05/09/2011

Black and white images, grainy and imbued with a spectral elegance, whirl past one another, accompanied by a visceral music which penetrates the listener, enveloping him in a labyrinth of caressing and bitter sounds, clear and distinct. The new documentary by Icelandic group Sigur Rós, Inni [+see also:
trailer
interview: Vincent Morisset
film profile], special event of the Venice Days, arrives in Venice in world premiere. Apart from Canadian director Vincent Morisset, present in the room are three of the four musicians: bassist Georg Hólm, keyboard player Kjartan Sveinsson and drummer Orri Páll Dýrason.

After Heima, documentary from 2006 in which the director Dean De Blois followed the group on leg after leg of their Icelandic tour, Sigur Rós return with Inni, a new, fascinating reportage, which this time focuses on one concert alone, held in 2007.

They are famous for not being particularly loquacious, these four guys from northern Europe and the incipit of the film, in which they look at each other in perplexed silence, not knowing how to answer a radio interviewer, perhaps explains the reason behind this new project: abandoning the classic documentary formula, made of backstage interviews, to concentrate on performance alone.

Room is made for the music, therefore, with all its devastating suggestive energy, enriched by a refined editing job led by Morriset. «I am now exploring the potential of computers. I don’t think I will ever do a project like this again, too much like hard work!” says the director, with a smile on his face, during the Q&A following the screening and moderated by music critic John Vignola, in which Sigur Rós took the audience’s questions, numerous despite the time. “We are preparing a new album” they confess, while their agent adds “next year we will also be touring in Italy”.

Of few words but nice guys, they play along with someone who asks them whether they will ever make a pop album and they confirm the ever more frequent presence of their songs in arthouse films; incidentally, for example, Café de flore, a film present in this year’s Venice Days, contains as many as four of their songs. This confirms the incredible evocative strength of the nordic group’s alchemical sounds, which are too suggestive not to be used by the expression of cinema.