Iver is the first of the short movies I will review in this blog. I came to appreciate it as it brought many memories of the many days I spent around the pool training, swimming, and triathlon. Let’s start with the basic Iver is a Norwegian movie starring Erik Næsbak Brenden. It was broadcast on Norwegian TV in 2004. Later on, it was shown at many film festivals worldwide, amongst them the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, the Wisconsin International Children’s Film Festival, and the Taiwan Intl. Children’s TV & Film Festival 2008. During the Giffoni Film festival in Italy, Iver won the Silver Grypon for Best Short Film. The movie is available in Norwegian only, but I discovered English subtitles. However, even if you don’t use them, you will still understand what’s happening as the dialogues in the movie are rather simple and easy to follow.
The plot follows the adventures of Iver, who is taken to the pool by his mother. Unfortunately, she cannot go in with him as she has to attend an important appointment. Once in the pool, he wants to have fun, high diving and using the swimming mates as a surfboard to skip across the top of the pool. Both of which are forbidden activities in this pool with stringent rules. And a very strict lifeguard is always after him ruining all the fun. Eventually, the boy gets thrown out of the pool for not behaving and failing to follow the rules.
http://youtu.be/VnCVvrMWT1o
However, Iver is not giving up (yeah), and when the pool closes, Iver sneaks back in to do some more swimming. Much to his surprise, he sees the lifeguard doing all the things he was not allowed to do, and then the ending is a happy one!
The morals of the movie are clear; too often, we have to keep rules broken by those who make them. (A double standard.) This reminds me that a policeman stopped me a few days ago and asked me why I was not riding my bike on the red line but the shoreline near the sea. (At the same time, he rode his motor scooter there.) A similar situation, but I couldn’t just answer, “because I like it more in here.” But back to the movie, its running time is only 9 minutes, but it’s guaranteed that you will have fun watching every one of them.
I thought Iver taught the wrong lesson but it was a good short anyways. The lesson I thought it taught was that it is OK to have a double standard as long as you are on the advantaged side. And if you can leverage yourself onto the advantaged side then why complain about how unfair the standard is to others.
Sorry, for me that is the wrong message. Right is right and wrong is wrong.
But a movie can have the wrong message and still be a good movie. The shots were well thought out and the camera work was good. the acting was very well done also. The script also conveyed the message well.
Nicely done.