Thoughts on Metalhead/Málmhaus (2013) after my first watch
Edit: tumblr is shit so my first paragraph got deleted but its basically the same as the conclusion so its okay i guess
The movie was frustrating at first because Hera was just an asshole and a bit of a menace (nothing too wild like I expected though) and she hardly faced any consequences. I realized —and this is based purely off assumption from observations and some brief knowledge— that I’m not used to the Scandinavian focus of rehabilitation over punishment. If Hera lived in America, unless she was wealthy on top of being white I would've fully expect her to be met with cruelty and punishment ending in her life spiraling downwards. It must be a cultural thing, and I think that lifestyle is a luxury that Scandinavia can afford but everyone across the world needs to have as well. (If I’m inaccurate and you're Icelandic or Scandinavian please correct me).
So yeah I was annoyed with how Hera treated her nice parents who lost the same person as her. But I really got the picture of how they only fanned the flames of her suffocation, loneliness and discomfort in the extremely tiny Christian village when they made the gargantuan parental mistake of bringing a priest into the house to fix her. It didn't help that the priest was a fucking inept idiot who entered a young woman's bedroom alone with her and started taking his shirt off without uttering ANY explanation while she was visibly scared he would do what priests do, however it was to show her his Iron Maiden tattoo. Ok.
Did not expect the movie to touch on sexism and gender roles but it would be avoiding a huge glaring factor of Hera's issues if it didn't. Hera wants to fix her relationship with her parents and community after burning the church down and wants to be "normal," so she marries/gets engaged with her childhood friend and lives with him and his father as a housewife, as if to "make up" for everything. When Hera fries fish and stares blankly out the window, longing to be free out in the land, it parallels her mother at the begining identically. That's when I truly noticed the sexism that's been plaguing, silencing and isolating the women in the story the entire time. Hera admits she wanted her parents to be happy by changing like this and her mom tells her she just wants her to be happy on her own terms.
So after shunning her community and being a huge metalhead asshole, and then stripping herself of her identity and becoming a shrunken housewife, Hera seperates with her husband and helps rebuild the church she burnt down to finally arrive at the perfect balancing point of being her true self without spitting fire at her family and community. It's solidified when she performs her first show for them, and instead of bursting their eardrums with screaming she sings her same song for them in a way that can understand her with. The movie ends with her and her parents dancing to Megadeth, it was really sweet and beautiful.
An important note is that this ending wouldn't have happened that way if Hera's parents hadn't decided to finally candidly talk about their sons death and learn to move on, clearing his room out even. Hera's brother was a metalhead. Metal was Hera's sole crutch because while her parents went absent drowning in imprisoned grief, all she had left was a brother who could only exist in her and the music. Living with the walking ghost of their dead son didn't help the family get close enough for any cooperation, the leather clothes and heavy music was a loud reminder of the boy's passing. Accepting his death meant accepting Hera's identity and finally finding the true and balanced individuals within the family. This was a very healing, surprisingly gentle and loving story.
Hold og blóð
að moldu skaltu verða
víga móð
allt skal fá að brenna
sviðin jörð
gleypir hina bestu
sviðin jörð
drepur allt að mestu
Sársaukin
dregur úr mér andan
þína skál
teyga svarta sanda
svo langt sem augað nær
fennir yfir engi
svo langt sem augað nær
fennir vel og lengi
- EN -
Flesh and blood
into the ground returned
Destroyer born
Everything will burn
Scorched earth
Swallows the best of us
Scorched earth
annihilates the rest of us
Agony in pained defeat
A toast of sand so dark and sweet
As far as the eye can reach
Snow engulfs the fields
As far as the eye can reach
The snow will never yield
#f1
#photography
#the amazing digital circus
#heated rivalry
