Winter Brothers (2017)

Right, let me be straight with you: the first ten minutes of Winter Brothers nearly broke me. Not in an emotional way. In a "I genuinely cannot see what is happening on screen" way. I sat there squinting at what appeared to be shapes moving around in the dark, possibly underground, possibly human, with barely a word spoken between them. I honestly had no idea what I was watching or why.

This is the Icelandic entry on my A-Z World Movie Tour, and I was hoping for something a bit different. Iceland is a country with extraordinary landscapes, and the film does occasionally deliver on that front. When it ventures above ground, there are moments where the bleak, wintry surroundings carry a real atmosphere. I'll give it that much. But those moments are constantly undercut by picture quality so poor it borders on unwatchable. The mine sequences, which make up a large portion of the film, are so dark and murky that you're essentially just guessing at what's on screen. That is not a stylistic quirk I warmed to. That's a barrier between me and the film.

When I could actually make out what was happening, here's the basic shape of it: two brothers share a home in rural Iceland. They work together in a mine, doing grim, thankless manual labour, and neither of them looks particularly thrilled about their lot in life. One of them has taken to brewing moonshine using chemicals he's pilfering from the workplace. Predictably enough, one of his colleagues ends up seriously unwell as a result. There's your conflict, more or less. It's a bleak little story about desperation, dead ends and the kind of quiet misery that settles over people who feel trapped. I can see what it's going for, honestly. But seeing what a film is going for and actually engaging with it are two very different things.

The tone reminded me a little of The Witch (2015), in the sense that it's uncompromising and oppressively atmospheric, leaning into discomfort rather than offering any relief. But where that film builds genuine dread, Winter Brothers just left me cold, and not in the way it intended. There's a difference between minimalism and emptiness, and this film spends most of its running time on the wrong side of that line.

Then there are the penis scenes. Several of them, apparently included without much explanation or obvious purpose. I'm not prudish about these things, but when something sticks out (no pun intended) as strange and unexplained, it's reasonable to wonder what the point was. I'm still wondering.

And then the ending arrives. Or rather, it doesn't. It just stops. One moment things are building toward something, and then: nothing. Credits. I sat there genuinely unsure whether my stream had crashed. The abruptness wasn't the clever, ambiguous kind that leaves you thinking for days. It was the baffling kind that makes you feel like a chunk of the film has gone missing.

Look, I respect that filmmakers from smaller countries often take bold, unconventional approaches, and part of the joy of the A-Z World Movie Tour is stumbling across things I'd never have sought out otherwise. Sometimes that leads to a real discovery. This wasn't one of those times. The interesting setting and the occasional glimpse of something worthwhile in the premise weren't enough to save a film that's muddy in almost every sense of the word.

One and a half stars. Iceland, you deserved better representation than this.

Rating: ★★  | Year: 2017  | Watched: 2025-06-29

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Amazon Video
Buy: Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Philo · OVID · Fandor Amazon Channel
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store
Physical: Amazon US

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Iceland: Unknown Soldier (2017) · Adrift (2018)
More from the 2010s: Wonder (2017) · Beautiful Boy (2018) · The Witch (2015) · What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)