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You gotta admit that Sigur Ros are not "everyday listening"... their music suits night time listening, or the twilight hours, so it did take events to conspire for me to watch this film (ie., a boring Sat night in the house, nowt on the box & a brand new TV dying to be checked out!).
The DVD is actually 2 discs.. Disc 2, a more "straightforward" gig CD, showing concert footage from the free gigs they played around Iceland in 2006, while Disc 1 is almost a "rock-u-mentary", though unlike any one I've ever seen before. The film cuts between the live performances, interviews with band members, beautiful landscape photography & a lot of "portrait" shots of the audiences... from kids to OAPs & documents a country that seems worlds apart from what I know.
The live performances are all superb... all set in very different locations, from community centres to disused warehouses to valleys on hillsides. Apart from the final gig in Rekyavik, everything is so much the anthithesis of the "rock" video.. there are no security staff in neon jackets, no barriers in front of the stages (where stages are used), kids wander freely, playing amongst the adults, who sit around campfires, mostly looking like they could be in Woodstock.. there's a huge sense of freedom about the events. One gig sees the band play a coffee shop, where families are sat round tables, drinking tea, eating biscuits & watching the band. In that way, it's a film that focuses as much on the icelandic people as the band themeselves.. there's a section in which they follow a local who makes marimbas from pieces of stone he finds from a quarry, which the band then play with him as they jam in a cave! There's the local brass band who join them onstage... so many glimpses & insights into the local cultures. It's a very human film, touching, but never cliched, epic but still humble. A triumph of a film.
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