No Such Thing (Iceland, 2001)

I rented this movie because of the director/writer: Hal Hartley. He is somewhat a cult figure as an independent filmmaker in Hungary (and probably in the UK too) and I don’t recall seeing any of his movies. This was a nice fairy tale without a happy ending. Hold that thought, this was a sour satire of cold-hearted world of tabloid editing, running after the latest or fake sensation at any cost. Scratch that, this was peek into the dark soul of a monster who became one upon encountering the sorry and never changing state of the human spirt. Or maybe it is an unlikely love story of a Stockholm syndrome girl and her captor. Now I really got it: it’s all of the above. Plus it was mostly shot in Iceland a rare location for movies. It is a fantasy story after all, so it should be set in a mythical land. But it is also set in the 20th century, so it cannot be a nameless land, particularly that part of it is set in New York City. Overall the Monster was a feeling enough person to become a complex character, an essential feature to drive the movie from a Beauty and Beast paraphrase to a social commentary.