In Nietzchka Keene’s somber 1990 adaptation of the Brothers Grimm’s “The Juniper Tree,” which stars Björk in her first feature film role and is currently being re-released in a 4k restoration, the story moves at its own deliberate pace. With a lulling rhythm that’s aching and laguid with no sense of urgency despite an atmosphere that weeps with prolonged grief and yearning, the film acts like a hymn. Mournful and repetitive, it follows the lives of two sisters in the Middle Ages after the death of their mother, who was stoned and burnt after being uncovered as a witch. The two make an escape and run into a recent widower with a young son. Jóhann (Valdimar Örn Flygenring) and his son Jónas (Geirlaug Sunna Þormar) are still despondent following the death of their wife and mother, and the eldest of the runaway sisters, Katla (Bryndis Petra Bragadóttir), uses her magic to lure in Jóhann, as the peculiar Margit (Björk Guðmundsdóttir) watches on. Shot in Iceland with a very small budget, Keene made the most of her modest sums, for the imagery aids in making the monotonous pacing bearable. For a film with magic at its fingertips and an actress as beautifully whimsical as Björk, too much reliance is placed on that overarching tone of bereavement and theological motifs as opposed to the story itself and those who relayed it. The Juniper Tree isn’t a triumph but, rather, an intriguing starting place for an artist who would go on to further explore her own, specific vision, not unlike Keene’s own particular point of view.
Regardless of the end result and bite-sized budges, Keene’s debut feature is intriguing and distinct. Adapting one the Brothers Grimm’s bleaker tales with themes including cannibalism, child abuse, and reincarnation, it signaled what should have been an exciting new voices of independent cinema. Instead, the Boston, Massachusetts native director would go on to only produce two other feature films, one of which was finished posthumously following her death in 2004. Much of the film’s interior focus is shot in tight and confined spaces. It creates such a greatly overwhelming sense of claustrophobia—from physical threat and religious persecution—that once the screen opens up for expansive wide shots and landscapes that rolled and disappeared into the distance, the effect is stunning. Keene along with cinematographer Randolph Sellars deliver a film that is visually staggering, sometimes startling. Through minimalist choices such as maneuvering characters into small room, claustrophobic rooms and the decision to shoot in black and white highlights the suffocating dreariness of the characters lives.
Regardless of its own artistic merit, one of the greatest draws to the film is Björk’s leading role. It’s interesting to look at Björk’s career and the films she’s chosen to partake in. Having shot the film in 1986 (though it wouldn’t be released until 1990 due to financial trouble) before her leap into pop stardom, this is one of only two films she’s made so far including the 2000 Lars von Trier film Dancer in the Dark. In both films Björk is taking creative risks that have long marked the individualistic performer who has never failed to stray from being unpredictable. Dancer in the Dark is unmistakable reflection of an artist who goes out of her way to redefine any ready-made box she might’ve been placed into, while The Juniper Tree retroactively highlights what type of artist she’d become with the story she was drawn to. The Juniper Tree is a meditative spin on the fairytale, with darker source material than most (though most are relatively bleaker than the average Disney, cotton candy-flavored interpretation) that deconstructs many of your typical archetypes of the genre. Katla, playing the role of “evil-stepmother,” isn’t without motivation and driven by a strict sense of evil-doing but, rather, is a survivalist who is conditioned to get by, no matter the cost, especially with her younger sister in her care. She doesn’t so much see her wedding the lone, grief-stricken father as a means of self-aggrandizing opportunity but as a strategic means of escape. Björk’s young sister, Margit, isn’t debilitated or charmed by her visions and ability to see those who have passed. She is what she is and simply wants to live easily. The sisters’s black magic isn’t depicted with grizzly imagery but takes a detached, clinical approach that does not elicit any emotional responses. The film’s magic and violence is almost brazen in how nonchalant the images of a drowned woman, dead goat, or child with his mouth sewn close appear on screen. It’s a dreary and gray world overrun with religious oppression, but the story never goes the obvious route, stable in its conviction to tell the story as the fairytale did, with a mind for the sorrowful and heart for those lost and left behind. When Margit has a vision of her dead mother, unable to speak, who pulls her blouse down to reveal a black hole where her heart should be, we’re stricken with the vacancy death leaves in its wake.
Both The Juniper Tree and Dancer in the Dark are at odds with the familiarity of the genres they’re labeled as, befitting a star whose own musical sound has often relied on the ability to create such stark dissonance of tonality (sweet and sugary) and outcome (soulful, furious, pioneering.) Björk was a perfectly waifish spirit to take part in such a quiet and cold portrait of grief with The Juniper Tree and her uninhibited performance would translate into a career of courageous artistry.
Keene’s understanding of what makes a fairytale so lasting is clear despite a picture that’s rough around the edges. The performances aside from the naturalistic Björk are flat with didactic dialogue and the first twenty minutes drag on, resulting in a film that’s easier to celebrate individual successes than a film that is more than the sum of its parts. More filmmakers should allow their familiar tropes to dabble in the weird such as The Juniper Tree did, resulting in a morose atmosphere that leaks from the screen in all of its mundane depravity. The religious and fantastical are married here, with evil imagery seen in a shot of the eyes of a dead old goat and reincarnation when the soul of Jónas’s mother gifts him with a feather as a totem to keep him safe. When the Jónas seemingly perishes, to hide the the truth, Katla throws him in the river but not before stealing a finger to bake into stew, only to serve to the boys father. Life and death is cyclical in The Juniper Tree, demonstrated further when the Jónas has seemingly returned a raven, only to be recognized by Margrit.
So many fairy tales, including those of the Brothers Grimm, are built off of a foundation of longing and pain. If they end with such satisfyingly happy conclusions it’s because the protagonists overcome impossible hurdles. The tragedy of The Juniper Tree is that there is no easy ending. It comes to a mournful conclusion with no sense of relief, just exhausted forgiveness because what else do Magrit and Jóhann have to offer such a world that’s taken fully and only returned in pieces? Spiritual but with a fierce sense of realism, Katla isn’t evil even though she is the cause of the pain that befalls the characters; the dead stay dead and we’re left peering out dusty windows as we’re once again left behind. As Jóhann tells Margit, “He’s dead and she’s gone and we’re all that’s left.”
The world of The Juniper Tree is unforgiving but also asks its characters to be. The end is suitably tragic as it ask asks us to believe in the exhausted optimism of Margit as she sits and speaks with the Raven who is no longer recognized by his father. Björk and Keene made a wonderful pairing for their respective feature film debuts as director and star. It’s imperfect, but the artistry leading the charge are powerful and singular voices in a medium that still needs more voices similar to theirs to pave ways to further experimental cinema. The film may have been in need of polishing up to make it shine brighter than the final outcome, but it takes risks in ways too many filmmakers still refuse to do, resulting in a film that’s both frustrating because of it’s unmet potential and worth bolstering for the voices that weren’t supported well enough upon its initial release. There’s plenty to take away from The Juniper Tree but it’s the inventive and transgressive voices the emerge that linger on. The most alluring aspect isn’t the story itself but the voices telling it.