Note: The writer of this review watched The County on a digital screener from home. Before making the decision to see it—or any other film—in a movie theater, please consider the health risks involved. Here’s an interview on the matter with scientific experts.
At a brisk 92 minutes, The County takes less time to watch than the average Monopoly game takes to play, while offering much the same grim lesson. Our hapless token—let’s make it the wheelbarrow—is Inga (Arndís Hrönn Egilsdottír), an Icelandic dairy farmer who works alongside her husband, Reynir (Hinrik Ólafsson), producing milk for the neighboring rural community, consisting largely of other farms. To be more specific, they sell their milk to a company known as the Co-op, which purchases virtually everything that local farmers produce and expects complete brand loyalty to their own market in return. Anyone who tries to acquire necessary supplies more cheaply elsewhere—in Reykjavík, say—discovers that their business no longer has any customers; even those who don’t sell directly to the Co-op are patronized by people who do, all of whom fear potential retaliation. Indeed, the Co-op effectively owns most industry in the area, having lent money and/or equipment to everyone. That very much includes Inga and Reynir, who are so deeply in debt that they can barely keep up with payments to the Co-op, much less turn a profit.
The County relates what happens when Reynir unexpectedly dies, having driven his truck off the road and over a small cliff late one night. Already heartbroken, Inga soon receives more bad news: Reynir’s accident appears to have been suicide (there are no skid marks suggesting a loss of control), and he’d been serving, unbeknownst to her, as a Co-op spy, reporting neighbors who surreptitiously bought supplies from an outside source. Had he refused to do so, Inga is told, they’d have lost the farm long ago. Her subsequent Facebook screed, entitled “The Co-op Mafia,” gets media attention and sets her on a collision course with Eyjólfur (Sigur∂ur Sigurjónsson), the company’s dapper but ruthless manager. Both parties appeal directly to the community, with Inga attempting to establish a rival co-op that would be genuinely cooperative while Eyjólfur not only puts on the squeeze but cheerfully insists that the whole village can make out like bandits if they just keep toeing the line. Sure, they’re making the Co-op rich at their own expense, but that wealth can be used to attract rich city folk, who’ll buy summer homes there. It’ll all trickle down!
Inga’s not having it, and The County’s strongest asset by far is Egilsdottír, who gives the sort of beaten-down yet truculent performance on which Frances McDormand now has a near-monopoly of her own in the U.S. It’s even plausible that McDormand could someday play the role, since writer-director Grímur Hákonarson’s previous feature, Rams, recently got an English-language remake (albeit Australian rather than American) starring Sam Neill. The mordant sense of humor that made Rams’ Icelandic incarnation so darkly charming, however, is entirely absent from this follow-up, which has more in common with a conventional rabble-rouser like Norma Rae. Hákonarson alternates between crowd-pleasing defiance—at one point, a furious Inga drives one of her supply trucks to the Co-op’s headquarters and sprays milk all over the building’s windows—and a downbeat assessment of how much change is realistically possible, never fully committing to either mode. The result feels less complex than just wishy-washy, exemplified by a late moment in which the soundtrack blares what sounds like an Icelandic pop song from the ’80s (Inga would be the right age, somewhere around 50), signifying liberation, only to cut it off mid-note and let an oppressive silence fall. It’s “Get out of jail free” and “You are assessed for street repairs” on the same Community Chest card.
9 Comments
I was just reading up on Iceland the other day, by sheer coincidence (…okay, I fell down a wiki wormhole because of “Husavik”), and I got the impression that because wealth inequality is so low in Iceland, this kind of thing would be relatively rare. So it makes me wonder: is this an Icelandic horror story? “Look what would happen if we let rich capitalists concentrate wealth”?
That’s a good read. I love Iceland. Fascinating society. Not the friendliest people. Happy to pay taxes to maintain their society, though. I drove the entire Ring Road once and I hope to visit again soon. I can trust them to be vaccinated, unlike stupid fucking Americans who view face masks as torturous punishment.
People don’t stop making similar sorts of stories even if the country is wealthy.
Couldn’t low wealth inequality mean everyone’s more or less equally broke?
I’ve heard that cost-of-living expenses are high over there on that tiny Volcano island filled with Elvish people. Per capita GDP does make it seem like it’s a prosperous nation, though:https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=IS
It’s complicated…The first thing to remember is that Iceland’s population is TINY and within that, political and economic power is highly concentrated through intermarriage and relationships developed in school and university. So whilst income inequality is relatively low in Iceland, opportunity is far from equally spread. This was one of the reasons the country came so badly unstuck in the 2008 crash – there was a constant circulation of a small number of people between government, banking and the media. To give one example, Davíð Oddsson went from being Prime Minister for the Independence Party to Foreign Minister, to governor of the Central Bank of Iceland, to (after the IP was ejected from power for fucking the economy), editor of Morgunblaðið, one of the most powerful newspapers in the country, and one deeply hostile to the left-green alliance that cleaned up the mess.The second thing is that key aspects of the economy, most notably agriculture, are heavily protected by government intervention which guarantees minimum prices to farmers for things such as milk and meat. This effectively stifles imports of fresh produce and means prices in the shops are generally very high. However, without these subsidies, much of rural Iceland would be entirely depopulated because farms couldn’t compete with imported produce. For a country which has seen massive rural depopulation in favour of the ever-growing monster of the Greater Reykjavík region – which already has 2/3 of the country’s total population, this would be a disaster.The other thing that would cause problems is that it is a very small country and especially out in the sticks, people not only know you, but they know everyone in your family going back many generations. People have to get along with their neighbours or they cannot work and live in the area.It’s a fascinating country that I utterly adore and the people are the funniest, coolest, smartest ones I’ve ever met. I don’t know how they’ve survived this long and I have no idea how long they can keep things going like the amazing, but baffling language, in an increasingly globalised world. But having said that, their most important modern novel is Halldor Laxness’s ‘Independent People’ which is all about being relentlessly stubborn; so good luck to them.
I agree with Stephen Wright, it’s not fair that only one company makes the game Monopoly.
If the market has a bunch of sellers but a single buyer (as it sounds from the review), that’s a monopsony, not a monopoly. Don’t feel bad about it, though, even my browser doesn’t know that word.
It sounds like this is a bunch of wholesale sellers to a single buyer, who then is also the only seller back to the community of those products. Which I think makes it a monomonopolyopsony.