In this character study disguised as a murder mystery, 50-something Ingimundur (Ingvar Sigurdsson), a police chief in an Icelandic village, silently and stoically grieves the death of his wife in a car accident two years earlier. Her car went through a guardrail along a winding, foggy highway and plunged into the sea—and we see the accident in the bravura opening shot.

In the first third, we follow Ingimundur on his daily routines, which include working on his house in the countryside and hosting his granddaughter, with whom he has a strong connection. He has very little use for anyone else. This includes his clearly work-ordered grief counselor, his two colleagues at the station, his daughter, and, for sure, his daughter’s husband, whom he dismisses with a glance. If this were an American film, Ingimundur would be played by Gary Cooper or Clint Eastwood. 

His daughter eventually brings over a box of his wife’s mementos from her house that Ingimundur wasn’t aware of. In it, he finds a photograph of a man he doesn’t know and a small movie camera with film of this man and his wife goofing off in a classroom. Something about their exchange makes Ingimundur suspicious, and he does some digging and discovers the younger man was a fellow art teacher at her elementary school. So Ingimundur starts following him, at his job, to his home, going so far as to join the same soccer league. He starts losing concentration, injuring himself while making repairs, and becomes violently volatile. And he gets the idea that his wife may have actually been murdered. There is no proof and no clues, but that doesn’t lessen his suspicion.

In a lesser movie, this would be the point when we would see an investigation, with clues and dead ends and backtracks; the suspense would build; and maybe there would be a red herring and a surprise third act reveal, but none of that happens here. Instead, Ingimundur stews and steeps in his suspicion, slowly poisoning the few people left in his life.

The film becomes less about murder and more about how grief can turn toxic if not dealt with, as well as how a particular generation of men was never taught to mourn, let alone express their feelings. This all hinges on Sigurdsson’s performance, which is fairly magnificently internalized, and director Hlynur Palmason knows it. Palmason has a tendency toward fairly pretentious sequences and shots, but when he focuses on Sigurdsson, all this falls away and you are left with this silent bull’s icy stare.

Much of the story line focuses on Ingimundur and his granddaughter, Salka (an impressive Ída Mekkin Hlynsdóttir). There is a deep connection, and more than anything, the film’s tension comes from the fraying of that relationship.

Unlike other Icelandic and Nordic films, there is very little gore or violence. But there is a darkness, an uncompromising outlook that seems to come from dealing with such a harsh environment. Ingimundur’s hell is replicated in the bleak, gray landscape he lives in and the fairly drab house that he is constantly renovating, evoking echoes of Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, where Gene Hackman’s corrupt character spends the entire movie attempting to build a house. Palmason and cinematographer Maria von Hausswolff do an excellent job of putting us in this desolated setting, practically suffocating us with it.

Palmason paces the piece beautifully, keeping the burn nice and slow while gradually raising the temperature to the breaking point for Ingimundur. The tension is nigh unbearable. The flaws that keep popping up are some fairly pretentious maneuvers. One example among many: Ingimundur is driving and hits a 10-pound, foot-long rock in the middle of the road. He gets out of the car and tosses it over the side of the road. The rock tumbles down a hill, and then in another shot, it plummets down further, until finally it hits the water with a plunk and then we get a view of the rock slowly sinking down to the bottom. It seems less like a metaphor for anything than a gag from Family Guy. Also, the beginning features a static shot of the exterior of Ingimundur’s house in the fall, then the spring, followed by snowy winter. This goes on for about two and a half minutes, all scored to an arty string quartet.

But these are fairly minor quibbles. For the most part A White, White Day delivers dark insights into the nature of grief free of sentimentality and sugar.