Though Björk’s voice can escalate to a growl on a dime, her default decibel is a breathy staccato, the nervous whisper of a church mouse. Even when speaking, her voice often pendulates into a quiet, sing-songy rhythm, like that of a mythic creature gently casting a spell over you. Fittingly, it is with a rhyme that she first appears in Nietzchka Keene’s The Juniper Tree, the medieval fantasy that marked her film debut. Björk’s presence is immediately spellbinding, fueled by a cherubic yet witchy energy that runs strong within her still. The film was shot in Iceland in 1986, when she was just 21, but it didn’t premiere until Sundance in 1990. This week, an extensive restoration of The Juniper Tree begins a theatrical run at New York’s Metrograph, before expanding to select cities nationwide.

The Juniper Tree is a feminist flip on the Brothers Grimm fairytale of the same name, which originally featured a brutal stepmother. In Keene’s vision, the stepmother, Katla (played by Bryndis Petra Bragadóttir), is less an unforgiving matriarch and more of a survivor. She’s the older of two sisters who are left to fend for themselves after their mother is stoned and burned to death for witchcraft; Björk plays the younger sister, a clairvoyant named Margit. Katla comes up with a plan to keep her and Margit safe: she casts a love spell on a recently widowed man named Jóhann (Valdimar Örn Flygenring), who quickly takes her in as his new wife. Unlike the typical fairytale portrayals of witches, Katla is shown using sorcery as a means to find safety in a world that misunderstands and punishes her kind. In a supernatural story, she’s the anchor that brings stark realism and the terrestrial concerns of womankind.

Margit, on the other hand, takes after Björk in the sense that she brings an otherworldly quality wherever she goes. In the film, her dark-abyss eyes often squint to the distance, frequently on the verge of tears, as if shaken to her core by an outside force—eyes that see something beyond the craggy expanse. That’s because Margit is the only one with visions of her dead mother. This connection ends up bonding her to Jóhann’s young son, Jónas (Geirlaug Sunna Þormar), who’s struggling with his own mother’s death and scheming to dismantle Katla’s place in their household. For a brief moment, thanks to Margit, there’s hope of a shift in the tense familial dynamic.

Margit (Björk) worries when she realizes she has the gift of visions, for which her mother was stoned and burned. Clip courtesy of Arbelos Films.

As an actress, Björk is better known for her role in Lars Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark, the 2000 film that nabbed her the Best Actress award at Cannes and birthed the infamous swan dress at the Oscars. Though that film also taps into her whimsical side (and utilizes her singing more), her childlike mysticism in The Juniper Tree is mesmerizing in a different way. Clothed in humble medieval garb, she is one with the earth, yet she must wrestle with her apocalyptic visions of events to come. In the film’s most memorable scene, her mother opens up her chest to reveal a black hole, through which Margit puts her hand. The meaning of this is unclear, but Margit’s visions turn toward ominous symbols just as the narrative takes a dark turn.

Keene was an American filmmaker who studied the Icelandic language. She captured the hills and caves of this fantastical setting on black-and-white, 35mm film to make it feel of a different time and place. Though this Grimm adaptation is rather, well, grim—it contains many sedate stretches and the resolution is no happily ever after—the subtle subversion on the story makes it a worthy watch, and not least for Björk’s presence as the affectional center of a stone-cold world.

Björk on set, photos courtesy of Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater. Björk on the set of The Juniper Tree. Photos courtesy of Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater.

It’s also interesting to consider The Juniper Tree in the context of Björk’s future visuals; a warped fairytale aesthetic has been one running theme in her brilliant and vast collection of music videos. You see it most notably in Michel Gondry’s clip for “Human Behaviour,” a surreal reimagination of the Goldilocks story in which Björk’s anti-heroine soars over trees and is pursued by stuffed animals. Even in her more down-to-earth videos like “Venus as a Boy,” where she spends the entire time cooking eggs, Björk’s quaint isolation and fondness for animals (here, an iguana) is vaguely reminiscent of a princess tucked away in a cottage, pining over the pleasures of her feminine prince in this update. And in what is arguably her visual masterwork, “Black Lake,” she hones her supernatural powers amid the famous landscape of her home country, one of her most constant inspirations. The Björk in “Black Lake” could very well be Margit 30 years later, resurrected with a vengeance.