Issue #4 - May 2018
PROFILE
Frankie Dettori
A SURREAL STORY
Frankie Dettori
Page 11
FOR HIM
Renewed Classics
Loro Piana
Page 14
RIDERS
Steve Guerdat
Photo Courtesy of Richard Juilliart
Page 25
WHISHLIST
Essentials
Safe Riding
Page 18
O
f Horses and Men, the 2013 film debut of Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson, will have a place in history as a controversial film. As the director himself explained at the time, “This is not a simple story. I don’t know if the English title allows the viewer the right interpretation. The missing word, Story, is the key. And of course, I have to say that here in the north, women are men.” Naturally, another fundamental premise for Erlingsson was, “It is important to add that no horse was harmed during the making of the film. This is stated in the closing credits and it is absolutely true. The members of the cast and crew all own horses and love horses, for them and for us they are like children. I must admit, though, that some of the human actors were traumatized during filming, but I’ve heard that they are still alive, or at least they were as I wrote these lines.” The plot is indeed bizarre. A man, Kolbeinn (Ingvar E. Sigurðsson),
Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson in Of Horses and Men (Photo Courtesy of P.F.A. Films)
who loves a mare. A woman, Solveig (Charlotte Bøving), who loves this man. And then, barbed wire which blinds, a tractor falling off a mountain, a horse that swims to help get more supplies of vodka, another horse disemboweled to allow shelter from the icy cold. On the other hand, the aesthetics balance out the excesses of the story through extraordinary music, like the teutonic flight in Aleksandr Nevskij, by Davíð Þór Jónsson and photography which exalts breathtaking scenery. The fusion of man and horse would have pleased Ovid and not only him, you feel the animal heartbeat of Buñuel, the burning no future sexuality of Bruno Dumont and also a genuine anthropological tension which comes through the explicit choice of style. The film is decidedly radical and really not for everyone, it is a part of the tradition of the films which divide their critics. You either love it or hate it.