Mary Catherine McAleer

Katla’s plot is fundamentally a mystery. It’s also a drama about the physical fallout of a natural disaster, and it’s also a sci-fi about the dead emerging from the volcano’s adjacent glacier. Where folklore and science intersect, every character’s understandable disbelief about what might truly be occurring leaves the omniscient audience with equal parts questions, theories and frustration over the Vik residents’ apparent ignorance to outside possibilities as to what on earth is going on in their town. But Kormakur’s beautiful and deeply philosophical masterpiece portrays a hypothetical much harsher and more gripping than the storyline itself. In a Campbellian way, writers display a portrait of the human sentiment of regret not often explored: the cold assertion that a second chance; an exact do-over to right a wrong isn’t possible for us. Katla seems to suggest that this isn’t because the transgressed can’t forgive or forget (as the emerged have), but rather because the regretful are so altered by their own actions that reconciliation with the self (and thereby with others) is improbable if not impossible. In several instances, Katla tells us that a cheated endeavor at redemption is worse than the original punishment. Residents of Vik weathering the volcanic eruption, which spontaneously and unpredictably blows ash for a whole year, is excellent symbolism by Kormakur if intended. This theory is presented by Katla tenderly and universally using characters simultaneously empathetic and cruel, and its message should resonate with the ubiquitous confusion that comes with loss—something that we all experience individually. One more thing: the English dubbing is downright excellent. As someone completely distracted by poor translation of foreign series (e.g. American accents on Spanish films) and by any subtitles generally, I was shocked by how well the English (in Nordic accent) fit the actors’ movements—to the point where I was erroneously convinced that the Icelandic and English languages share many similarities. Ha! 10/5. If not the best, one of the best series I have ever enjoyed.