King of Devil's Island

It's such a shame the Norwegian Committee did not choose this film as the contender for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

The acting is top notch from all the main characters. Kristoffer Joner and Stellan Skarsgård's characters really gives you the chill, but the actors that really surprised was the newcomers Trond Nilssen and Benjamin Helstad characters. They delivered the best dialogs and very convincing acting.

If you are a sucker for true stories about injustice, mental and physical abuse and uprising against a brutal regime, then go watch this film now! Forget about The Troll Hunter, this is probably one of the best Norwegian films from the last decades.

A gripping and tragic movie made even more so because its based on real events. It surrounds the infamous Bastøy Boys Home correctional facility in Norway and the violent uprising that took place there in 1915, led in part by 17 year old inmate Erling who bucks against the brutal regime.

I spent the entire movie feeling cold, exhausted and hungry as the wintry isolation almost becomes a character in itself here. Why didn't anyone ever wear a jacket? Was that part of the punishment at the home?

Great performances from everyone, although for some reason I'd been expecting more brutality from Stellan Skarsgard, maybe because he always looks so angry and mean. The real problem here was the dorm master!

In the end I was left wondering how much of this story is true and slightly confused by the bittersweet flash-forward at the end, how many years later was that? Was "he" a whaling captain? A little vague. 02.15.14

Another piece of Norwegian greatness. KING OF DEVIL'S ISLAND (great title, incidentally) is one of those based-on-a-true-story-you've-never-heard-of movies, charting the brutality of life inside a remote and wintry island-based borstal during the early 20th century.

Coming across as a Norwegian version of the hard-hitting British SCUM, KING OF DEVIL'S ISLAND is great whichever way you look at it. The technical qualities are excellent, as is the acting from a mostly no-name cast whose one main star is Stellan Skarsgard, as miserable and burly as he's ever been. It's the developing relationship between Benjamin Helstad and Trond Nilssen that really makes this involving viewing, despite the distasteful elements of the subject matter and the general feeling that this isn't going to have a happy ending.

In any case, I absolutely loved this film and want to see more like it. The Scandinavian countries seem to be turning out hit after hit at the moment, both in television and film, and it's a shame Britain and the USA couldn't follow some of their cues. If you want a lesson in how to make an exceptional bit of drama then you could do a lot worse than checking out KING OF DEVIL'S ISLAND.

'The King of Devil's Island' tells a familiar story of the abuse of authority, in it's portrayal of the life in a tough boys' prison in early 20th century Norway. More unusually, there's no story of tyranny among the inmates themselves, and moreover, the staff are quietly evil: the child abuser, and the governor who turns a blind eye while simultaneously believing that his regime is morally improving. Indeed, for a story of harshness and death, the film could be considered understated, except for the powerful melodrama of its climax, which is well-earned by the lower key, but convincing, material that proceeds it. And like other Scandanavian movies, it gains power through the sheer fact of the climate: when folly could mean freezing to death, there's an underlying seriousness absent in more clement environments.

In the U.S., Alcatraz used to serve as a prison known to the inmates as "The Rock," a place where criminals were sent in a boat, the island from which few had ever been known to escape. In Norway, until 1957, criminal children, even those committing relatively minor crimes were sent to an Island Prison on the island of Batsoy, another dismal isolation from which there was supposedly no escape. "The King of Devil's Island" as another young man arrives after committing a murder, consigned to the prison's special diet of silence and discipline, work amid dismally spartan conditions. The new inmate, after the usual give and take with more dominant prisoners, most of them young teens, manages to find himself a friend, sharing his plan to be the first to attempt a getaway.

Animosity between the inmates and those in charge, one of them an unregenerate pedophile and another taking money that should go to the welfare of the prisoners, develops quickly, and a steady intensity is constantly building--not with the buckets of profanity that pepper an American prison film, but a series of darker, psychological twists evolving from our knowledge of many of the young men involved.

Although in color, the atmosphere is dark, the skies seldom blue, the woods dark, the walks snowy: it is a moody film, but never lets the tension loosen much. I found it gripping and intense, building to a smashing final scene: not necessarily conclusive, but totally satisfying. The acting is universally excellent, the underlying music score appropriate without being intrusive. This well-made film was fully worthy of my time.