Average Rating: 5.7/10
Reviews Counted: 53
Fresh: 27 | Rotten: 26
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 6.1/10
Critic Reviews: 18
Fresh: 13 | Rotten: 5
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 358
Wealthy, aging patriarch Thordur assembles his scattered heirs to discuss the future of the family fishery. But bringing everyone together unleashes a storm of long-repressed sexual abuse, lingering suspicions, sibling rivalries and incestuous passions. Ultimately, it's a heartless battle between the past and the future that culminates in a night of explosive rage.
Unrated, 1 hr. 49 min.
Sep 13, 2002 Wide
Sep 30, 2003
Palm Pictures
All Critics (56) | Top Critics (20) | Fresh (27) | Rotten (26) | DVD (3)
There is something willfully balanced about director- co-writer Baltasar Kormakur's vision of this imploding family.
A subzero saga where dysfunction and distress -- and large quantities of herring -- rule.
Funny and entertaining ... in an Icelandic sort of way.
The different tones don't always blend smoothly, but it's still a pretty compelling tale.
The potential for spiteful humor exists throughout the movie, but Kormakur keeps hooking into melodrama, and for that you need at least one sympathetic character in whom to invest.
A likable movie about people who are anything but.
Though there are ugly events galore, there is not an ugly frame in this entire masterpiece of a soap opera by the sea.
a typical icelandic drama
The confrontational family dinner features archetypes that would have been at home on Dallas.
It's Shakespeare mixed with St. Elmo's Fire by way of Björk.
For its unique mix of fire and ice, The Sea deserves to be seen.
It was all so pointless.
Kormákur is fully content pimping his particular love/hate relationships with the beautiful/harsh landscapes of Iceland in as many different masochistic scenarios as possible.
[The] film is so sullen that it's more painful than a three-day family reunion with all of your least-favorite relatives.
The central figures... are so shrill and spiteful that it's hard to care what happens to them.
'The Sea' is only a step above a TV soap opera. But it is a step, and we're able to feel genuine compassion for some of the characters, while reveling in the greed and stupidity of the others.
enough heatless monologues to bore Victor Hugo
The motivations of these characters may be a tad easy to predict, but the passion with which Kormakur's cast invest themselves in the proceedings is impressive.
It gets 3 stars because it had crazy Icelandic people yelling their Satan language at each other the whole time. Otherwise, it's a 2.5 star film about kids hating Iceland and their Dad, and one guy humps his half cousin half sister in a frozen ocean and they act like it's no biggie. Too bad he'd not be able to
January 15, 2008Super Reviewer
Saw The Sea. Pretty disappointed. It's pretty much exactly the same movie as Festen (The Celebration) except it's set in Iceland, doesn't have the annoying Dogme camerawork, instead replacing it with a healthy dose of comedy. The comedy works, but the rest of the movie doesn't; as it progresses it becomes increasingly
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