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The Quake (2018)

24 Sunday Mar 2019

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Original title: Skjelvet

D: John Andreas Andersen / 108m

Cast: Kristoffer Joner, Ane Dahl Torp, Edith Haagenrud-Sande, Kathrine Thorborg Johansen, Jonas Hoff Oftebro, Stig R. Amdam, Catrin Sagen, Per Frisch, Hanna Skogstad

Three years after saving hundreds of lives in the tsunami disaster that struck his home town of Geiranger, geologist Kristian Elkjord (Joner) is separated from his wife and family. While he still lives in Geiranger, they have moved to the capital, Oslo. The death of a colleague, Konrad (Frisch), in what is regarded as a rare seismic shift while working in a road tunnel, prompts Kristian to investigate further. Making contact with his former boss, Johannes (Amdam), Kristian’s suspicions that the seismic shift that killed Konrad could be an indicator of a bigger problem to come, is refuted. But when Kristian discovers that Konrad has been researching the possibility of another devastating earthquake similar to the one that struck Oslo in 1904, his suspicions appear to be well founded. With the help of Konrad’s daughter, Marit (Johansen), Kristian does his best to alert his family – wife Idun (Torp), teenage son Sondre (Oftebro), and young daughter Julia (Haagenrud-Sande) – but with all three of them in various parts of the city, getting to them in time and keeping them safe becomes even more perilous when Kristian’s fears become reality…

An unexpected but welcome sequel to The Wave (2015), The Quake is pretty much the same movie but on a grander, more devastating scale. There’s the usual long build up before the titular disaster happens, and there are the usual scenes where the hero tries to convince everyone around him that he’s not crazy or alarmist or both, and there are the standard, minor precursors to the main event to help build up the tension. It’s formulaic, and for the most part entirely predictable, but thanks to an astute script – courtesy of returning writers John Kåre Raake and Harald Rosenløw-Eeg – and Andersen’s confident handling of the material, this is that rare sequel that is as as good as the original. Having the same cast back to play the Elkjord family helps too, and the decision to have Kristian estranged from them due to his suffering from debilitating survivor’s guilt, gives many of the movie’s earliest scenes more of an emotional impact. So much so, that when it comes time for Kristian to take on the mantle of rescuer, the increasing peril everyone finds themselves in is all the more effective for the viewer in that there’s no guarantee they’ll all survive.

As with the scenario in The Wave, Raake and Rosenløw-Eeg have taken a real event in Norway’s history – the 1904 earthquake referred to hit 5.4 on the Richter Scale – and then explored the current research which advocates the strong possibility of another earthquake on the same scale happening at some unguessable point in the future. This plausibility adds to the credibility of the movie, and makes the actual earthquake depicted feel as if it could actually happen (there’s a restraint too in the amount of devastation that’s caused that also feels right). Joner and Torp reprise their roles with the same integrity and commitment they brought to The Wave, and there’s strong support from the rest of the cast, though Amdam is stuck playing the kind of blinkered character you hope will end up being taken out by a collapsing building. The cinematography is suitably bleak with a subdued colour palette and often gloomy lighting, but this is in keeping with the pessimistic nature of the material. The special effects are impressive without going over the top, and the various obstacles and problems that Kristian has to overcome to keep his family safe are well crafted and well thought out. The last thirty minutes are as tense and as nerve-wracking as anything else you’re likely to see in the disaster movie genre this year, but it does make you wonder, what next for the unfortunate Elkjords?

Rating: 8/10 – with a slow start that concentrates on its characters and promoting the inevitable danger they’ll face later on, The Quake offers a number of edge-of-the-seat moments in amongst all the mayhem, and it does so with a great deal of shrewdness and self-assurance; with a surfeit of suspense, and a handful of visceral shocks, this is an object lesson to how to make a disaster movie feel realistic, and how not to lose sight of the characters once it all goes spectacularly wrong.

The Wave (2015)

22 Thursday Oct 2015

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Wave, The

Original title: Bølgen

D: Roar Uthaug / 104m

Cast: Kristoffer Joner, Ane Dahl Torp, Jonas Hoff Oftebro, Edith Haagenrud-Sande, Fridtjov Såheim, Arthur Berning, Laila Goody, Eili Harboe, Thomas Bo Larsen

Geiranger in Norway is both the name of a fjord and the name of the small tourist village that nestles between the mountains at the fjord’s head. The area has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and features some of the most spectacular scenery in the world; as a result it’s the must-visit destination of hundreds of thousands of tourists each year. But there’s a problem, and that’s the nearby Åkerneset mountain, because at some point it will erode to the extent that a significant portion of it will collapse into the fjord and send a devastating eighty metre tsunami towards Geiranger. Simply put: the village will be flattened.

Against this background, the magnificently named Roar Uthaug and screenwriters Harald Rosenløw-Eeg and John Kåre Raake have fashioned that most unlikely of movies: a Norwegian disaster movie. But unlikely is as unlikely does, and The Wave is grounded by the fact that this type of event has happened elsewhere in Norway in the past (and the movie opens with a recap of these tragedies). Where movies like San Andreas (2015) try to impress with the size of the devastation on display, The Wave keeps it simple, and is so much better for it.

Focusing on geologist/mountain whisperer Kristian (Joner) and his family – wife/hotel receptionist Idun (Torp), teenage son/skateboarder Sondre (Oftebro), and cute young moppet Julia (Haagenrud-Sande) – the movie opens with Kristian on the verge of leaving Geiranger and the geologist’s facility where he works, and moving to the “big city”. But in classic movie fashion he senses that all is not well on Åkerneset, and instead of taking himself and his kids to the airport, he abandons them at the facility’s car park in order to go check out his hunch – which of course proves to be deadly accurate. But also in classic movie fashion, his colleagues, led by doubtful Arvid (Såheim), in a performance guaranteed to make viewers think of Charles Hallahan’s similarly unimpressed/stupid geologist in Dante’s Peak (1997), say they’ll keep an eye on things and that Kristian shouldn’t worry.

Stuck in Geiranger until the next day, Kristian drops Sondre off at the hotel where Idun works, while he and Julia spend one last night in their old home. Sondre heads off to skateboard in the basement levels with his earbuds in, and without telling anyone. With the mountain making the kind of noises that practically scream “Evacuate right now!”, Arvid and colleague Jacob (Berning) rapel down into a crevice in order to check their recording equipment, and find themselves right smack in the middle of the mountain’s decision to give up keeping it together. Before anyone can say “What was that noise?”, an eighty metre high tsunami is heading for Geiranger, and the clock is ticking: if everyone wants to get to safety, they’ve only got ten minutes to get there.

Wave, The - scene

At this point the special effects kick in, and very good they are too (the tsunami’s merciless, unstoppable rush toward the hotel is one of 2015’s most indelible images). With ten minutes proving too little time for everyone to save themselves, Kristian himself barely survives, while Julia at least is kept safe with a neighbour. Idun and Sondre find themselves holed up in the hotel’s bomb shelter with guest Phillip (Larsen) as the water level rises. What follows is the kind of race-against-time search and rescue mission these kind of movies thrive on, with Idun and Sondre facing more threats to their survival than would seem logically possible, and Kristian conveniently being in the right place at the right time to discover their whereabouts.

Hackneyed scripting aside, there’s tension aplenty in this “second half”, and the cast gamely play it straight, which adds to the edge-of-the-seat atmosphere that Uthaug creates (even if the viewer is certain it’ll all turn out okay in the end). One of the strengths of this scenario is that the family is one you can actually root for; for once they’re a family who clearly like each other and aren’t dysfunctional (it’s certainly more credible than Dwayne Johnson’s macho need to save his daughter in that other disaster movie). It’s also here that Uthaug uses his budget wisely, mixing vast swathes of destruction with more intimate location work and achieving a convincing fit with both. And there’s a decision made involving Phillip that hints at the script maybe having a darker edge in an earlier draft.

The Wave has been a massive hit in Norway, with almost a fifth of the country’s population having seen it on the big screen. Despite the subject matter – hey, let’s show what could happen when one of our mountains collapses – and its real life consequences, and not forgetting that the movie was actually shot in Geiranger, by keeping the heroics to a minimum, and dialling back on any potential histrionics, Uthaug and his cast and crew have made an effective, exciting thriller that surpasses expectations.

Rating: 8/10 – comprised of three distinct acts – “I think we should run”, “I hate it when I’m right”, and “I’d say I told you so but I have to go save my family first” – The Wave has a great deal of heart amid all the death and destruction, and never lets its more predictable elements get in the way of telling a good story; surprisingly gritty, and with a great deal of charm, it’s no wonder the movie’s been chosen as Norway’s Best Foreign Language Film entry at next year’s Oscars.

Cold Lunch (2008)

12 Saturday Jul 2014

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Cold Lunch

Original title: Lønsj

D: Eva Sørhaug / 90m

Cast: Ane Dahl Torp, Pia Tjelta, Aksel Hennie, Bjørn Floberg, Nicolai Cleve Broch, Anneke von der Lippe, Kyrre Haugen Sydness, Birgitte Victoria Svendson, Ingar Helge Gimle, Jan Gunnar Røise

A Norwegian drama focusing on the lives of five people who all live and (mostly) work in the same small section of Oslo, Cold Lunch introduces us to Leni (Torp), a forty-something woman who has spent the majority of her life in an apartment with her father; Christer (Hennie), a young man who can’t pay his rent; Heidi (Tjelta), a young mother whose husband, Odd (Sydness) is controlling and abusive; Turid (Svendson), a fifty-something woman who does her best to live an active, fulfilling lifestyle; and Kildahl (Floberg), whose disabled wife hates and despises him.  When Christer leaves for work one morning and he gets bird poo on his clothes, the “accident” sets in motion a chain reaction that brings these characters into each other’s orbits.

Using the washing machine of the building next door to his, Christer realises his money is in the pocket of his waistcoat.  Unable to open the washing machine, he finds the fuse box and pulls out the main fuse.  As he retrieves his money, Kildahl appears and challenges Christer, who promptly leaves (without apologising for causing everyone in the building an inconvenience).  Upstairs, Leni’s father has been killed as he attempts to restore power to his flat using his own fuse box.  Leni sees his body but does nothing; eventually Kildahl and an electrician visit the flat and find the old man.  In another apartment, Heidi is looking after her infant son.  With the power having been cut off, some of her husband’s clothes aren’t washed or ironed; he gets angry and when Heidi pleads for his understanding, Odd slaps her across the face before leaving.  Nearby, Christer quits his job because the store owner he works for won’t lend him the money he needs to pay his rent.  Odd works for a property management company; he finds Leni at the flat and informs her that her father’s contract for the flat ended when he died, and she must leave within the next two days.  Later, Kildahl is having dinner with his wife; angry with him and her condition she urinates while sitting at the dinner table.

Over the next couple of days, their lives intersect and new bonds are forged, while others are strengthened (or made to endure), and one is curtailed almost as soon as it’s begun, and one more remains unchanged.  Leni learns how to cope in the outside world, Christer gets an offer to join a small crew taking a boat to the Caribbean, Heidi tries her best to become a better partner to Odd, and mother to their son (with terrible consequences), and Kildahl and Turid both take each day as it comes in the hope that their lives will improve in some way, however small.

Cold Lunch - scene

The writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”.  And so it is with Cold Lunch, its characters seeking ways out of their individual predicaments, and not knowing how to find them.  It’s a bleak, unforgiving kind of movie, intent on showing what can happen when we all have a bad day, and the repercussions that, often, we’re not even aware of.  Happiness, the movie seems to say, is fleeting, and by no means guaranteed, even if you work hard for it, or deserve it.  By chance, Leni finds a job but she is still all alone in the world – a scene in a cafe sees her nodding in acknowledgement to a woman at the next table.  When she does it again, the woman is unimpressed and turns away.  Unable to connect with the world around her on a meaningful level, Leni (who appears to be the movie’s one “success” story) will always turn inward for comfort and peace of mind.

Likewise, Christer and Heidi find it difficult to connect with others.  Christer is almost entirely dependent on the people around him but he has a fundamental distrust of everyone.  He has a moment of self-awareness that seems to bring about a kind of personal salvation, but how long it will last is uncertain.  Heidi’s life is even more wretched, her proclivity for self-denial dictating her behaviour at every turn.  She too has a moment of self-awareness (mixed with a burst of self-confidence), but it’s fleeting and she renounces any chance of changing her life almost straight away.  Her future is the bleakest, and has a grim inevitability.  The same can be said for Kildahl, his relationship with his wife entirely one-sided, his attitude toward her more as a parent with a disabled child than as a husband to his wife.  They are both locked in a loveless marriage of co-dependency, and as both are middle-aged, they will continue to make each other miserable for some time to come.  And Turid, whose life, at least, is governed by principles, doesn’t realise just how these principles will continue to keep her alone.

From all this it could be assumed that Cold Lunch is a dark, depressing movie, but despite its subject matter, it’s an oddly positive movie that makes you root for the characters even when you know there’s very little hope for them.  Per Schreiner’s script also has quirky moments of dry humour and unexpected levity amongst all the gloom.  There are good performances all round – Torp and Hennie are particularly effective – and the photography by John Andreas Andersen is understated while also emphasising the bright, airy rooms and outdoor spaces the characters inhabit (which reinforce how alone they are).  Making her feature debut, director Sørhaug shows sound judgment in her approach to the material and alleviates the doom and gloom with carefully constructed moments of hope, along with the aforementioned levity.  At times, she walks a bit of a tightrope in getting the balance right, and there are moments when the movie stumbles under the weight of its ambition – an homage to Hitchcock’s The Birds is clumsily done, and leads to an accident that no one responds to in anything resembling an appropriate manner – but all in all, Cold Lunch is quirky, and oddly affirmative despite its characters trials and tribulations.

Rating: 8/10 – darkly humorous at times, and in a way that only the Scandinavians can pull off, Cold Lunch is not for everyone; too downbeat for its own good at times, it’s nevertheless a movie well worth seeking out and rewards on closer inspection.