Iceman review: Plays like an X-rated version of Aardman cartoon Early Man

Iceman is the only film you will see this year, or any other, in an early version of the Rhaetic language. “Translation is not required to comprehend the story,” the opening credits inform us. This is an everyday tale of murder, pillage and rape among neolithic village folk in the Otztal Alps thousands of years ago. The movie was inspired by the discovery of a body in the region after a glacier melted in the early 1990s. At first, everyone assumed the corpse was that of a hiker or climber who had got lost in the snow. Then, the scientists discovered he had been dead for 5,300 years. Felix Randau’s movie imagines what might have been the story of his life and death.

Iceman plays like an X-rated version of the recent Aardman cartoon Early Man. The early scenes in which we see residents in a little settlement tending the land and looking after their pigs suggest a time of pastoral contentment. We see childbirth and death. Life is very tough but the neolithic inhabitants appear to be living at one with nature. Then comes catastrophe. The community’s leader, Kelab (Jurgen Vogel), is off on a solo hunting trip when members of another tribe attack the village. The most shocking aspect of this scene is the matter of fact way in which these marauders massacre everyone in their sight. They walk around the village, stabbing, burning and garrotting men, women and children alike. They steal a few furs and a box containing a sacred glass-like stone and then wander off, showing as little urgency and emotion at their departure as at their arrival. When Kelab returns from his hunting trip, he encounters utter devastation. The only survivor is a newborn baby (showing an unexpected resourcefulness, he suckles the little tot on the teats of one of the surviving goats).

As Kelab sets off in pursuit of the killers, the film turns into a prehistoric answer to the typical revenge western. We may not be able to understand any of the muttered dialogue but the plot is easy to follow. Kaleb is a dab hand with a bow and arrow. He is also utterly ruthless. He wants to inflict as much suffering on the killers and their families as they inflicted on his community.

At times, Iceman risks degenerating into Monty Python-style kitsch. With his neat beard, Vogel looks more like a well-meaning hippy geography teacher or a member of a 1970s prog rock band than a Stone Age hunter. The brief presence of legendary spaghetti western star Franco Nero as a silver-haired troglodyte is disconcerting. Seasons pass in rapid-fire fashion. One moment, the climate seems springlike and benign and the next the hunter is tramping through icy blizzards or falling down a crevasse. His behaviour – and that of the three brutes he is pursuing – is hard to interpret. All these men are capable of great tenderness with their loved ones but treat other as animals only fit to be slaughtered. If Kelab has religious beliefs, they’re hard to work out. When he gouges out the eyeballs of one of his dead antagonists, you can’t help but wonder if the director has been watching too many John Ford films (in Ford’s The Searchers, John Wayne shoots out the eyes of a Comanche corpse to stop him entering the spirit world).

The film’s strength lies in its sense of mystery and in the primal nature of the story it tells. The Iceman is too consumed with thoughts of revenge ever to give into despair. He may not have much to live for but he refuses to die, whatever his enemies or the elements throw at him. Vogel plays him as a fatalistic but recklessly brave figure, determined to settle scores before giving into despair. The majestic landscapes add to the epic quality of a film that is bloodthirsty as it is original.