hurt Valley of Shadows’ fortunes — but this is its own sumptuously unsettling package.
Production companies: Film Farms AS, Them Girls, Anna Kron
International sales: Celluloid Dreams, [email protected] Producer: Alan R. Milligan Executive producers: Tom Kjeseth, Alexander Hagerup Screenplay: Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen, Clement Tuffreau Cinematographer: Marius Matzow Gulbrandsen Editor: Mariusz Kus Production designer: Maria Håård Costume designer: Sofie Rage Larsen Composer: Zbigniew Preisner Main cast: Adam Ekeli, Katherine Fagerland, John Olav Nilsen, Lennard Salamon
Toronto 2017: Valley Of Shadows Review CHRIS MACHELL , TIFF 2017
����� Using the folkloric tropes of a deep, dark wood and tales of a beast terrorising the countryside, with his feature debut Valley of Shadows Norwegian director Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen has crafted one of the year's finest, most deeply affecting psychological dramas. As with all the best ghost stories, this one starts with a family in crisis. Aslak's (Adam Ekeli) older delinquent brother is missing, possibly dead. His mother (Katherine Fagerland), already frantic searching for her one son, doesn't like her youngest hanging around with his older friend, understandably fearing a repeat of her older son's path. Meanwhile, the boys have taken in upon themselves to investigate the horrible deaths of mutilated sheep in the surrounding farmland. The adults suspect a wild animal, or a lunatic - Aslak's brother's timely disappearance makes him a possible culprit but as far as the boys are concerned, only a werewolf could have done something like this. The film's family themes and Scandinavian austerity invariably bring to mind Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In, and the forests loom over the farm recall the setting of last year's The Witch. But this is a fundamentally different beast, keeping the mystery of the monster tightly wound and adopting a more psychological bent than those dyed-in-the-wool supernatural thrillers.
Valley of Shadows' relentlessly slow pace and lack of narrative incident will doubtless turn off gore hounds after a quick fix of lupine action, and it's fair say that the film's house-bound middle section has more than its fair share of moping around. But things pick up when Aslak's dog creepily growls at something just out of frame before bolting for the woods, prompting Aslak to brave the forest alone. It's in this sequence that Valley of Shadows truly comes into its own. Channelling a near-Tarkovskian sense of space, Gulbrandsen imbues every tree branch and every shaft of light with ethereal life, captured beautifully by his brother Marius' cinematography. Seen through the eyes of a nine-year old boy, shivering and alone, the mundane becomes mystical, and the dangerous becomes the alluring. Provisioned only with a ketchup sandwich, time bends and stretches irregularly as day passes into night. A journey up the river on an abandoned rowing boat is pregnant with symbolic meaning, but it his encounter with a stranger in a cabin - the closest the film gets to a real 'monster' - that leaves the most indelible impression, a subtly transformative experience for Aslak. At once tender, eerie and surreal, Valley of Shadows is a coming-of-age tale like no other. http://www.cine-vue.com/2017/09/toronto-2017-valley-of-shadows-review.html?m=1
Toronto 2017 Review: VALLEY OF SHADOWS Leads Us Into The Deep, Dark, Woods Of Scandinavian Gothic
Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen's debut feature is a dewy, surreal tale of innocence on its wayward cusp.
Kurt Halfyard September 8, 9:01 pm
What we do not understand scares us. We often need monsters to blame.
Young Aslak is at that tender age where we all seek a little independence, but do not know what to do with it. When nothing in the adult world makes clear sense, and time seems to stretch out forever. This leaves ample opportunity for him to wander and explore his surroundings - out of sight of his harried single mother.
The current big going ons in Aslak's life is the mysterious killing of sheep in his rural Norwegian village. There is also the gaping absence of his older brother. Could they be related? These gory slaughters occur only when the moon is full. Could there be a werewolf perhaps
lurking in the dank, fecund woods on the doorstep of the town? Wonder and danger are two sides of the same coin.
There is not much in the way of dialogue in Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen's debut feature, Valley of Shadows, a dewy, surreal tale of innocence on its wayward cusp. The storytelling is firmly in the school of show-don't-tell, but when it does deign to speak, it inclines one to sit up and listen. An early, isolated line of dialogue: "Come, I have something to show you," is a self-contained diamond; effectively and efficiently the Ur-promise of cinema. With an eye for cinematography as allegory, Valley of Shadows is cinematic to its very core.
Shot by Marius Matzow Gulbrandsen (the director's brother) as if it were a waking dream, where ultra-wide shots to establish geography are intermingled with close-ups of young faces to offer interior landscapes. The film makes sure you are never on firm ground with either, but the tone is consistently daring and we are quietly invited to see what comes next. Individual shots often seem like self-contained movies, with the picture holding its breath.
The magic here exists in the pauses between shots. A baroque, Moog-ish, score from Zbigniew Preisner (a regular collaborator with Krzysztof Kieślowski) knows when to get out of the way, and when to make its presence unequivocally known. This is the space (or silence) where a moment of uncertainty might go either way: into anxious despair, or into profound acceptance.
Aslak flirts with going into the forest several times, arriving right up to the edge (which is fenced off but not without holes) with his friend. They desire to find and expose the werewolf who is killing the sheep, but the imposing wall of trees proves too much. Later, when his dog, Rapp, disappears and his distant mother is fully in the throes of other adult worries involving the police, Aslak gathers up some bread and jam, and heads into the forest on a rescue mission.
The camera lingers on the thick red jelly on the lily white bread, in the same way it rests on an early image of Aslak's pale fingers covered in lamb's blood upon discovery of the sheep carcasses. The imagery announces innocence lost. But not so fast. At first blush, I thought it might be a burgeoning puberty, but upon further consideration, it is more a severing of the umbilical cord, be it prepared for life or not.
Apparently the classic Gothic narrative has a Scandinavian tributary in the same way it has an American one. Homesteads and looming architecture are supplanted with moss covered-forests and rocky wilderness. Forbidden knowledge arrives here not as answers or revelations, but as an acknowledgement that the world (and family) is a place of unanswerable mysteries and secrets.
Growing up is pretty fucking strange. But you cannot go back. On several occasions the image of the full moon dissolves onto Alsak's blonde head of hair as he sleeps. The narrative often exists as a persistent dream-like state of the future promise of adulthood.
Valley of Shadows evokes key shots from Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter and Michael Haneke's Time of the Wolf, while being in hock to neither. All three films are, paradoxically, familiar, and deeply unconventional coming-of-age stories. There is a distinct flair for visual precision. On second thought, maybe it is not wise to pay too much attention to the words, and focus on the images, which steer closer to universal truths than your run-of-the-mill scary movie is willing to go.
The Gulbrandsens take classic folk tales, steep their tropes in modern psychoanalysis, and put the results on display via expressionistic cinema. Gorgeously rendered on 35mm film, shot on location in the particularly foreboding western peninsula of Norway, it is hard to believe it is a first feature. We will be watching the brothers' careers very closely going forward, all the while leaning in, hard, to this frighteningly confident first feature.
Six year-old Aslak (Adam Ekeli) lives a quiet life with his single mother Astrid (Kathrine Fagerland) in a rural town adjacent to farmland and a mountaintop forest. He’s too young to understand all that’s happening around him — especially considering he’s generally told to keep away from the adults when they’re speaking — but he knows enough to gauge the strained atmosphere and heavy emotion growing. So he looks through keyholes and gazes out windows, everything he sees simultaneously meaningful and yet without meaning. When things get too intense he hides in his closest. When he begins to feel alone he finds his dog Rapp. And as tension mounts at home (police chatter about his estranged brother puts Astrid on edge), a monster begins lurking in the distant trees.
Let’s put “monster” in quotes because the word is used more as a concept than literal manifestation of the supernatural as far as Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen’s film Valley of Shadows is concerned. Or is it? The result of his and Clement Tuffreau’s script always being from this young boy’s perspective means it could be anything. Maybe the vague generalizations he hears the men whose sheep are being slaughtered speak are in response to a lone wolf feeding in the night. Or perhaps the folk tale conjecture of his older friend Lasse (Lennard Salamon) about a werewolf skulking in the light of a full moon is more than just a scary story born from heavy metal music and active imaginations. Maybe Aslak’s brother is this suspected beast.
What is it that he knows and what can he not comprehend? Try and remember back to when you were six and attempt to answer that question because it won’t be easy. We like to think we had a handle on things in the comfort of hindsight, but who’s to say our current brains aren’t simply deciphering the puzzle pieces we couldn’t fit together back then? Imagine yourself a scared kid who doesn’t know where his brother is — who can’t even begin to recall what he looked like or who he was with Mom locking his bedroom door. Now your friend is showing you mauled animal carcasses and illustrative engravings of werewolves feeding on children. Wouldn’t you conflate the two? Dual unknowns caught within a fantasy mirroring real life?
With these dark thoughts set against Zbigniew Preisner’s haunting score, you’ll discover yourself teetering on the edge of reality and nightmare. Gulbrandsen lets this visual and aural aesthetic envelop us by removing dialogue from most of the runtime either through distortion caused by distance or Aslak’s isolation. Music fills our ears as the fog rolls in to turn an already fairy tale forest dwarfing anyone who comes near — and cinematographer Marius Matzow Gulbrandsen ensures we experience its scale — into a mysterious region holding werewolves and moose alike. But while Aslak’s first foray across its border abruptly ends in fright, his second cannot. Rapp is missing and only he can find him before the monster. Couple that horror with an emotionally retreating mother and Aslak would officially be alone.
The film is a subtler take on the concept seen in A Monster Calls with both searching to represent grief’s manifestation in a child. Whereas that film dealt with an adolescent in his teens (or soon-to-be), however, Valley of Shadows takes us even younger to highlight a mind too fresh to be anything but impressionable and confused. But we aren’t merely watching Aslak’s journey while fantasy sequences arrive with clear delineating features separating them from life. Gulbrandsen has instead put us in his shoes by placing the camera at his level to peer around corners and watch without listening. We receive the same details as Aslak, our brains parsing fact from fiction with a realistic lens the filmmaker might not be using. Therefore anything remains possible.
So don’t be embarrassed when you hear something heavy in the distance cracking branches. Don’t think you’re the only one holding your breath when the camera zooms into those trees to find the culprit. We fear what we cannot see just as Aslak does, our imaginations conjuring the worst possible outcome as a product of the creepy environment and tense psychological air created. And when a stranger (John Olav Nilsen) is seen watching us from across a river, how could we not expect to witness a transformation of some kind? We’ve simultaneously traveled deep into this dangerous forest and into Aslak’s constantly roving mind so that every little thing becomes real and unreal. It’s impossible to discern one from the other as fear renders our direct vision untrustworthy.
In this regard it’s recommended that you enter Aslak’s world knowing as little as possible so your mind can process events without preconceptions. Bask in the mystery of not knowing whether Gulbrandsen has made a poignant drama or a bona fide horror because the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive. The film doesn’t need to embrace those genres literally for their labels to be apt either, the mood and tone our wonder absorbs proves as relevant as seeing something concretely fantastical onscreen anyway. Gulbrandsen isn’t telling a story, he’s leading us through one with all the uncertainty necessary to question, interpret, and understand despite no true answers being provided. Whether a monster is murdering those sheep is inconsequential to the existence of one blocking Aslak’s path.
Valley of Shadows premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. https://thefilmstage.com/reviews/tiff-review-valley-of-shadows-teeters-on-the-edge-of-reality-and-nightmare/
Valley of Shadows | Skyggenes Dal (2017) | Toronto Film Festival 2017 FILMUFORIA SEPTEMBER 8, 2017
Dir: Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen | Cast: Adam Ekeli, Kathrine Fagerland | Fantasy Horror | Norway 91′ A young boy ventures into the forest in search of mysterious creatures that eat sheep, in this eerie Scandinavian Gothic fable that uses an unsettling score and an atmospheric sense of place to explore how most of our deepest fears and insecurities often stem from quite banal and explicable childhood experiences. Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen fantasy drama unfurls poetically in the remote forests of Norway. Aslak, struggling to connect with his mother, with no father or siblings around, spends most of his time alone alone as his mother has suffered some recent tragedy. Unable to understand or connect with the present, Aslak escapes into a world of fantasy in order to make some sense of his unstable family life and strange events going on in his neighbourhood. Livestock is being slaughtered, and while the local farmers suspect a wolf, Aslak’s fertile imagination goes into overdrive imagining werewolves and other folkloric happenings in the remote woodland surrounding his home in Norway.
Beautifully captured on the widescreen and in intimate close-up by the director’s brother Marius, Valley of Shadows links into Norwegian and European literary and artistic sources to show how kids often endow the explicable and even banal world of adults with a sense of fantasy or even horror, when seen from their own febrile, almost feral perspective. This exotic and rich emotional breeding ground of childhood imagination has given rise to a fabulous creative force resulting in fairytales based on folklore and nature and to deal and explain everyday feelings of loss, fear and bewilderment. And Gulbrandsen has used this fascinating childhood world as the idea for a fantasy drama. Adam Ekeli is brilliant as the hyper intelligent and wildly suggestible young Aslak whose bewilderment and fertile imagination transform a simple wander through a misty Norwegian wood into a waking nightmare of Gothic horror proportions. The film is exquisitely captured from his gently sensationalist point of view. Working as his own DoP Gulbrandsen collaborates with editor and scripter Clement Tuffreau to create a work of ethereal beauty with an extremely modest budget, and a very simple narrative enlivened by a score from Polish film composer Zbigniew Preisner, best known for his work with film director Krzysztof Kieślowski. Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen was born in Bjørkelangen, Norway, and he studied directing at the Polish National Film School in Lodz. He is the director of the shorts Darek (09) and Everything Will Be OK (11). Valley of the Shadows (17) is his debut feature film. TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL 2017 | 7-17 SEPTEMBER 2017
2017 Toronto International Film Festival Written by The Film Stage on September 18, 2017
Valley of Shadows (Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen)
Six year-old Aslak (Adam Ekeli) lives a quiet life with his single mother Astrid (Kathrine Fagerland) in a rural town adjacent to farmland and a mountaintop forest. He’s too young to understand all that’s happening around him — especially considering he’s generally told to keep away from the adults when they’re speaking — but he knows enough to gauge the strained atmosphere and heavy emotion growing. So he looks through keyholes and gazes out windows, everything he sees simultaneously meaningful and yet without meaning. When things get too intense he hides in his closest. When he begins to feel alone he finds his dog Rapp. And as tension mounts at home (police chatter about his estranged brother puts Astrid on edge), a monster begins lurking in the distant trees. – Jared M. (full review)
Top 20 must-see acquisition films at TIFF17 The majority of the films that screen at TIFF have yet to be picked up for distribution in North America — or even elsewhere. Directors bring their films to the festival hoping to find an audience and a distributor to bring the film to an even bigger audience. If a film isn’t picked up for distribution, it might never see the light of day — and especially a big screen — again. With that in mind, here’s a look at this year’s must-see films, which you might not get to see otherwise. They’re all so great that we hope buyers will see them and pick them up: these films deserve an audience.
Valley of Shadows (Norway, Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen)
Still from Valley of Shadows, courtesy of TIFF. Valley of Shadows is a haunting, atmospheric fable about ghosts, grief, and childhood. In rural Norway, one boy ventures into the dark woods to confront the monster savaging sheep – and the shadow hanging over his family. Director Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen takes us inside young Aslak’s perspective, imparting both the fears and the unquestioning dream-logic of childhood. Beautifully shot and scored, this deliberately paced mood piece should not be missed. – Mary Angela Rowe
Esprit Critique TIFF 2017 – Valley of Shadows, l’appel de la forêt Projeté au Toronto International Film Festival dans la section « Découverte », Valley of Shadows du Norvégien Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen (lire notre entretien ici) en est une fort belle. Choc esthétique, intelligente utilisation de la figure du monstre, plongée psychanalytique dans un espace hautement symbolique… Qui a dit qu’un premier film ne pouvait pas réunir autant de qualités ?
Aslak, six ans, dort paisiblement quand son copain Lasse le réveille à coups de cailloux lancés contre sa fenêtre ; il a quelque chose à lui montrer. Ensemble, ils se rendent dans une étable où gisent les carcasses de plusieurs agneaux, éventrés. Caché dans l’ombre, le jeune garçon observe la brutalité de la scène. Entre incompréhension et fascination, il a besoin de toucher le sang d’une bête du bout des doigts pour se confronter à la réalité de la découverte. « C’est un loup-garou qui a tué le mouton », lui explique son ami de près du double de son âge, « il reviendra à la prochaine pleine lune ». Pour Aslak, qui vit seul avec sa mère dans une région rurale de la Norvège, il est parfois difficile de distinguer le réel de l’imaginaire. Les carnages sont-ils l’œuvre d’un monstre comme le prétend Lasse ? Ou sont-ils liés à la disparition de son grand frère recherché par la police ? La réponse se trouve peut-être au cœur de la forêt…
L’ambiguïté règne en maître sur Valley of Shadows. Alors que la lecture de son synopsis pouvait laisser croire à (ou redouter) une production horrifique sacrifiant le mystère au bénéfice de l’attraction pure, le film de Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen se révèle infiniment plus complexe, pour notre plus grand plaisir. En adoptant le point de vue de son très jeune protagoniste, le scénario signé par Gulbrandsen et le Français Clément Tuffreau prend soin de respecter la porosité entre réalité et imaginaire qui définit la perception d’Aslak. Cette focalisation permet au film de se déployer comme un rêve éveillé. Le sérieux avec lequel le point de vue du garçon est adopté témoigne non seulement d’un respect sincère pour un âge dont on oublie trop vite les spécificités mais écarte également la nécessité de l’explicitation. Plus que le « sérieux au jeu » des enfants, c’est de l’être au monde et de la perception de l’enfant dont il est question. C’est ainsi que Valley of Shadows vous rappelle avec quelles difficultés, à l’âge de six ans, vous receviez et compreniez les informations, comment vous approchiez le monde qui vous entourait, en dessinant les limites du réel et des chimères.
Plutôt que de décrypter rationnellement cette perception ambiguë ou pire, la mettre au service de simples effets horrifiques – qui seraient ici le résultat d’un recul cynique –, le jeune réalisateur la fait sienne et en offre une représentation littérale. De cette manière, la démarche de Gulbrandsen rappelle les propos de Tolkien qui affirmait, dans son essai Du conte de fées, que la question de la vérité des contes ne doit pas être prise à la légère, avant d’ajouter que cette vérité relève de notre imaginaire et non d’une causalité rationnelle : « Les contes de fées se rapportent essentiellement non pas à une “possibilité”, mais à la “désirabilité”. » Lorsque l’enfant s’interroge sur la véracité d’une histoire, il chercherait donc avant tout à savoir si celle-ci a quelque chose d’éclairant à transmettre au sujet de ses propres préoccupations prioritaires. À la question, que tous les enfants ont posé un jour, « est-ce que c’est vrai, le conte dit-il la vérité ? », la réponse devrait donc se soucier des préoccupations actuelles de l’enfant et non des faits réels. Et c’est bien le cadre de référence d’Aslak et non celui des adultes (personnages comme spectateurs) qui est représenté dans Valley of Shadows.
Parce qu’il déploie le monde nébuleux dans lequel son jeune protagoniste évolue sans jamais passer par un décodage redondant, Gulbrandsen nous permet ainsi d’en vivre la portée symbolique. C’est effectivement toute une tradition d’interprétation psychanalytique qui est revendiquée par le Norvégien. L’imposante nature du Sud de la Norvège, à l’image de cette
inquiétante forêt embrumée dans laquelle Aslak pénètre, est à comprendre comme le reflet de ses tourments intérieurs. La question n’est plus de savoir si le garçon va effectivement y trouver un loup-garou, mais ce que ce voyage va lui enseigner sur lui-même et son rapport au monde. En ce sens, le traitement du merveilleux de Valley of Shadows correspond parfaitement à ce qu’expliquait Bruno Bettelheim dans sa Psychanalyse des contes de fées :
« Tout conte de fées est un miroir magique qui reflète certains aspects de notre univers intérieur et des démarches qu’exige notre passage de l’immaturité à la maturité. Pour ceux qui se plongent dans ce que le conte de fées a à communiquer, il devient un lac paisible qui semble d’abord refléter notre image ; mais derrière cette image, nous découvrons bientôt le tumulte intérieur de notre esprit, sa profondeur et la manière de nous mettre en paix avec lui et le monde extérieur, ce qui nous récompense de nos efforts. »
Il est bien question de passage à un nouvel âge pour Aslak, lui qui court se cacher en se bouchant les oreilles à chaque confrontation avec le drame qui ronge sa famille et qui va découvrir l’existence de la brutalité, comme le signifie magnifiquement le moment où le sang de l’agneau qui rougissait ses doigts lors de la scène inaugurale est remplacé par le sien propre. Il s’agit pour lui de comprendre et d’accepter la violence de la réalité que seule la présence d’un monstre pouvait jusqu’ici expliquer. L’explication de l’allégorie tient d’ailleurs en une seule réplique : « Ce que nous ne comprenons nous effraie, alors nous avons besoin de monstres à blâmer. » Si le monstre n’est ici pas traité comme une entité clairement définie ou comme un allié/thérapeute, il reste un moyen d’effectuer le chemin d’acceptation de la cruauté de la vie (sur le sujet, voir l’épisode de BiTS dédié à la figure du monstre).
Pour porter ce conte psychanalytique sur un âge de transition, Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen mise avant tout sur l’esthétique. Dans Valley of Shadows, la parole est retenue et l’essentiel du récit passe par l’image. De ce parti pris résulte un film hautement cinématographique aux forts accents païens. Visuellement, le travail de Jonas Moatzow Gulbrandsen et de son frère Marius (qui officie en tant que chef opérateur) impressionne. Tourné en 35mm et en grande partie en extérieurs, le film parvient à saisir une nature majestueuse. Une majestuosité renforcée par la composition de Zbigniew Preisner et un splendide jeu sur les échelles de tailles : le plan où la minuscule silhouette d’Aslak sort de l’immense forêt que secoue une tempête sur fond de
chœurs restera comme l’une des images les plus fortes vues cette année. Ici, les éléments et les animaux occupent non seulement une place importante dans la géographie du drame mais deviennent de véritables acteurs, en témoigne le rôle narratif que remplit la musique de Preisner qui va jusqu’à proposer un thème spécifique à la forêt.
De par sa dimension atemporelle et universelle, Valley of Shadows évoque davantage les classiques du cinéma nordique (de Sjöström à Bergman) que n’importe quelle autre production récente. Si on retrouve une atmosphère similaire à celle de Let The Right One In (dernier grand choc alors signé par un inconnu venu du Nord), en raison de ses éclairages et, bien évidemment, de la thématique de l’enfance, la comparaison s’arrête ici. Le film de Gulbrandsen ne bascule effectivement jamais pleinement dans le genre et préfère voguer sur les eaux troubles de la suggestion. L’entreprise est infiniment plus complexe et s’oppose à la nostalgie régressive des années 1980 qui donne le la d’une grande partie des productions indépendantes actuelles. Mais quand le résultat est au rendez-vous, il n’est pas exagéré de parler de grand film.
VALLEY OF SHADOWS Réalisé par Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen Avec Adam Ekeli, Kathrine Fagerland Date de sortie en francophonie inconnue
