- Inni: Sigur Ros. Directed by Vincent Morisset. Vancouver International Film Festival. Visit www.viff.org/festival for complete schedule until Oct. 14.
THE key to Sigur Ros's popularity is that its music can mean anything to anyone.
Iceland's most popular export since Bjork has made a name for itself internationally through a growing canon of lyrical, ethereal music, all of it sung in Hopelandic, an original language that is a blend of Icelandic and nonsensical words.
Deciphering a song's literal meaning is, perhaps, possible if you have a unique grasp of Nordic languages, but it's almost better not to. Jon "Jonsi" Birgisson's vocals flow out of him in a stream of consciousness, in and around powerful drum beats and guitars played not with picks, but horsehaired bows that might otherwise draw the sound out of a cello or double bass.
The music finds itself at home in almost any context. In 127 Hours, their song "Festival" signaled a recluse's re-entry to civilization, while in Vanilla Sky "The Nothing Song" accentuated a vain publisher's harrowing journey through a lucid dream.
Though it invites different interpretations, it nevertheless unites fans the world over who clamber over each other to catch rare live performances.
Fans in Vancouver need clamber no more. The Vancouver International Film Festival is screening the concert film Inni: Sigur Ros as part of its 2011 Arts and Letters program.
Montreal director Vincent Morisset's fim is actually the second to focus on the band after 2007's Sigur Ros: Heima, a documentary that aimed to locate the band in its homeland and link its music with the rolling, barren landscapes that bore them.
Hardly a sequel, this one is billed as more an anti-Heima, a film devoted solely to showing the band in a live space.
"I think Heima was a lot about their roots in their homeland," Morisset says in an interview.
"With Inni, we wanted to create a piece that would give justice to the kind of classic live experience of when you go to see Sigur Ros in a venue."
Morisset, a web-based director who has done artwork for bands including Arcade Fire, came to the project by coincidence.
"I met Dean O'Connor, who is one of the band managers in Montreal three years ago," he says. "The band was touring and they just finished the Heima documentary where they follow the band through Iceland. At that time I was just finishing Mirroir Noir, the Arcade Fire documentary.
"They called me, said 'Vincent, would you be interested in doing a film on Sigur Ros? It's the end of the tour, the future of the band is uncertain.' There was a sense of urgency, maybe it's the last time we will see the band."
Shooting Inni wasn't just a matter of going to Sigur Ros's concerts and splicing the footage together. Morisset filmed it on HD digital, transferred the footage to 16 mm film, then projected it and re-filmed it through glass. The result aims to give an impressionistic view of the band, allowing them to dance off the screen in waves of light and sound.
"At one point the image is so crisp, that for me, it's like TV, it just gives this soulless image," he says. "I thought that by transferring the footage into 16 mm, it would just add a bit of texture and imperfections and the fact that we kind of passed through all those generations, we lose some details, but it just made the composition more, almost abstract."
Morisset isn't kidding when he muses about the end. It's not the end of the band, per se, but very likely the end of opportunities to hear their music in a live setting. He says Sigur Ros is likely to release more music but it's uncertain whether and when the band will tour again.
"It's not like they said we won't tour anymore, ever," he says. "But of what I know, they haven't announced any tour, but at the time I was approached, two of the band members were expecting kids, Jonsi was starting his solo career, so there was a lot of uncertainty about the future of the band at that point."
Anyone who wishes to see Sigur Ros live can do it at the film festival this weekend. Inni is playing Saturday at 4: 20 p.m. at Empire Granville 7 cinemas. Tickets are still available at www.viff.org.
