At first it is only the mere hint of a shadow that appears in the shimmering heat rising from the desert sands. In agonizing slowness the shadow becomes a shape and then a man and then it is Lawrence, stepping out of the waves of molten heat that swim across the screen. If you’ve only seen Lawrence of Arabia on DVD, the grandeur and power of this shot was lost on you. I was privileged to see a 70mm print of David Lean’s mad masterpiece, and was captivated by the desert’s intoxicating presence in the film. It is not just a location–a place where sets were built and actors were filmed and dialog was spoken; it is a character and a force unto itself.

The rocky, frigid landscape of Iceland inhabits Jar City in the same way that the desert inhabits Lawrence. It holds a starring role, although one that I am quite certain the Icelandic tourism bureau is none to happy about.

The Icelandic countryside, cold and lonely.

The cities are drained of color. The towns and villages sprawl across the rocks like unwelcome squatters. Biting wind whips up and over the coastal cliffs, cutting through churches and graveyards and prisons. To our North American eyes, everything seems vaguely familiar, as if we have been there before, but it is a dim and dreamy echo. Iceland, in truth, is a bleak and foreign place.

We are dropped into this world with no primer or context, which is not surprising given that it was created for an Icelandic audience. A little girl has died from a rare disease, her blue body lying on a slab in the morgue, her father devastated but unable to weep. Iceland is cold, the girl is cold, and he is cold. Cut to a murder investigation with all the CSI trappings we’re intimately familiar with, where a stoic homicide investigator named Erlendur (Ingvar Eggert Sigurösson) is piecing the puzzle together, bit by agonizing bit. These two stories – the father driven to understand his daughter’s death and the cop driven to solve the murder before him – will intertwine with one another in surprising and elegant ways.

Icelanders have awesome sweaters.

On its surface, director Baltasar Kormákur’s adaptation of Arnaldur Indiröason’s best-selling novel is a compelling murder mystery of the choicest flavor – the kind where it’s immensely satisfying to guess what’s really going on. All of the pieces are there, but Jar City doesn’t insult your intelligence by making it easy. Erlendur grasps at each one in front of him with the confidence of an old pro, taking us from tight-lipped convicts to buried corpses to forgotten scandals. The meaning of the film’s title isn’t revealed until the halfway mark, though I won’t do you the disservice of spoiling the reveal. When the final piece clicks into place, we’re left with a complex but believable story of human tragedy and loss.

Through it all, Iceland is there. It’s as if the loneliness of the land reaches up from the ground and into the characters, permeating their entire being. They are withdrawn, distant, and isolated, just like the island they call home. They go about their lives and their jobs and their investigations oblivious to the dreariness they exist in, both physically and emotionally. I have no idea if Iceland is exactly as it is pictured in Jar City, but given that it became the country’s highest grossing film ever, I strongly suspect it is quite accurate. Even if you’ve never set foot on it’s shores, anyone who has ever experienced deep loneliness or isolation or numbness will know what it is like to live there.

2002 was an Icelandic year for me. Emotionally, I was in a confusing relationship, erecting frail barriers in a pitiful effort to distance myself from pain. Physically, I was living by myself in a friend’s unfurnished home and sleeping on a bare mattress (all in the name of saving money) while driving 40 minutes daily to work at a soul-crushing job. That winter the gas went out, and I can remember lying on my mattress, shivering, while I finished Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, as intimate an examination of human loneliness as exists in all the annals of literature (you can find my review of the book’s recent adaptation, which I consider to be a failure, here).

I share all of this not because of some form of misguided narcissism, but to illustrate the depth with which Jar City examines the human condition. Those who have experienced acute isolation, where everything in your life implodes upon itself until nothing seems real but your own loneliness, will empathize with the raw power of the film’s landscape. It is Jar City’s uncredited character that lodges in your mind long after the plot and actors have been forgotten, reminding you of the bleak places the human soul must sometimes traverse.