A Brilliant Conflict

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Bengt Erlingsson's 'Of Horses and Men' tells the story of a remote Icelandic village where people don't say much, but, as a series of vignettes show, have fairly important relationships with their animals. The tone is droll and, although it takes a bit of getting used to, the individual tales are actually quite amusing, as is the overall conceit of the film. It's not exactly high art, but it's definitely warmer than the bleak landscapes that form the film's backdrop might suggest.

This is one of the rare movies that kept lingering in my mind for a long time after I had seen it. The film is made up of individual stories and each story has a light and a dark twist to it. It has a light, humorous side to it, but is also disturbing. The meaning and the images are striking and very powerful. And they are enhanced by the vast and desolate expanses of the country. As a foreigner I also enjoyed very much seeing those beautiful horses and the interaction of the Icelanders with those fabulous animals. It is an ingenious production that gives the viewers a glimpse of the Iceland that is remote and wild. Wonderful debut!

The Icelandic film Of Horses and Men should properly be called Stories of Horses and People, director Benedikt Erlingsson told the Palm Springs Film Festival audience. The film is structured like an episodic Icelandic saga.In the last shot a wide expanse of life radiates out of the central hub, a pen of newly rounded up mustangs. That's a coda to the stories that relate human to equine life. Indeed each episode begins with an image of a human or his work reflected in a horse's eye. The opening titles use a white horse's close-up hide as the backdrop. An ear perks to the music. Later the music will fade in and out of the hoof beats.In the first episode a man is humiliated when the snappy white mare he is riding is mounted by a black stallion — the man still aboard. Feeling emasculated, the man shoots his mare and lovingly buries her. Because the stallion's owner desires that man she castrates the stallion. In the last episode she will finally get her stud, even if she has to warn him to hold on to his horses. In fact, to her brown mare who's jumpy. After the roundup the man finds another white mare, so his romantic adventure shows only gain.In some episodes the horses are clearly smarter than the men. One man rides a horse into the sea to buy vodka from a Russian boat — then drinks himself to death on the pure alcohol he was given. In a spat over a fence one man is killed and another loses an eye.On the other hand, a Swedish girl proves her mettle by single-handedly rounding up six runaways and the blind drunk. The young Mexican who admires her joins a riding troop and survives a blizzard by killing and gutting his horse, then burrowing into its carcass. In these stories the human and the horse are in harmony. For more see www.yacowar.blogspot.com.

Of Horses and Men, in Icelandic; Hross í Oss.A film by actor, author and director Benedikt Erlingsson and produced by Fridrik Thor Fridriksson.I encourage everyone to see it and form their own opinions.Tom Robbins said: "The function of the artist is to provide what life does not".Apparently Tom has never been to Iceland. I truly enjoyed this magnificent journey, diving into the deep end of the pool with a talented group of artists/professionals — and horses! — taking chances (in my opinion with great success) that I have never seen before in Icelandic films (if anywhere else) coming out with loads of beautiful - and some unforgettable moments...One of the better films I have seen in a good while; amongst several other factors, the cinematography blew my mind. But then again, this is Iceland, Icelandic landscape, Icelandic horses, etc. etc.Will be thoroughly surprised if this film does not do extremely well.