Dean DeBlois’ documentary film Heima (meaning “coming home” or “at home”) follows the band Sigur Rós on their summer 2006 tour of their home country Iceland. The tour consisted of mostly free, unannounced concerts, and with the band in three basic configurations spanning the continuum of the purely acoustic to the fully electric. The four core members Jónsi Birgisson, Georg Hólm, Kjartan “Kjarri” Sveinsson, and Orri Páll Dýrason perform several acoustic songs just for the camera. The extended band (including string ensemble Amiina) is also seen performing outdoors, fully Sigur Rósunplugged, at a concert protesting an environmentally destructive dam to be built by the Icelandic government. Finally, in contrast, we also see the full band in indoor concerts with dramatic lighting and video effects.
Many Sigur Rós songs are sung in an invented language called Vonlenska (“Hopelandic”), adding to the universality and international appeal of their music. For the uninitiated, Sigur Rós are a key representative of the musical genre “post-rock,” which generally refers to highly evocative, cinematic, largely instrumental music sometimes compared to movie soundtrack composition. Other notable bands working in roughly the same idiom include Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, and Múm. In my opinion, you can trace the genre’s heritage back to the progressive rock of Yes and King Crimson.
Interview clips and stunning landscape images punctuate the film, making it almost as much about Iceland itself as the band. The most incongruous clip is from the avant-garde band’s unlikely appearance on the Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn. They discuss being unprepared for the business side of a career in music (lawyers, contracts, etc.), but understand that they have to think of the future.
The second disc of the two DVD set features full uninterrupted performances, but with no two songs played in sequence, let alone a full concert. The fragmentation of both the main documentary film and the supplementary features is mildly disappointing. However, the band has plans for a full concert film directed by Vincent Morisset.
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