Fiery Devil’s Island an Icy Drama of Resilience and Resolve
Located on the Oslo fjord lies a home for delinquent youth, ages 11 to 18, in Bastoy. Run with an iron fist by the ruthless warden Bestyreren (Stellan Skarsgård), the place is a model of senseless brutality where all those in charge seem driven to make their charges suffer for their perceived crimes, no matter how large or small. They will have justice. They will produce respect. They will change these youngsters’ lives for the better. Or, if not, they will break them into tiny emotionally scarred pieces reducing their threat to society to absolute nil.
Stellan Skarsgård and Benjamin Helstad in King fo Devil's Island
© Film Movement
At least, that’s what they think they are doing. New inmate Erling (Benjamin Helstad) instantly sees the hypocrisy in all this, even if at first his doing so comes from a purely selfish place of his own haughty importance and superiority. Driven to escape, a shocking tragedy changes everything for the teenager, transforming him into some kind of leader the rest of the boys in the home are longing to look up to. Realizing he has more to look out for than just himself, Erling stages a violent uprising against Bestyreren and his subordinates, his and the other’s collective actions leading to the arrival of 150 Norwegian soldiers with orders to quell this rebellion as quickly as they can.
King of Devil’s Island is in many ways a motion picture we’ve seen many times before, something of an early twentieth century Norwegian Taps only instead of young cadets staging a revolt you have troubled incarcerated boys in their place. Like If…, they are led by a charismatic charmer who initially only seems to be out for himself. Like a silly B-movie in the vein of Toy Soldiers, they are faced with an armed opposition unafraid to let bullets fly causing all sorts of deathly havoc in the process.
But that familiarity aside, director Marius Holst does a splendid job of crafting a scenario and creating a world that is immediately bracing and all-encompassing. We are transported with shocking immediacy into the Bastoy school, this prison for delinquents that purports to want to bring out the best in their charges but in reality couldn’t care the slightest for them. The emotions are heighted right from the start, the icy confines as perilous to the students as the elders roaming the halls.
All this bleakness does get a little overpowering at times, and early on Erling is such a one-dimensional slob I wasn’t quite sure I’d be able to get behind him and his changing mission. But his confrontations with Bestyreren are remarkable, and the event that takes the lad from selfish teen to heroic adult is shockingly effective. Holst builds his tale with remarkable precision, his eye continually on the ultimate endgame, getting to the climax far more of a bracingly effective experience than I admittedly thought it was going to be early on.
Skarsgård is his usual wonderful self, and while this isn’t a character he probably struggled with watching him do his thing is a consistent joy nonetheless. His Bestyreren is an excellent foil for Erling, the obstacles he keeps setting up before the youngster one that both made sense from the standpoint of an authoritarian while also curdling the stomach from that of an impartial onlooker. Skarsgård tackles it all with his trademark professional resolve, finding intimate intricacies inside the character that more than likely did not exist within the confines of the script itself.
In the end, however, it is young Helstad who impresses the most. Taking an unlikable sieve of a character only to transform him into a mesmerizing figure of well-earned exultation, the actor goes above and beyond in a way that held me captivated. King of Devil’s Island isn’t new, doesn’t offer up a lot in the way of surprise, but thanks to Helstad, and in no small part due to Holst’s confident hand, the movie transcends the familiar and transported me into a fiery winter wonderland of despair and resolve I almost didn’t want to depart from. It’s a grand achievement, this Norwegian import an auspicious effort worthy of being discovered by mature audiences everywhere.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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