White Night Wedding follows the life of Jón during the day leading up to his second marriage. Jón is an ex-professor living on the small island of Flatey, Iceland. The opening scene sets up the film's light attitude, but also tells us of Jón's controversial past. In the beginning of the film, we learn that his ex-wife, stricken with manic-depression, convinced him to leave his job as a professor in Reykjavik and move to Flatey, where she is from. We later learn that once they moved to Flatey, Jón became close to a girl that was his student at university. As Anna, Jón's first wife, realizes that she is losing her husband, her mental state becomes worse and worse. The director, Baltasar Kormákur, uses Jón's flashbacks to his previous marriage to explain to the viewers what happened in Jón's first marriage and what led him to marry Þóra. These flashbacks, tinted with different lighting to differentiate them from the present, only tell the viewer a small part of the story at a time, so they are unaware of many important details until the end. This leaves some excitement and keeps the viewer watching. While I liked the excitement, sometimes the flashbacks were not clearly a flashback and confused me. Kormákur sometimes used a specific cut style to signify that the upcoming scene was a flashback, but other times the film would jump cut to the scene without telling the viewer if it was in the present or in the past. This was especially confusing at the beginning of the movie, but once I was used to the style of the film, I became more prepared for scenes to be set in the past.
One of the main themes we can see in the film is money. Iceland's economic state is not very strong, so money is a common theme in Icelandic films. When Jón and Anna move to Flatey, Jón meets Börkur, who dreams of building a golf course on the island. Börkur convinces Jón to invest in this golf course, including cutting a deal with the family of his future bride, Þóra. Jón rents land from Þóra's family, but does not pay for it. This deal is central to the plot, as Þóra's mother continuously nags Jón and Þóra throughout the film, threatening to call off the wedding if he does not pay her. Þóra's father is frustrated by his wife's obsession with the money and secretly gives money to Jón to be used to pay for the land. However, Jón passes out outside and the money blows away to be found by the island's priest. The economy of Iceland clearly impacts the lives of those on the island and leads Þóra's mother to worry more about money than her own daughter's wedding.
While dealing with his fiancé's mother and her obsession with his debt, Jón is also feeling more and more guilty about the events leading up to his second marriage. We learn from a few flashbacks that Jón cheated on Anna with Þóra and when Anna caught them, she rowed a leaky boat into the sea and drowned herself. As we get closer to the wedding, Jón becomes increasingly quiet and distant from Þóra. At the wedding, Jón asks Þóra to step outside with him and calls off the wedding, telling her that he does not want to drive her to madness and death as he believes he did to Anna. She begs him to stop thinking that way, saying that she will make him happy and help him until the day she dies. During this argument, the entire wedding party comes out to watch the unfolding drama. Jón runs to the sea and gets in the same leaky boat that Anna used to drown herself. He prepares to kill himself the same way until Þóra and the rest of the wedding party make it to the sea. Þóra swims to him and they decide to get married in the sea. The priest is carried out and they take their vows, seemingly ending the movie on a positive note. Although Jón has had a hard time with his marriages and is unsure about marrying again, Þóra seems to have saved him and made him happy. However, the final scene tells us that that is not how the marriage works out. Ironically, Jón becomes the satisfied married man, while Þóra seems to become the one sneaking off and looking for something better, as Jón did with Anna. As cheating was a central theme in the plot of the film, this seems to be a sort of poetic justice for what Jón did to Anna and tells the viewers that cheating is usually not the best way to start out a relationship.
One of the main themes we can see in the film is money. Iceland's economic state is not very strong, so money is a common theme in Icelandic films. When Jón and Anna move to Flatey, Jón meets Börkur, who dreams of building a golf course on the island. Börkur convinces Jón to invest in this golf course, including cutting a deal with the family of his future bride, Þóra. Jón rents land from Þóra's family, but does not pay for it. This deal is central to the plot, as Þóra's mother continuously nags Jón and Þóra throughout the film, threatening to call off the wedding if he does not pay her. Þóra's father is frustrated by his wife's obsession with the money and secretly gives money to Jón to be used to pay for the land. However, Jón passes out outside and the money blows away to be found by the island's priest. The economy of Iceland clearly impacts the lives of those on the island and leads Þóra's mother to worry more about money than her own daughter's wedding.
While dealing with his fiancé's mother and her obsession with his debt, Jón is also feeling more and more guilty about the events leading up to his second marriage. We learn from a few flashbacks that Jón cheated on Anna with Þóra and when Anna caught them, she rowed a leaky boat into the sea and drowned herself. As we get closer to the wedding, Jón becomes increasingly quiet and distant from Þóra. At the wedding, Jón asks Þóra to step outside with him and calls off the wedding, telling her that he does not want to drive her to madness and death as he believes he did to Anna. She begs him to stop thinking that way, saying that she will make him happy and help him until the day she dies. During this argument, the entire wedding party comes out to watch the unfolding drama. Jón runs to the sea and gets in the same leaky boat that Anna used to drown herself. He prepares to kill himself the same way until Þóra and the rest of the wedding party make it to the sea. Þóra swims to him and they decide to get married in the sea. The priest is carried out and they take their vows, seemingly ending the movie on a positive note. Although Jón has had a hard time with his marriages and is unsure about marrying again, Þóra seems to have saved him and made him happy. However, the final scene tells us that that is not how the marriage works out. Ironically, Jón becomes the satisfied married man, while Þóra seems to become the one sneaking off and looking for something better, as Jón did with Anna. As cheating was a central theme in the plot of the film, this seems to be a sort of poetic justice for what Jón did to Anna and tells the viewers that cheating is usually not the best way to start out a relationship.