GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL 2020 - The Last Autumn (Síðasta haustið)
GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL 2020
Yrsa Roca Fannberg’s The Last Autumn (Síðasta haustið) is presented as a documentary but with the absence of talking heads interviews and the neglect to give context to the subject's actions, the film feels more in the lines of a narrative feature. In a tiny Icelandic village, Ulfar and his wife Oddny spend a meandering day farming. Tending to their sheep year after year, this autumn will be the final time the farmers drive their herd down from the hills.
Fannberg directs the film to feel like a forgotten home videotape, with much of the shots feeling like a Da Vinci sfumato. Ulfar goes about his daily farming activities with hints of sadness against the Icelandic mountain mist. He drives his tractor and feeds his livestock, the audience left unable to tell of the time period except for when the radio plays snippets of modernisation. Later, Ulfar and Oddny’s family arrives from Reykjavík, to help with the final sheep herding.
It is clear that Ulfar and Oddny relaxed at the fact that this will be their last autumn working in the burdensome agriculture industry. Yet the couple also seems melancholic, as they are leaving behind their everyday life as it has been for decades. The joyfulness of the sheep contrasts Ulfar and Oddny’s sadness, with tails wagging more than a dog’s, as Ulfar bottle feeds the lambs. The sheep are unaware that the entire herd will shortly be slaughtered, with a few lucky ones managing to live a little longer as they get sold to the other village farmers.
Fannberg does make some odd stylistic choices, such as using black and white in The Last Autumn’s introduction in a way that feels like a rehash of Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse. The film changes to colour but again shifts to black and white in a sequence of blurred photographs being used as a stand-in for the mass slaughtering of Ulfar’s sheep herd. Fannberg’s choice not to use traditional documentary tropes, such as interviews, work for The Last Autumn’s sense of impending loss. The audience is able to grasp more of Ulfar’s thinking just by watching him putter around his farm than they ever could by listening to him speak to the camera. When dialogue is necessary, Fannberg hones in on conversations between family members, providing a little more insight into how the Icelandic farming community is dealing with such change. The camera’s blurriness adds to the vintage feeling of the piece and a smaller square aspect ratio helps relay the film’s intimacy. Through these techniques, The Last Autumn becomes a profound portrait and a dedication to Iceland’s remaining farmers, a tale of a vanishing way of life.