Weirdhouse Cinema: The White Reindeer

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1952 Finnish folk horror film "The White Reindeer," starring Mirjami Kuosmanen.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
today on Weird House Cinema we're going to be talking
about the nineteen fifty two finish folk horror film The
White Reindeer, starring Miryami Quosmanan and directed by Eric Blomberg.
If I may say, I think this is the finest
ware ungulate movie I have ever seen.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
It may be the finest ware ungulate movie I can envision,
because the concept to many of you, I imagine were
wolf fans to the last of you, I'm assuming you
might struggle to get excited for a ware reindeer picture.
And yet this one is really good. It's classy, it's

(00:58):
basically art house and has some, you know, almost kind
of documentary vibes to it at times. It's very well
done and ultimately makes you buying completely to this concept
that I have to admit that on the surface, too
many of us might seem a little silly.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Oh by the end, I was terrified of reindeers. Is
that a correct plural would not be Reindeer's it'd still
be reindeer. That's plural. You just to say the dear Yeah, okay,
but yeah. So this movie is set in the culture
of pre Christian Lapland today the northernmost region of Finland,

(01:35):
and The White Reindeer tells a story of love and loneliness,
of women's dependence and independence in culture, of longing and desire,
of witchcraft, of transformation, and of murder. It's got all
kinds of stuff going on. So the basic premise of
the story is that Pirita, a woman of the north

(01:57):
married to a hard working reindeer herder Lapland, finds herself
unhappy with life, and she seeks the help of a
wizard who prescribes for her a ritual that will make
her irresistible to men. But unfortunately, this magic spell has
a toxic interaction with the pre existing condition of her

(02:18):
being a genetic witch since birth, and instead of merely
becoming the bell of the Ball, Pirita is transformed into
a kind of seductive, somnambulist and reindeer version of a werewolf,
assuming fur and antlers by the light of the moon
and luring unsuspecting herdsmen to their deaths. Now, Rob, there's

(02:41):
one little random claim I read on the Internet that
made a lot more sense of the story to me
after I read it. I don't know this is true,
but it seems likely given the story here. It's not
explained in the story itself, but apparently the Sami people,
whose culture is depicted in this story. Among the Samni people,

(03:01):
it was a common folk belief that there was something
special about a white or albino reindeer, and if you
could catch a wild white reindeer, it would bring you
great fortune.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, that does help flash things out a little bit.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
So the white reindeer has a kind of interesting release history.
I was reading a bit about it in a book
called one hundred European Horror Films, edited by Stephen J. Schneider,
and apparently it's nineteen fifty two debut in the Finnish
capital of Helsinki happened during the summer Olympics in Helsinki,

(03:37):
which resulted in what the author calls near vacant screenings.
Nobody was gone to see it, but so not a
good way to start. But it caught on domestically after this,
in a second run later that summer or maybe in
the fall and it started getting good press and would
eventually become something of an international hit, receiving a number

(03:59):
of wards, including at the con Film Festival. We'll get
into more on that later, but it's kind of interesting
that this was a sort of sensation at the time,
and I think for most of my life I'd never
even heard of it. I never became aware of it
until just recently.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
I was not aware of it until you texted me
over the weekend and said, I have chosen for this week.
It's the White Reindeer. And I at the time I
was I was like, of course, you know, one hundred percent.
I'm like, all right, let's do Let's do the white Reindeer.
But I was also thinking, this is an interesting summer choice.
But of course we just did a cour Stuff to
Blowy Night episode on skiing, so it's not out out

(04:37):
of keeping with us to do something that seems seasonally opposite.
But oh, ice skating, Yeah, ice skating, Sorry, not skiing.
We haven't done skiing yet, but we should skiing.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
There's a lot of skiing in the movie.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
She But but now that you mentioned that this originally
came out in the summer, it is fitting that we're
talking about it in the summer.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
I mean, I happen to personally love counter seasonal programming.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah, you know, that's just me.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Now. I think it could be interesting to compare this
film to other Rare Beast movies we've covered on the show,
But maybe we should come back to that later or
just as it occurs to us throughout. One thing I
do think we should talk about briefly at the top
is this movie's visual stylistic virtue, As many reviewers mentioned

(05:22):
this as a real highlight of the film, the bold,
stark way that it looks. It was shot on location
in real snowy landscapes of northern Finland, in Lapland, And
so you get these the fells, you know, these kind
of like like low sloping or rounded mountaintops or hilltops,
many of which are bear some of which have just

(05:45):
kind of I don't know, sad looking like snow covered
tree limbs poking out.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Like every portion of the tree, trees iced over in
ways that those of us in more southern climate's scared
can imagine. Like it looks almost Sussian, you know, the
way these trees are iced over.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
Yeah, true Arctic strangeness.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
Yeah, Jack frost hit this landscape hard, but also.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
Like herds of reindeer stretching to the horizon in some shots,
those are quite striking. And then these little and then
the way that the movie deals with both absolutely empty
expanses and then these little closed boxes in the homes.
You know that. So you'll go out in this field
and it's just like seeing far to the horizon and

(06:31):
there's nothing there but a few like you know, leafless
shrubs or this, you know, this train of animals just
stretching over the horizon and there's like nothing else to see.
But then you arrive at the Wizard Shack and you
go inside and it looks like it's about like eight
feet by eight feet. Inside it's like tiny but crammed
with evil magic.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah, now that you mentioned it that way reminds me
of some past discussions we had on the on the
Core and stuff to blow your mind episodes about the
art of Tibet and like in tear spaces into Bet
interior sacred spaces versus the exterior world where you have
like huge sky and sweeping vistas, And we have a
similar vibe going on here, you know, with these these

(07:12):
little enclosed often you know, very dark, cozy spaces, and
then outside it's just like a white wasteland, but in
the most beautiful sense.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
Yeah, these things filmed in a way that is both
frightening and beautiful.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
If we haven't mentioned it already, this is a black
and white film, which, especially in these shots of the
of the landscape, seem very fitting.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
You know.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
It's it's like everything is very very white, and the
shadows have this this depth to them, and then the
indoor scenes, especially at night, also feel it feels appropriate.
I will say there are a few scenes of just
sort of normal everyday life or celebration within the community
that I kind of wished we could have seen in color,
because I feel like those were Yeah, I just kind

(07:57):
of wanted to see the colors there. But on the whole,
oh yeah, the black and white and this is absolutely beautiful.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
I just realized there's really no way around it. But
we're gonna say the words reindeer and snow so many
times in this episode. I was just like going through
my notes trying to think of synonyms, so I wasn't
repeating myself so much. But in a way it's fitting
because this movie is just it's just plowing straight into
your brain with reindeer and snow, there's so much of both.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
Most of the location is snow, and there are far
far more reindeer in the picture than human beings. Like
it's just it's just a fact. There's just so many
reindeer on the screen at different points. But in a
way that is again, it feels very when you see
people interacting with the reindeer. When you see it feels
almost like a documentary, like a snapshot of life. There's

(08:46):
not a sense of like, all right, let's get the
reindeer wrangler out there so we can get this shot.
Like this, this film feels very real.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
I believe the director of it had made documentaries and
maybe even on this subject right correct.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
His first short picture as well, we'll discuss here in
a minute, was about Lapland reindeer herders, So it's yeah,
it's very fitting. I should also point out that this
film is in many spaces very light on dialogue. It
has almost a silent film sensibility.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
That's notable in multiple ways. It does contribute to the
mood of the film because there are long silent stretches
where there's just music, no talking in between the dialogue scenes,
and that I think that does contribute to the kind
of lonely, eerie feeling that they're attempting to conjure, especially
when we're just alone with Perita. Yeah, but in addition

(09:39):
to that the lack of dialogue, it shows a real
what seems to me to be a conscious choice of
narrative restraint that keeps many things about characters motivations and
thoughts a mystery very different than I think most other
movies at this time would have done.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
That.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
I feel like if this same kind of subject had
been approached by an American filmmaker at this time, there
would have been a lot more voiceover explaining the interior
thoughts of characters of perioda and aslock. But we don't
get that, so very often we're just sort of left
wondering what they're thinking about what's going on.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, it has a very European art house sensibility in
that respect. And yeah, and there will be no transformation
scenes in this in the way that you get them
in a certainly American and many European examples of ladder
monster movies and so specifically were Wolf movies. But then again,
you don't need a transformation scene for a great shape

(10:40):
shifter movie.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
That's right, I mean, And in fact, this movie it
doesn't really have a lot in the way of special effects,
but it doesn't really need them because the way it
handles its subject matter is just very natural and graceful.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
Like.

Speaker 3 (10:56):
So, there's a character who transforms into a reindeer in
these in the murder scenes, and you'll see her just
sort of leap out of frame, and in the next frame,
the reindeer leaps into frame. And it's a very simple
way to depict this kind of transformation without showing it
in frame, and it works just fine.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, this reminds me I want to mention really quickly.
When I was looking up the reviews on letterbox for
this film, one of the people I followed, John from
Video Drum here in Atlanta, made the comment somehow this
is one of those low budget or enormous budget watching
experiences which I can totally I can totally feel, because again,

(11:34):
I think a lot of it has to do with
that naturalistic vibe, this kind of like documentary feel to it.
At times, you can feel like, well, all they did
was turn on the camera and this is just this
is just what it is there. This is life. But
then again, when you start thinking about, like, you know,
any documentary about filmmaking you've seen, like, no, maybe this
was absolutely an enormously expensive picture. It's just hard to tell, especially,

(11:56):
you know, being so far from this environment, and from
this time.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
I agree that it feels that way, though, I guess
we should just flag that I don't necessarily want to
vouch for this film's cultural authenticity and how it depicts
the Sami culture and all that, because I don't really
know how well it captures that. I didn't find sources
addressing this. It clearly is trying. It seems to me
to be trying to capture a kind of cultural authenticity,

(12:22):
but I don't know how well in reality it actually
did that.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Right, We can point to other examples from the nineteen
fifties and different cinema editions where there's not a lot
of finesse shown in sort of cultural depictions. So yeah,
we would. I think it's reasonable for us to have
a healthy amount of skepticism, all right. You know, I

(12:49):
don't know if this had a trailer, or if whatever
kind of trailer it originally had in Finland, if it
exists online anywhere, we may the air just a little
bit of what I think is a modern trailer for
it that Eureka Entertainment put out. Eureka Entertainment is responsible
for what I believe is the main Blu Ray option

(13:10):
for this picture. I did not watch it on this
Blue ray. I streamed it. It's widely available for streaming
wherever you get your streaming pictures. But it looks like
the Blu ray is a really nice package with a
number of extras and menuima, a lench line and.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
Yellow and took.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
All right, Well, let's let's get into the uh casting

(14:33):
crew here a little bit. And I always want to
apologize for any pronunciation errors with names and such. We
haven't done really any finish films before. We've done some
Russo finish co productions.

Speaker 3 (14:48):
Yeah Rose Russo finished things, right, yeah, yeah, But this
is I think that this is our first like purely
finished film from the golden age of Finnish cinema.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
And don't understand. And I want to note I'm going
to refer several times to the Juicy Awards Jussi. There
may be more USY Awards. They're essentially like Finnish Academy
Awards and I think maybe there's a little Emmy energy
in there, because I think they also recognized television projects,
or at least came to at some point. They've been

(15:18):
held since nineteen forty four, and I'm going to refer
back to them several different times here. Okay, so the
key individuals, as we've already noted, are going to be
Eric Blomberg, who is credited as the director, one of
the writers, certainly the cinematographer, and also the editor, as
well as his wife mir Jammi Kuzmannin And She Is

(15:43):
Our Star, she is also credited as one of the writers.
But I was reading about her specifically on a website
called Nordic Women in Film dot com, and in this
this write up they mentioned just how closely these two
work together their projects. I think the quote is from
one of them, is that when it came to projects

(16:04):
they worked on, you would have to use a pair
of tweezers to separate what each one did. So this
division of labor here we get is in many ways
maybe just a reflection of what their backgrounds were. Her
background wasn't acting. His background was in cinematography and was
behind the camera, and therefore they're credited as such, and
it's also been pointed out that there were very few

(16:27):
female directors in Finnish cinema at the time, so maybe
that was another reason that her name wasn't at the top.
But like they work so closely together, just keep that
in mind as we're talking about these divisions, because it
seems like this whole project was a collaboration.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
Right, so it should be kind of thought of as
that them as co filmmakers.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yes, yeah, and they were very open yeah about this.
So let's start with Eric though he lived nineteen thirteen
through nineteen ninety six, Finish cinematographer, producer, screenwriter and director,
not to be confused with the Swedish poet of the
same name. This Blomberg started off as a cinematographer with
credits going back to nineteen thirty six, and he was

(17:07):
a producer from nineteen thirty eight onward. His first directorial
credit was a nineteen forty seven documentary short titled With
the Reindeer about the reindeer of Lapland.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
Yeah, as we alluded to earlier, that is not surprising
if you've seen the film that he had shot documentary
footage about reindeer herding or about reindeer in general. There
is a I don't even know how to identify what
the points leading to this impression are, but there's just
a feeling of familiarity with the subject, if that makes
any sense.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
Absolutely, yeah, and it was well received. This documentary short
won a USYE Award. I'm going to go ahead just
say ucy instead of juicy, just because it sounds better
to me. But that may also be incorrect, okay. He
followed this short up with a handful of additional shorts
before tackling this his first feature length film, again a
collaboration with his wife. She co wrote it, and again

(18:02):
that they were you'd have to use a tweezer to
separate what they were each working on in their own words.
As you pointed out, nobody seemed to go to see
it at first because they released it during the summer Olympics,
but then it began to pick up steam domestically and
then ultimately was very well received internationally. Not only did
it earn them a UC for cinematography, it was nominated

(18:25):
for the Grand Prize of the cons Film Festival in
fifty three, and it won in its fairy Tale Film category,
which excited me and I had to research this. I'm like,
what else won? What else was nominated? I don't think
this category existed previously or afterwards, So I'm not sure
what the story is here. If they were if they
invented a category to honor this film, which if that's

(18:48):
the case, great, this film totally earned it, or if
they were like, yes, fairy tale films they need their
own category, and then it just they decided not to
keep doing it. I'm not sure.

Speaker 3 (18:59):
I'm getting out of the pitch. Bring it back, Bring
it back to the Cohn judges. We need a fairy
tale film category.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
Do it? Yeah, and maybe you'd encourage even more fairy
tale films. I don't think we have enough of them.
So Blomberg followed this up with a handful of feature
link films, some more short works, and finally a couple
of TV movies in sixty six and sixty eight. Of these,
his nineteen fifty five film Killouse also won a Ucy
for cinematography, but The White Reindeer I Believe remains his

(19:26):
most well known film, certainly internationally, and continues to resonate
not only as an example of Finnish cinema, during it
from the golden era of Finnish cinema, but also as
a rich entry in Global full car.

Speaker 3 (19:38):
I've read that Blomberg did not do a lot else
in this sort of magical category.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
Right, that's I'm to understand that as well. Looking at
his other pictures, I don't think anything else could qualify
as you know, specula as having a speculative element.

Speaker 3 (19:53):
Okay, but that was Eric Blomberg. Let's talk Miriami Kosmanan.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah. So Kospannen lived nineteen fifteen through nineteen sixty three.
She plays our Witch Reindeer, Finnish actress, writer and longtime
wife of Eric Blomberg. I was reading her this profile
of her in her work on Nordic Women in Film,
and they point out that she was like a real
wild child as a kid, like she played sports with

(20:17):
the boys. She loved swimming and fishing. There's some story
about her putting out a fire in their house. So yeah,
she seemed to be a real spirited individual. And she
was active from thirty seven through fifty six. And they're
a good I think a dozen collaborations between her and
her husband. She is often credited as a writer and

(20:38):
sometimes she is an actress, but this film, in particular,
I'm to understand, was a case where it was at
least partially inspired by a dream she had of a
woman turning into a reindeer. And I think it's also,
you know, as we'll discuss, based on some existing bits
of folklore and Bret and Sagas and so forth, but
also there's a dream element, something that you know, that

(21:01):
emerges personally from her. There's also a quote in that
article about how like they had a unified vision for
this picture and that they each could see every scene
before they shot it. So she's a really beautiful thought,
I think.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
Especially for a film that has deadly premonitions within it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they yeah, they saw the vision together.
Other notable films of hers include nineteen thirty eight's The
Song of the Scarlet Flower, which, like much of her filmography,
was a romance drama. Again, I don't think there are
any other films in her filmography that you could think
of as being horror, fantasy, or certainly sci fi. I

(21:41):
think The White Reindeer stands alone. She won a UC
for Best Leading Actress for her role in The White Reindeer.
And yeah, she's amazing in this It's a captivating performance.
You know, she's often silently channeling these intense feelings of loneliness,
of love and hope and eventually otherworldly power.

Speaker 3 (22:02):
She really carries the film. I mean, it is her
burden to carry, and she takes it up that snowy hill.
We spend huge amounts of the movie just alone with her,
with nobody else, and even in scenes where she's with
other people, often it's just sort of the audience in
her and the other people are kind of peripheral. Yeah,

(22:23):
And so we have and it's a really interesting way
to render a protagonist in this way because we our
main relationship is with her, and we spend all this
time with her. But also she remains so mysterious through
the entire film, and we even at the end of
the story, I think there are many questions we can

(22:44):
still have about her that aren't really answered directly.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
Yeah, because you know, ultimately she gets some great Dracula moments,
and in a sense it's going to follow some the
trajectory you might expect from a were wolf picture. But
yet at the end there's not this feeling of Welp,
she was a monster and thank goodness, we killed her.
It feels a lot, a lot sadder than that.

Speaker 3 (23:07):
Yeah, it's very it's tragic.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
Yeah, it's more. If I'm going to compare it to
just an easily referred to werewolf, picture reminds me maybe
a little bit of American Werewolf in London, like that
kind of vibe where it's it's yeah, the monster's dad,
but we don't feel great about it.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
I would say, yes, but it's even more tragic than that,
because of course, you know, she has to be killed
by the man she loves, uh, and he doesn't even
know it's her. So it's just tragedy all around. And
then there's an even more kind of bleak layer, which
is that the guy an American werewolf in London. He
just had bad luck, wrong place, wrong time. He was
out on the moor and he got scratched. He got

(23:43):
bitten by a werewolf. That's no good.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
She.

Speaker 3 (23:47):
It seems that our main character here is is doomed
from ages past. She was like doomed before her birth
to this life of unnatural witchcraft. And it's like there
is something that the other characters recognize about her that
is evil. But it's almost like it's an evil that
is not of her choosing.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah, yeah, it's an Yeah, it's fascinating. We'll have more
to say about this character and this performance as we proceed,
but let's move on to Aslek. This is Parita's young
reindeer herder husband, played by Finnish actor and TV director
Kalervo Masilla, who lived nineteen thirteen through nineteen ninety seven.

(24:29):
I say young reindeer herder husband. The actor was I believe,
like forty here, and you know, kind of looks like
a forty year old guy. But I have to say
he has a very sympathetic face. It's a good performance.
And while you could argue, well, he looks maybe a
little older than he should be, and this is not
unique to this film. We see this in all sorts

(24:50):
of pictures, just in every decade. But I ultimately kind
of liked the fact that he looked a little older. Yeah,
and she does too in certain scenes, because I kind
of got this perhaps accidental vibe of them both being
slightly older members of the community who just hadn't found
love yet until now for various reasons.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
Oh that's interesting. I didn't really think of it that way.
I guess I interpreted. I mean, he does look older
than I think he's supposed to be. Just based on
the narrative, I would have guessed these characters are both
supposed to be like twenty or something, and they're actually
both I guess in their you know, thirties or forty.
But you could you could buy it, I think, especially

(25:29):
with Aslac, because he's like he's a Reindier herder. I
mean he's out there in the weather, like he's getting
you know, the snow's beaten on him every day. You
can imagine, Yeah, you'd imagine that he would look distinguished
and mature even at a younger age, and he does.
And so he he has a kind of rugged handsomeness

(25:49):
but also kind of a baby face at the same time.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like I say, he has a very
sympathetic face that works well here. Now, someone who does
not have a sympathetic face, as the character messenjutscha. I'm
probably not saying that correctly. This is like a forester
who shows up in the rag. Yeah, he has a
real threatening air to him. I was looking him. He's

(26:13):
an interesting character played by Aki Lindman, who lived nineteen
twenty eight through two thousand and nine. He was a
professional Finnish football player turned actor and eventually writer and director.
He started acting I Believe in nineteen forty nine, started
directing in sixty one, and was active behind the camera
till two thousand and seven and in front of it
till two thousand and three. He won a Ussy for

(26:35):
acting in fifty six for The Unknown Soldier. He won
one for directing in nineteen eighty eight, and then he
received a Lifetime Achievement Award in two thousand and eight.
His various credits include nineteen fifty nine's Moonwolf, which is
a rocket movie, a werewolf movie, nineteen seventy seven's Telephone,
nineteen eighty one's Reds that's directed by and starring Warren Beatty.

(26:58):
I haven't seen Reds, but that one is filmed on
location in Finland, so you had some Finnish actors appearing
in some smaller supporting roles. And then he's also in
a nineteen eighty eight film called The Moon God.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
Wait, he was in moon Wolf and moon God. Yeah,
unrelated films.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
Though unrelated decades apart, different I can't remember. I think
The Moon God might have a speculative element to it.
But it's not a rocket movie. Moon Wolf is a
nineteen fifties rocket movie.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
Does seem like a coincidence. How many movies are like Moon?

Speaker 2 (27:27):
Now?

Speaker 3 (27:29):
How many would there be?

Speaker 2 (27:30):
Lots? Yeah, okay or something moon? There are lots of
like yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
Death moon. That's right, We've covered some on the show. Yeah,
I feel like modifier moon is more common than moon noun.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
Probably so in the long run, all right. We also
we mentioned that there's a wizard. May we'll get into this.
Maybe he's more of a shaman, but in the subtitles
he does call himself a wizard. This is the character Salkunila,
played by Arvo Alesma, who lived nineteen oh one through

(28:02):
nineteen seventy three, Finnish actor who seems to have worked
a lot in supporting roles, and he's really great in
this playing this kind of kind of drunken wizard or
shaman that lives in a hut. I would say, out
at the edge of the town. But there's not really
a town so much, but he's kind of out on
the outskirts of the outskirts here.

Speaker 3 (28:24):
The scene in his hut is really interesting. I'm excited
to talk about that later, especially for the way, like
the tables get turned. Like in his scene, Karita arrives
and it's like he's the scary one and she's kind
of supplicant, and she's like, oh, what's it going to
be like here, you know, meeting the shaman. But then
by the end of the scene, the tables are completely

(28:45):
turned and like she is scary and he is scared
of her.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
Yeah. And finally, the composer for this was Einar England,
who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen ninety nine. Finished composer.
He won an USI Award in fifty two for this score,
which I think, I'm on The whole feels very much
of its time, but I think it gets nicely dramatic
as the film progresses.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
Oh, I think the music's wonderful. I think it really
underscores the drama very well. There's, uh, there's these certain
themes that recur when like when Pirita is losing her
mind or when she's sort of going to another place,
we get this nice uneasy these these chords come up
and yeah, and there's some dissonance and uh, there's sort
of a theme of the stone God when we get

(29:30):
to that. Music's really good.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
I think that's when it its best. There's some early
parts where it's there are a lot of horns, and
it maybe feels a little fashion, you know, from a bag. Yeah.
But but but when it gets into the darker and
more dramatic parts, the composer totally brings it here. And
I should also add that the film also makes great use,
particularly in one segment early on, of what I take

(29:54):
to be authentic folk songs, which adds nice flavor.

Speaker 3 (30:06):
All right, are you ready to talk about the plot?

Speaker 2 (30:08):
Let's do it. So.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
We open on a shot of a winter landscape covered
in snow, striped with lines of bear trees and shrubs
stretching to the horizon. And then at the horizon we
see these fairly low, gently sloping mountains in the distance,
and in the foreground we see a pair of forked
reindeer antlers belonging to an animal whose head is below

(30:30):
the frame. And then standing next to the reindeer, there's
a person facing away dressed in furs, and there's music.
The music is just a woman's voice singing an eerie,
high pitched melody that sounds cold, you know what I mean?
Like this music, like it makes you want a blanket.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (30:50):
As we pan away from the reindeer and the person
over the landscape, a title comes in to tell us
that this is a story from Lapland, and we get
the title telling calling it the White Reindeer, Vlcoyne and Peura.
After the credits, a new song begins, and this one
sounds like a folk song, also sung by a single

(31:11):
woman's voice, and the lyrics are little girl child of Lapland,
born in a snow drift. And then here we see
there's like a shot of the sky and it's very
strange and beautiful. There are these gray clouds and there's
like a glare of the sun piercing through the clouds. Yeah,

(31:33):
And the song goes on saying grew to girlhood straw
stuffed shoes like a reindeer dough. And then we see
wind blowing over the top of a deep snowfield with
these black tree limbs barely peeking out of the drifts.
And this is something that the director they will the
directors will like to show you again and again is

(31:55):
shots of a snowy field with wind blowing and the
blowing snow like these sort of these sheets of snow
being picked up off the top of the field and
then blowing along. They look like curtains being dragged across
the land.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
Yeah, there's a real visual poetry to these sceness.

Speaker 3 (32:11):
Yeah. The lyrics to the song go on, she did
not know as a child, nor when she was married,
that she was born a witch, evil in her belly.
And then we see wolves running in the snowfields and
a woman on skis with a long stick as a
push pull. She's going alone over a hill, looking exhausted
and in pain. She's facing down the wolves that are

(32:34):
running from across the field. You don't know are they
threatening her, are they running with her? What's going on?
But then the lyrics continue. They say she offered to
the stone god to modern aka, she gave a white fawn,
then ranged the fells as a deer till the appointed hour.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah. I was reading that this modern aca was like
a traditional goddess, that is, a goddess of the earth,
of goddess of the beginnings of life, a protector of
children as well.

Speaker 3 (33:05):
And then eventually the woman approaches a conical structure in
the snow. I think this is supposed to be a
Sammi LaVoo, which is kind of similar to a North
American tepee. It's a conical shelter made with poles braced
against one another, and then it would be covered in
reindeer hides. Inside this structure, you've got people gathered together

(33:26):
cooking a meal, and one of them sees the woman
coming outside and pokes her head in to tell the others.
And then the woman comes inside the lavo and collapses,
and the lyrics go on to say iron pierced the
white dough. Then the lap girl slept chill shawl for
a coverlet snow drift for a pillow, and inside the

(33:48):
lavo we see a baby next to the woman, so
it seems she's given birth, and then an elder figure
in traditional Sami clothing holds the baby, and I think
it's implied that the mother died. It wasn't exactly clear
on that, but I think she's supposed to die. And
then afterwards we pull out to another landscape shot of
a massive steep, lonely hillside covered in snow, and again

(34:12):
just the wind blowing sheets of frost over the top
of the pack, and then that's the end of the
opening montage. The whole thing is very I don't know
it's got a light touch, but it's also a good
bit haunting. And so we kind ahead in time after
that to a very different mood. Now the image is

(34:32):
sharper and the music is more lighthearted, and we see
lots of people gathered for what looks like some kind
of winter games or festival. Throughout this movie, you will
see a common form of individual transportation in this region,
which is a person riding in a kind of ground
level sled pulled by a single reindeer. So when we

(34:55):
say sled, don't imagine like a big, high up sleigh
like often people are just sort of lying back in
this sled's basically right there on the top of the
snow with a single reindeer pulling them. And in this
scene we see lots of happy people being pulled around,
pulled all around, and crowds gathered. These people are lying
back in their one seat reindeer sleds. You got dogs

(35:15):
running around barking, and we see reindeer herders in their
traditional clothes standing around just cruising the vibes.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
Now, did we mention this already? If not, I want
to drive home that I don't think this is supposed
to take place in the nineteen fifties, but I don't
know when exactly in the past.

Speaker 3 (35:32):
Yeah, that's a good question. So I read online sources
saying this is supposed to take place in like pre
Christian times that you know, so this would make me think,
you know, at least hundreds of years ago. But also,
like the character one character has a fairly modern looking rifle.
And there's another scene where characters are in a building

(35:53):
that I don't know, looks to me kind of like
a Christian church, and they may seem to be attending
maybe church, or maybe I'm misunderstanding what's happening there.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
Yeah. Likewise, like the shamanistic traditions and the old religion
don't feel as old and as removed from the people,
which doesn't necessarily rein in exactly when this would be.
But yeah, so its hard to nail down.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
I truly, Yeah, I truly don't know when this is
supposed to be set. But certainly, like the characters don't
have TVs or anything, right. Yeah, anyway, so we've got
these these reindeer festival games going on, and in this sequence,
we're going to meet a couple of our main characters.
We meet a beautiful young woman Parita and a handsome
young man Aslock. And then Rob I pulled in a

(36:38):
screenshot of Parita and the first time we really see
her face here. She is the grown up version of
the baby we saw featured in the opening folk song,
and Oslock is a local reindeer herder and an eligible bachelor.
And when we first see Pirita's face, she is angelic
with a big, wide grin, and her eyes are sparkled

(37:00):
in the sun. You can see they really set it
up to like so that her eyes capture the light
and it glints on her. You know, they look like wet.
I don't know, it's a good gross, but like she's sparkling.
She's sparkling, and you can even see a little sparkle
on her cheeks. I think there's like snow melted catching
the light there. Yeah, and Parita is taking part in
the reindeer sled race here. She's having a great time.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
She's happy, yeah, just beaming with life.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
But also credit to Miriami Kosmanin's performance here, because she
always manages to make Parita seem a little bit strange
and mysterious even when she's happy and when times are good.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, even early on, there's
something else there. I don't even know. Is it a
deep loneliness. Is it something else. We'll have to think
about it as we perceive.

Speaker 3 (37:49):
But asloc is also in the running here in this race,
he seems to command his beast with confidence and pleasure
as Luck's he's a big ball of fun here. Yeah.
One visual theme I started noticing right around this sequence
that I thought I should flag Rob. The movie has
lots of shots of mostly empty snowfields that foreground, a

(38:13):
single tree all by itself, piled up with snow, sometimes
even bent over sideways under the weight of allD frost.
And I think that is probably an intentional pattern, and
it's kind of a subtle visual cue that communicates something
about loneliness. Loneliness is a theme of the film, and

(38:33):
it shows it as loneliness as this kind of cold
and heavy burden that smothers you.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
Yeah, that's great. Yeah. And then just in general, like
the world is this vast, cold landscape and you find
warmth and community and in very small packages here and there.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
Yes, I totally agree with that, though I would say
that like the focus is on something about the physical
world and the necessities of life creating these things. It's not,
it seems to me, not really a comment on anything
about the community being alienating or isolating. Is more just like,
these are the realities we have to deal with to survive.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Right right, And you know, they get out in the
snow and they have some fun. They they're laboring in
the snow. They don't you know, obviously it is an
environmental hurdle for life. But they're doing their best. And yeah,
just there are multiple scenes where our main actors are
like iced over, but they're smiling. So I think that's
telling and it matches up with some things I've heard

(39:34):
about surviving in cold environments, where like people say, yeah,
I mean, you just got to find a reason to
go out in the snow and live your life.

Speaker 3 (39:44):
So eventually Parita and Aslak seem to have become separated
from all the other contestants in the race. I don't
know if they stopped caring about the overall race course.
Now they're just playing together. It's just the two of
them dashing over this big hillside, treating each other flirtatiously,
and eventually as Lac makes a move he throws a
rope and Lasso's Parita, pulling her off her sled, and

(40:08):
he says, a reindeer is fast, but a wolf is faster,
and they embrace, laughing, and they tumble down the hill
in their furs, rolling over each other, and there's a
shot here where when they come to rest, Aslac cradles
Parita in his arms and she looks up at him
with this big, toothy smile, and it really shows off

(40:28):
this angel witch duality that Cosmondin brings to the role, Like,
if you look at her face here, Rob, she's looking
so happy, but also if you just change your mindset,
she could look so dangerous.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
Yeah yeah, and she will totally have those those Dracula
moments later on.

Speaker 3 (40:46):
And so as Lac leans down to kiss her. And
there's also something funny about the way he looks here.
They've done him up so that his eyebrows are just
spiky with ice, so he's got like icicles over his eyes. Anyway,
after the games are done, we see Parita and Aslac
canoodling together in a reindeer drawn sled and riding around
outside the festivities. Clearly they are falling in love, and

(41:09):
Aslak asks, do you like me, and she smiles and
leans on him, but doesn't say anything. So soon after this,
Parita is at home with her family. I believe these
are her adoptive parents, and we see Aslac and his
father coming in his sled to visit the house. I
don't know if this was supposed to mean anything, or

(41:31):
even if it was intentional, but Rob, did you notice
in this scene that as Aslac is coming down the road,
a black cat runs across his path?

Speaker 2 (41:40):
You know, I didn't notice this when I watched the film,
but it's a great point. I'm not sure what it means, Like,
I don't know what the black cat's role might be
in the folklore of northern Finland. But in absence of that,
maybe it's just like cinematic tradition of black cats. Or
sometimes you just have a cat that is going along
and mining its own business and does not care that
you're shooting a film.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
Get that cat out of the snow. Speaking to Parita's parents,
I think this is Aslak's father, and he says this
must be some kind of metaphor. He says, we have
a merchant, you have a bird, sell us the bird,
and this is a marriage proposal, and Parita's father asks
Aslak if his intentions are honorable, and he promises they are.

(42:23):
He makes a pledge that he will treat their daughter well,
and then the parents unfold a cloth containing the bride price.
It's several coins and pieces of jewelry, and you get
the sense that within their community, these people they're not rich,
but they can lead a rich life.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
Yeah. Yeah, there's not a sense of the people here
like barely scraping by in the edge of civilization or
anything like that.

Speaker 3 (42:52):
No, there are environmental hardships, but this is their way
of life and they make it work, so there is
it's not commune udicating it seems to me anything about
like poverty or hardship of that kind. But yeah, so
we see that, and then the next thing, you know,
we're at the wedding and it's a rock and party,
like friends and relatives come to poor gifts onto the

(43:14):
pile on the table and they're drinking from this frothy
booz booze chalice. Actually it's mostly just one guy drinking
this chalice and they're dancing around in the warmth of
the fire. Eventually, this might be Aslac's father I think,
who says the drink is drunk bread and salt eaten.
And then there's this interesting thing where like Parita and

(43:35):
Aslac are kept behind a curtain. They're hidden from everybody
else at the party, and one drunk guy keeps peeping
through the curtain and tells them they look just like
a couple of lovebirds. And then at the end that
there's a funny shot where they're like closing up shop
at the end of the wedding party, and like everybody's
still like trying to peek in the door, and somebody's
trying to force the door shut.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Yeah. Yeah, this is the sequence where I kind of
wish I had color because I feel like this is
a This is a colorful in its own way, you know,
rosy depiction of traditional life. Is it accurate, I don't know,
but it has an accurate feel to it, at least
in my viewing.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
I think the clothes in the scene alone would have
had a lot of cool colors. Yeah yeah, But after this,
now our main characters are married and time passes. Of course,
Aslac is a reindeer herder, which is a job that

(44:33):
requires travel. He has to take his stock around I
guess to different feeding grounds. Probably, so he's often gone,
leaving Parita home alone for long periods. And when Aslac
is gone, we learn Parita is lonely. We see her
excitement in one scene where he returns with a giant
train of animals. This was shot with a real reindeer herd,

(44:55):
and it's just amazing to see this ocean of antlers bobbing.
Is this column of like hundreds or maybe even thousands
of animals clops.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
On by, Yeah, so many reindeer.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
So Parita and Aslac race to meet each other, and
she just collapses into his arms. There's not just love
but relief when he comes home. But the night of
their reunion, that's when the vibes first start getting a
little dark. We see the couple together in their bed
and the camera slowly zooms in on them as we

(45:26):
hear these uneasy, dissonant chords swelling up on the soundtrack,
and we see that Aslac is asleep, but Parita is awake.
She's laying there and her eyes are open, and she
turns to her husband and she rubs his chest and
tries to rouse his attention, but he's you know, he's tired,
he's sound asleep, and he rolls over, turning his back

(45:47):
to her. And then Parita rises up from the bed
and slowly walks over to the fireplace to warm her hands.
And she turns and sees a man not aslac staring
at her from a bedroll on the floor. First time
I watched it, I was like, wait, who is this?
But I think this is one of the other herders.
I think they're all just sleeping in the same house here,

(46:09):
and you know, one of her husband's coworkers here. And
the man looks at her and she smiles, and then
she climbs back into bed with oslock. This little encounter,
in this exchange of looks feels significant, but I truly
wasn't sure what to make of it, Like was there

(46:30):
supposed to be some kind of sexual tension with this
other man or is he frightened of her for some reason?
You could kind of read the scene that way at stage,
like that could be what it means. She hasn't really
done anything overtly creepy yet, but she is just I
don't know, there's something in the music and the way
she looks at him that is a little maybe off

(46:51):
and we don't know like what exactly is going on,
but there's something she has a moment with this other man.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah, I was wondering, is the man's supposed to be creepy?
Year Like, I'm thinking to some of the themes here
that are not all that overret I guess, But you know,
we begin with this scene where her mother played by
the same actor, is chased by wolves there, So is
this guy sort of like are we thinking about like

(47:19):
he's kind of a wolf himself? Is he like looking
at her with predatory eyes? I'm not sure. Again that
the film is kind of leads it to your interpretation.

Speaker 3 (47:29):
Yeah, yeah, And so we have this question like ultimately,
what is it that Parita wants? We know, and we'll
explain more about this in following scenes, but we know
she's unsatisfied in her marriage somehow. But is this only
because she misses her husband and wants more attention from him,
or is it because she desires other men as well?

(47:51):
I think you could or is it something else? I
think you could interpret it multiple ways. And Parita herself
never says in the film. Later in her wear reindeer form,
she does seduce other men, but I wonder should we
take that as like her true to herself, as her
desire or is that just like the curse, the evil

(48:12):
magic acting through her.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
Yeah? In either case, like, I think more communication was
necessary its marriage.

Speaker 3 (48:20):
So later there's a scene where Aslak is preparing to
leave with his herd once again, and before he goes,
he gives Perita a gift, a young white reindeer, which
he says she can have as a pet. So it's small,
with soft looking fur, and it's asymmetrical. It only has
one antler on one side of its head, no antler

(48:42):
on the other side. And then Parita says, kind of sadly,
off you go again, and who knows for how long
I'll miss you, And he hugs her and he tries
to comfort her. He says he'll be back soon, but
you can see that she is not happy in the
way that like as he pulls away, she's still just
reaching after him. So now is alone again, alone with
her one antlered white reindeer dough and we see her

(49:06):
feeding it from a big ball of lichen. I think
that's what it is. She's got, like this big wad
of something that she feeds it. And then later, she
sits in her house staring out the window at this
bleak landscape with gray clouds, and there's like a beam
of sunlight cutting through the gray clouds, like we saw
earlier in the opening montage. She's obviously yearning for something.

(49:28):
And then suddenly a switch is flipped, A change comes
over Parita, and she has decided to do something, So
she hurriedly packs some items in a bag and ventures
out into the snow. She goes over a hill, across
a plane, all the way to a tiny, isolated cottage
in the fells, and I thought this was an interesting

(49:51):
choice for the equivalent of what you would get in
other movies. The witch's hut, which is often in the
movies I'm more familiar with, is in a four story
is in a swamp, and here it is the only
vertical feature we can see in an otherwise completely empty
expanse of snow.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
And it itself is covered in snow. This is snow everywhere.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
So Parita goes to the door and lets herself in.
The cottage is filled with smoke, the floor is filthy.
There is a goat chained to a post in the
middle of the room, and then squatting on the floor
tending to a fire. Is Salkunila the shaman, the wizard,
kind of the cunning man? I wondered if you had
a thought on this, rob do you read Salkunila as

(50:36):
an inbounds or an out of bounds practitioner of magic
from the society's point of view? Is he more like
the village priest or the village shaman, or is he
more like some kind of outsider warlock.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
That's a great question. Yeah, because if in other films
where we have this character sort of character show up,
you know, generally in the form of a witch, you
can have different more they may lean more old religion,
more pagan, or they may lean more satanic dark magic. Right,
and in either case kind of like position a sort

(51:11):
of spiritual distance from the mainstream. But then here we
get the sense that whatever the spiritual distance, there is
a there is an actual physical distance from the rest
of the people. I'm not sure how we're to take that,
so I don't know. I I guess I got the
overall impression that the shamanistic traditions that he represents are

(51:32):
at least not that far from the mainstream. But for
whatever reasons. What he does is a little removed from
the rest of the community. He is kind of an
individual corner. Yeah, he is an individual with with influences
in the other world, and that's why you come to him.

Speaker 3 (51:53):
Maybe it's in a place where like you could buy
beer at the store, but he's a home brewer. Yeah,
maybe so salkut Nila. He turns his eyes up to
uh Pirrieto when when she comes in, and he says,
I knew you would come, And then he hangs a
pot over the fire. It looks like maybe it's a
pot of soup.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
I thought.

Speaker 3 (52:13):
It looks like it's got a big bone sticking out
of it.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:16):
Yeah, And Parita quickly begins digging into her bag and
pulling things out to lay before the wise man. She
has brought. She has brought gifts. This is I guess
how she's going to pay for his services. First of all,
she pulls out these round loaves of bread that look
like giant bagels. Rob, I understand you figured out what
kind of bread product this is.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
Yeah, I was curious, maybe a little hungry at the time,
and it's it's it's I'm not going to attempt to
pronounce its finished name, but it's apparently a traditional finish
rye bread and that hole in the center it has
to do with the way that they're they're they're hung
on poles at some point in the process of making them.
But yeah, so some sort of finish rye red here.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
So you sent me an article. It's like after you
bake them, you hang them up on a pole over
the oven, and that like keeps them warm or dries
them or something.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
Yeah, so they're not donuts or bagels. They're something unique.

Speaker 3 (53:07):
But so yeah. She pulls out these large bagel shaped
loaves of bread and then a wedge of cheese. That's
got to be reindeer milk cheese.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
Right, it's or goats. I mean this guy, but this
guy's got goats and he doesn't have cheese, so that's true.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
He wants that cheese, I think. She also pulls out
a dried piece of meat, and then finally the good stuff,
a bottle of clear spirits. This could be vodka or
maybe some kind of traditional sammy liquor. Alandi Salku Nila
sees what he wants. When she produces the bottle, he
snatches it and immediately just starts chugging, and after a

(53:46):
good long chug he turns back to Parita and he says,
love potion is it?

Speaker 2 (53:52):
You?

Speaker 3 (53:52):
Women young and old the same? And then while he's talking,
he also keeps doing this bizarre, slow, high pitched laugh,
and he says, your man off in the fells. Salkunila
knows the cure. And then here he pulls out a
leather pouch and begins to pinch things out of it
and sprinkle them into the pot. He says, herbs from

(54:14):
beyond ten fells, beside ten streams, some graveyard salt, the
balls of ten bull moose, the strength of ten bull moose.
Salcunila the Wizard can bring back lost reindeer. Salcunila the
Great Wizard can raise the dead. And then I love
this part. He pulls out a divination object. It is

(54:38):
a drum with a skin loosely stretched over the top
as its head, and all over this skin are illustrations
and drawings, these patterns, And then he places a small
stone or bone dye of some kind on the drum
and then starts beating the drum with a clawed mallet,

(54:58):
and this makes the little die object like bounce up
and down, and land on different parts of the drawings
on the drumhead. Yeah, I like this, so I assume
where the bone piece bounces on the drum here. Tells
her what she must do, and Sulkuneila explains the message.
He says, you must sacrifice to the stone god, the

(55:18):
first living thing you meet on your way home. Then
no reindeer herder will be able to resist you this winter.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
You will.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
But then he trails off. He stops talking, and he
leans back, looking frightened, like he's frightened of Pirita. And
she tells him to go on. But now she's looming
over him with this menacing posture and this crazed look
in her eyes, and she reaches out a hand flexed

(55:47):
like an animal's claw and presses it down against the
painted drumhead. And now the drum begins to sound, releasing
this new, deep, deeper, echoing beat, and the bone and
the little object starts to dance, even though Salcunila is
not touching the drum. Nobody's beating the drum, but we're
hearing a drum beat and it's it's reverberating. So there's

(56:09):
some kind of terrible power radiating out of Parita herself
into the drum and Rob, I don't know if you
have a way of describing the way her face looks
in this scene, but it's intense.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
Yeah, the lighting is totally different, you know, of course
this is a darker environment to begin with. And then yeah,
she has this kind of sinister look on her face,
like something has awoken inside her. The spell. It kind
of comes back to what you said earlier. This spell
has has interacted with a pre existing condition that was
unknown to our wizard here, that she herself is a

(56:44):
born witch.

Speaker 3 (56:45):
Yeah, and he announces it now he Salconela screams witch
and Parita looks possessed. And then also an interesting distinction
to wonder, like, so he's doing something like some kind
of magic or witchcraft, but there's a different thing he
means by her being a witch. Maybe it's that like
he knows the the magical arts, but she's got something

(57:08):
you know, inborn in her, like she has powers.

Speaker 2 (57:12):
Yeah, Like I get the sense that like he is
one who has reached into the other world and has
some degree of power. And it's probably over selling his
ability saying he can raise the dead and so forth,
And you.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
Know what's that vodka.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
Yeah, he's kind of a mess. And at this point
he realizes, oh, she's the real deal though. She has
powers that emerge from within the other world, and yeah,
maybe he even has some some notion that there are
going to be some interactions with how his magic and
her magic are now going to manifest.

Speaker 3 (57:46):
Right, So Parita looks possessed, and then finally the drumhead
rips open and Salku Nila shouts in terror as he
like falls back into the corner of the room. He
reaches for his goat for safety, and Parita stares into
the fire as it climbs higher, and then the scene's over.
After this, Parita, we see her back outside heading home.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
Now did she get a love potion at all? It
was just well, she was given a ritual to a
ritual to carry out, so there's not so much a potion,
but yeah, a ritual to carry out in order to
achieve this effect.

Speaker 3 (58:18):
Right, So she's going back home and she's come out
of her trance, but she as she's crossing the distance,
she hears the words of the shaman again. She has
to sacrifice to the Stone God, the first living thing
that she meets on her way home. But when she
arrives home, oh no, there's Oslac outside the house. He's
home early, but fortunately before she reunites with her husband,

(58:43):
Like the pet reindeer with the one antler, he lets
go of it and it runs ahead of him into
her arms. So the white reindeer now is the thing
that she has to sacrifice. Aslac tells her that he
missed her and he had to come home early to
see her. And at this point I wondered, oh, man,
should you interpret that as like I made the trip

(59:04):
to the shaman for no reason, like he came back anyway,
this was the thing I wanted? Or did it already work?

Speaker 2 (59:12):
Hmmm, that's a good question. I also had a question
about how there's not, again, not a lot of dialogue
in some of these In many of these scenes, so
like the wizard is just saying like, oh, yeah, I've
got what you want. You want a love potion, No
reindeer herder will be able to resist you. And then
but she doesn't say no, no, no, just my husband.
I'm just trying to make my husband more attracted any reindeer.

Speaker 3 (59:36):
Well, it's unclear again, I think it we don't fully
know whether she is just wanting the attention of her husband,
or whether she's interested in the attention of other reindeer
herders as well. It could be either one. Yeah, I
mean I think it is clear she misses as locks.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
So absolutely that that's at least a part of it.

Speaker 3 (59:54):
Yes. Anyway, later we see Sipurita remembering what she has
to do, so she packs up and she harnesses the
young reindeer and she sets out for a journey to
the place of the Stone God. This is one of

(01:00:16):
my favorite parts of the movie. So like, she passes
these strange landscapes while she's on the way. There's one
part here, Robert, I don't know if you know what
we're looking at. There's this big ice field and then
there are these regularly spaced vertical structures that are totally
covered in snow and ice, and I was like, are
these just like really narrow trees that are regularly spaced

(01:00:40):
this way or is this something man made? I truly
have no idea.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
I mean I took them to be trees when I
was watching the film, but I could be wrong. Yeah,
they could be structures of some sort, but they've been
blasted by the snow and are now just encrusted with it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:53):
So the atmosphere and the music become much more frightening.
As she nears the place of the Stone God. It
is a giant, dark stone monolith looming over a field,
topped with a reindeer skull and massive antlers, and then
below the stone there is a reindeer graveyard, though all

(01:01:15):
we see is snow with just hundreds of reindeer antlers
sticking up out of it. It's a wonderfully composed scene,
absolutely yes. So Parita reaches the altar and then she
kneels down with her pet, and she raises the knife
and then plunges the knife in to complete the sacrifice.
And here some power comes over her. Yet again. Parita

(01:01:38):
is overwhelmed, maybe possessed in some way, and she passes
out and has all these visions. She has visions of
her life, of her meeting with the Shaman, of there's
a vision of a reindeer running across a field in
photonegative and something now has changed, and I think maybe

(01:01:58):
this is a good point to you kind of zoom
out and speak in a more summary way about the
rest of the plot of the film, and then we
can I don't know, focus on anything that stands out
to you that you want to talk about. So after
this point the ritual seems to have worked, but at
a terrible cost. It sort of it comes with a twist.

(01:02:18):
It's like a monkey's paw sort of thing. She is
indeed now irresistible to the reindeer herdsman, but at night
she transforms bodily into a wild white reindeer and roams
the fells committing murders. So in her reindeer form we
see this first scene where she attracts the attention of

(01:02:40):
a herder one night and he wants to catch her,
not as parita, but as a reindeer, to add her
to the herd. I guess. And this is funny because
it plays on this duality of like, she will be
irresistible to the reindeer herdsman, and sometimes what they're interested
in is business they want, you know, they want this reindeer,
or maybe there's it's playing on this full belief that

(01:03:00):
like catching a wild white reindeer is like something that
brings great fortune.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
Right right. But then the other side of that, of course,
is that on one level or the other she is
a woman pursued by.

Speaker 3 (01:03:12):
Men, yes, exactly. And then so when this guy does
catch her, she transforms back into her human form and
then she kills him. And this cycle repeats several times
with these different sort of lurings out and murders in
where she will alternate between her reindeer form and her
human form.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
And she kind of has vampire teeth to a certain extent.

Speaker 3 (01:03:33):
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, we see that, and it's freaky.
And in response to the killings, the villagers get very
upset and they try to come up with solutions to
combat the evil witchcraft in their midst. The solution favored
by Aslak, not knowing that the witch is his wife,
is cold iron, and that is the only way to

(01:03:53):
kill a witch. So you see these forging scenes where
these guy, you know, people who are I think not
professional blacksmiths, are just doing the best they can. They're
like beating out these iron tips into spearheads so that
they can kill the witch with cold iron.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
Isn't there one scene where he's making one in the
room with his wife, Yeah, yes, she's in there, yeah yeah,
and she's kind of like recoiled in the corner. Because
this is like an instrument of death for her, but
he doesn't know that she is the witch. She is
the reindeer.

Speaker 3 (01:04:24):
So at one point you mentioned the ranger with the
rifle that shows up from the south. He is not
part of the culture of the film and is not
impressed by stories of magic and devils. He tracks the
reindeer and he tries to shoot it, but I think
some magical trickery goes on and the rifle explodes in
his face, and then he sees the animal transform back

(01:04:47):
into a beautiful woman and he sort of loses his mind.

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:51):
After more killings, the villagers form a mob to hunt
down the wear reindeer, and in this final in the climax,
he Parita is frightened and she flees. She keeps transforming
back and forth between her reindeer and human forms. She
tries to go back to get help from the wizard
from Salkunela, but finds that he has been killed in

(01:05:11):
his cottage. Rob, how did you interpret that? Who killed him?
Do you think it was the villagers?

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
I don't know, because he's in there, like it's cold
and frozen. It's unclear when he died exactly, so I
mean it's it also doesn't seem and he was necessarily
practicing a lot of self care. So, like, did he
drink himself to death in that hut? Is it because
of what he saw after?

Speaker 3 (01:05:37):
Did she kill him? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
Did she kill him? Yes? She may have. She may
have killed him sight unseen, you know, off off off camera,
off screen after that initial encounter. I don't know, it's again,
it's it's it's a bit ambiguous, but it's clear that
like he cannot help her in the same way that
this ranger from the south cannot help the villagers.

Speaker 3 (01:05:59):
Yeah, and so she also she's seeking help wherever it
can come. She tries to go back to the place
of the Stone God to ask for mercy, but no
mercy will be given. And then finally, in her reindeer form,
she's caught by Aslac, who gores her with a cold
iron spear, after which she transforms back into herself, leaving

(01:06:19):
Aslac mortified and he kneels down over her, realizing he
has killed his wife, and he brushes her hair tenderly
while she's dying, and then we just see the snow
blowing from the slope of the fells and the cold wind,
and that's the end. It's a very bleak ending.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
Yeah, we don't even get at the end. We close
out and then we get the studio, the logo, and
that's it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:41):
So so many interesting questions. I've raised this a couple
times now, but I want to come back to evidence
we can look at in the film for what is
Parita's attitude? Like, so much of her inner life is
left mysterious, and that's part of what makes the film
and the character so alluring. She's clearly feeling and thinking
so much, but we get hardly any dialogue or voiceover

(01:07:04):
to share the details of those thoughts and feelings with
the audience. So, like, what is her attitude towards the
killings that she's doing in the form of the White Reindeer.
I found this commented on in a book entry I
was reading about the movie. This was in a book
about werewolf films called The Werewolf Filmography by an author
named Brian Sen, and in the entry on The White Reindeer,

(01:07:28):
A sin writes quote it remains ambiguous as to what
triggers the change in Perita, nor is it clear whether
she embraces the metamorphosis. At times, she seems distraught over
what she's done in her bewitched reindeer form, while at
others she appears to revel in it, even sporting vampiric fangs.
In one scene, like you mentioned Rob as her witch

(01:07:50):
half seemingly takes over. It's as if she has two personalities,
the innocent Parita and the evil Witch. So I think
that's a correct scription. I wonder what we're supposed to
take away from that. And likewise, the other question we
raised about Parita's motivations, what is at the root of
her unhappiness and her desire at the beginning of the film,

(01:08:12):
What exactly is it she wants to be different? And
also like, what does she feel about her transformations? Is
she desiring a kind of violent liberation from some aspect
of her life or is it more just that she
desires love and companionship. It could go either way.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
Yeah, yeah, it's you know, I suspect it's getting to
some degree into this idea of like how does she
fit into this masculine world around her and the desires
of men, including her husband, you know, like she wants
to be loved, she doesn't want to be murdered. But

(01:08:53):
that's that's where we end up with the slaying of
her monster self as perceived by the commune unity and
the murder of her human self. And you know, this
is also a case that the ending. We can point
out that this matches up with were wolf and shape
shifting tales from ancient times, the idea that the monster

(01:09:16):
is killed, and in the killing of the monster it
is revealed that they were actually this individual, or if
not a particular individual, than a human being. They are
revealed in the death. Sometimes there's another form of the reveal,
which we've all seen in werewolf movies before, where it's
the wound. The beast is wounded, then later we see

(01:09:36):
the wound on the human individual and we realize that
the two are one.

Speaker 3 (01:09:40):
Can I point out another variation. Often in were wolf movies,
the character transforms into the werewolf, not only to in
this transformed state get the desire to kill, usually as
a kind of tragic thing, where the werewolf in their
human state doesn't want to do violence to anyone, but
they transform and then the wolf side of them takes

(01:10:01):
over and it wants to do these killings. But it's
also the wolf side of them is the kind that
can do the killings. It has the physical power and
the teeth and the claws and all that. So it
is through the wolf body that the violence is done.
That's not always the case in The White Reindeer. In fact,
I think am I remembering it right? That Perita usually

(01:10:23):
seems to like she will take the form of the
White reindeer at some point in the luring of these men,
or at some point in the pursuit, or at some
point in the escape afterwards. But like when she does
the killing, she often is in her human form, isn't she.

Speaker 2 (01:10:40):
Yeah, that's a great point this. I was reading about
this a bit in some of the information I was
reading a few months ago about the female where wolf
in in folklore, in mythology and in cinema, and the
authors made a point that, Yeah, you'll often see that
the female turns into a werewolf, and in turning into

(01:11:01):
a werewolf, they turn into a masculine or more masculine
form of themselves in order to be this dominant monster. Yeah,
and then here and in this film, yeah, she seems
to generally kill in human form. And we should also
point out again that it is not a graphic picture.

(01:11:21):
So when people are killed and animals are killed, it's
generally not shown. It's left to our imaginations.

Speaker 3 (01:11:28):
But I have the impression, based on having watched it
a couple of times, that most or all of the killings,
the last thing we see of her is like, she's
about to do it, and she's in human form, and
then maybe she warps away and you know, runs off
in the white reindeer form.

Speaker 2 (01:11:43):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It seems like the white reindeer form
itself is more about mobility, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:49):
But also about attraction.

Speaker 2 (01:11:50):
Yeah yeah, attraction, mobility. Yeah. I'm also reminded of other
folkloric traditions in which there is some inhuman threat that
may take on the form of two different things that
may attract a male, one being a female woman and
the other being a horse. Those kind of traditions kind

(01:12:11):
of seem akin to what we're seeing here in the
modes of attraction that are employed. You know, the men
are like, oh, there's a great rangeer, I need to
catch that from my hurt, or there is a beautiful woman,
I want to go see what she's up to, chatter
up a little bit, that sort of thing. I'm not
sure how we might completely factor that endo our calculations here.

Speaker 3 (01:12:30):
Yeah, there is a kind of duality of attraction along
those lines.

Speaker 2 (01:12:34):
I should also point out I don't have materials put
together to really go in depth on this, but we
should also acknowledge that like a dear woman or a
dear lady is also a part of different Native American
mythologies and traditions, and I think there is like some
amount of overlap in the way that that figure is

(01:12:56):
sometimes presented in what we have here in this film.
There's any actual connective tissue between these, but maybe they
speak to some common threads in the human psyche. I'm
not sure. If nothing else, you know, we might view
it in the same way that we have different werewolf
traditions and other shape shifting traditions that have popped up
in different parts of the world, some influenced by each other,

(01:13:19):
but some with no connections. But they sometimes end up
embodying some of the same ideas, the same attitudes, the
same relationships between the wild world and the domesticated world,
between civilization and the wilds, and so forth.

Speaker 3 (01:13:35):
One more question about Pirita. Do you see any element
of her getting her comeuppance in the film or do
you think it's purely tragic, just tragic? What happens to her,
Like is it not really her fault or is it
partially her fault?

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
Oh? I mean, in my viewing of the film, it
felt tragic. It felt like the path of doom that
was like writ from the day she was born. You know,
if I go back and piece it together, like you know,
in question where her mind was and all of this,
I could maybe lean more into the retribution view, But

(01:14:10):
I know, I think the pure cinematic experience is one
of doom and tragedy.

Speaker 3 (01:14:14):
Yeah, I feel the same way. I was just wondering though,
because I mean, it has structural elements that would lend
themselves to a kind of, you know, punishment of hubris
in some way, that there's something this character really should
have done differently, that they did wrong and they're being
punished for it. But I don't know, when you think
of the content of it scene to scene, it doesn't

(01:14:36):
quite feel that way. It feels more like the evil
magic is sort of acting through her rather than an
expression of herself. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:46):
The weird thing though, is like we tend to side
with her because she is the character we know the
most in the movie, and yet at the same time
we really don't know her at all. We have very
limited information about where her mind is and all of this.

Speaker 3 (01:15:00):
But again, I think that's one of the things that
makes the movie so exciting, is like, is the mysteriousness
of this character. I can't stop thinking about her in
a way.

Speaker 2 (01:15:10):
Yeah. Yeah, there's an art house ambiguity to this and
a dreamlike quality, fitting since it seems that this film
at least in part emerged from the mist of dreams.

Speaker 3 (01:15:20):
Okay, well, I think that's all I've got on the
White Reindeer.

Speaker 2 (01:15:23):
Yeah, the White Reindeer. Yeah, highly recommend it. It's easy
to get. This is not one that, as of this recording,
is super hard to find, so we recommend it, especially
if you want some counter season programming.

Speaker 3 (01:15:37):
Like we were saying, freeze out your mind while your
body sweats.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
Yes, all right, just a reminder to everyone that's stuffed about.
Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with
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but on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to
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(01:16:04):
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(01:16:25):
and sometimes a glimpse ahead of what's coming up next.

Speaker 3 (01:16:27):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
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