The County: NZIFF Review

Mustering as much fire and brimstone as a story of the little people can, Rams director Grímur Hákonarson delivers a quietly empowering tale.

It's the story of Inga (a fire-in-her-belly Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir) a farmer in the Nordic lands, whose life is overturned when her husband dies driving a truck. With the farm owned by the Co-operative run in the region and with outside trade stifled by the organisation, Inga starts a rebellion when she likens the group to the Mafia.

As the one-person-against-the-machine battle intensifies, Hákonarson chooses to centre the fight on the dignified but indignant Inga as she takes on the Co-op and its apparently corrupt CEO.

But this is no all-guns-blazing kind of affair.

Instead, as with Rams, Hákonarson elects to slowly build the tension and seeds the story of dissent from within long slow scenes that are character-led and predominantly revealing by their subtleties.

Egilsdóttir may be older and ravaged by time and tribulations of debt upon the farm, but not once does this timeless tale of David vs Goliath go for cliche. 

As the crusade begins against corporate bullying, Hákonarson never shifts focus away from Inga, her resolution and the plight of the smaller man within the valleys. In many ways, The County is not a new story, but with long wide shots, a simmering tension found in smaller communities and by never bedevilling any involved, Hákonarson delivers something akin to a tragedy as it plays out against the bleakness of the valleys.

It may end positively, but The County wins the festival for the bleakest happy ending delivered to the screen yet. In many ways, it could feel like a paean for the New Zealand leg of the festival itself - shorn of conventional routes, and taking on the uncertainties of Covid-19 on the cinema, Hákonarson's The County ends up being a resounding success and quietly moving salute to the common man and woman caught up in the machinations of the big corporate machine.