Smilla's Sense of Snow (film) - Plot

Plot

In 1859, a meteorite streaks across the sky and crashes into the Gela Alta glacier in western Greenland, causing a massive explosion that kills an Inuit fisherman.

In present day Copenhagen, Smilla Jasperson (Julia Ormond), a transplanted Greenlander, is studying ice crystals at a university lab. An Arctic ice specialist, Smilla is uncredentialed and unemployed with a troubled past. She returns to her apartment complex to find the body of her neighbor, Isaiah Christiansen (Clipper Miano), a six-year-old Inuit boy, lying dead in the snow. The police tell her the boy was playing on the roof and fell. On the roof Smilla sees the boy's footprints in the snow and suspects foul play. The pattern of the footprints reveal someone running straight to the edge of the roof. Knowing the boy was terrified of heights, she suspects he was running away from someone.

At the morgue Smilla meets Dr. Lagermann (Jim Broadbent). Seeing the body, Smilla remembers her friendship with the boy—reading to him, bathing him, taking him to the zoo. Her love for this neglected son of an alcoholic mother had given meaning to Smilla's lonely life. She is surprised to learn that Dr. Johannes Loyen (Tom Wilkinson), a prominent professor, performed the autopsy. The next day, she visits Loyen, who states it was an accident. Unconvinced, Smilla files a complaint with the District Attorney. She goes to Lagermann's home seeking more information, and he reveals he discovered a puncture wound on the boy's thigh made by a biopsy needle after his death. He also reveals that Loyen was examining the boy every month.

At the funeral, Smilla notices Dr. Andreas Tork (Richard Harris) trying to give money to the grieving mother who rejects it in anger; earlier she was also offered a pension from Greenland Mining following her husband's accidental death in Greenland. Detective Ravn (Bob Peck) from the District Attorney's office shows up at Smilla's apartment and agrees to look into the case, but Smilla discovers he is involved with Tork, the CEO of Greenland Mining. Smilla tracks down the company's former accountant, who directs her to the Expedition Report in the company archives. There she locates the report, and is surprised by her neighbor, the mechanic (Gabriel Byrne), who has followed her and now offers his help. They return to his apartment where she shares what she's discovered.

At the District Attorney's office, Ravn threatens Smilla with imprisonment—something Greenlanders find particularly stressful—for stealing Greenland Mining property. She agrees to suspend her investigation, but after learning from Isaiah's mother that her husband died from something in the melt water, she continues her investigation. Smilla meets her father, Moritz Jasperson (Robert Loggia), at a restaurant and asks for his help in understanding the Expedition Report. Their strained relationship is further complicated by the presence of his current mistress, Benja (Emma Croft), whose contempt for Smilla is reciprocated. Her father agrees to look into it, and later he shows her medical x-rays of Greenland Mining accident victims that reveal the presence of a lethal prehistoric "Arctic worm" thought to be long extinct. He explains how the presence of these worms inside a person's vital organs causes toxic shock and instant death.

At the apartment complex, Smilla discovers a cassette tape hidden behind the wall near Isaiah's old hiding spot beneath a stairwell. Unable to understand the audio, she takes the tape to an audio expert who cleans up the audio enough to reveal Isaiah's father talking to his son. The audio expert is soon murdered, and Smilla barely escapes with her life. Later Smilla and the mechanic follow their pursuers to a ship, which Tork is preparing for another Greenland excursion.

At the Casino Copenhagen, the mechanic's friend casino owner Birgo Lander (Peter Capaldi) provides Smilla information about the ship and points out its captain, a heavy gambler who is in debt to him. Lander agrees to help her get aboard the ship as an employee. Once on board, Smilla meets Nils Jakkelsen (Jürgen Vogel) who helps her discover video tapes revealing the truth about the Greenland operation—the discovery of an energy-producing meteorite that Tork believes will give his company a dominant position in the world. As the ship cuts through the dense Arctic ice packs, Smilla is chased throughout the ship by Tork's men. After Nils is killed, Smilla is helped by the mechanic, who secretly followed her aboard. He reveals he works for the government and was assigned to investigate Greenland Mining.

As the ship approaches the shore, Smilla leaves the ship following the mechanic's instructions and makes her way across the frozen landscape. She discovers the entrance to the Greenland Mining ice cave, where the company is doing research on the meteorite. Inside the cave she is captured by Tork's men, but she is rescued by the mechanic. Wounded from the exchange, Tork runs from the cave and out across the ice. The mechanic sets off a powerful bomb that destroys the cave in a massive explosion. The resulting waves move the ice beneath Tork, who falls and drowns in the freezing water. Smilla gazes out over the seemingly endless landscape of ice and snow—the land of her childhood.