Do you like reindeer? Then The White Reindeer is very much the film you’re looking for; apart from the titular white reindeer, there must’ve been hundreds of the bloody things serving as animal extras. I don’t know much about Finnish cinema other than the Kaurismaki brothers and the bits I gleaned from Wikipedia before watching this film; I now see it was, in fact, a somewhat rare example of a Finnish film making it to the US, where it actually won a Golden Globe award in 1956, having previously won a special jury award at Cannes in 1953. I can see why, cos although it’s obviously recognisable as a horror film (the “folk horror” resurgence seems to have boosted more recent interest in it), it also works as a piece of perhaps relatively exotic Euro-arthouse. Apparently it’s not based on actual Sami legendry, but director Erik Blomberg and his wife Mirjami Kuosmanen (who also plays the female lead) certainly wrote something with that feel; it’s the sort of story of that feels like it takes place in a kind of mythical setting, but the wedding scene later in the film takes place in an obviously Christian church, which kind of complicates that when you remember that it’s a shamanic spell that creates the eponymous reindeer. Actually, I’m not 100% sure what exactly Pirita becomes, a shapeshifter, obviously, but we get a couple of flashes of vampire fangs too… Anyway, Blomberg was also a cinematographer going back to the mid-30s, so you might expect the film to look good, and The White Reindeer delivers the imagery in fine style; I mean, given the Arctic Circle winter landscapes in which the story takes place (and which do a lot of heavy lifting for the film), you’d be hard put to not do so… the only real reservation I have is an unfortunately serious one, that being the music; not that it’s bad as such, just that there’s so damn much of it… it’s like the composer, Einar Englund, thought he was through-scoring a silent film, or that he had so many ideas that he didn’t want to give any of them up. It’s not bad, but it is a bit unrelenting and excessive. Still, a solid little film on the whole, I’m glad this has come out of obscurity again.
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