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thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

thedullwoodexperiment

Tag Archives: Norway

22 July (2018)

12 Friday Oct 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Anders Danielsen Lie, Bombing, Drama, Jonas Strand Gravli, Literary adaptation, Norway, Paul Greengrass, Review, Terrorist attack, True story, Utøya Island

D: Paul Greengrass / 144m

Cast: Anders Danielsen Lie, Jonas Strand Gravli, Jon Øigarden, Maria Bock, Thorbjørn Harr, Seda Witt, Isak Bakli Algen, Ola G. Furuseth

On 22 July 2011, a right-wing extremist named Anders Behring Breivik (Lie) carried out two acts of domestic terrorism in Norway. In the first, he set off a bomb outside the executive government quarter in Oslo. Less than two hours later, at a summer camp on Utøya Island, he shot and killed dozens of the people there, most of whom were teenagers. With the two attacks, Breivik killed a total of seventy-seven people and injured over three hundred others. Breivik surrendered to police on Utøya, and was soon charged with carrying out both attacks. His lawyer, Geir Lippestad (Øigarden), suggested that Breivik opt for a defense based on insanity, and Breivik was assessed by psychiatrists who diagnosed him as being a “paranoid schizophrenic”. But at trial, and even though the prosecution had to accept the diagnosis (which would potentially have seen Breivik committed to an institution rather than prison), Breivik realised this would blunt the message he wanted to make. Insisting that he wasn’t insane, Breivik made it clear he was fully cognisant of his actions, and that he carried out the attacks out of a sense of necessity…

Any retelling of a tragedy of the scale of the 2011 Norway attacks needs a sensitive approach, and it’s no suprise that when the movie was first announced, a campaign to stop its production was raised, and 20,000 signatures were generated. But those who didn’t want to see the movie made needn’t have worried, because 22 July is as restrained and as unsensational as you could possibly get. Thanks to an intelligent, well-constructed script (by Paul Greengrass), and equally intelligent, perceptive direction, this adaptation of Åsne Seierstad’s book, One of Us: The Story of a Massacre in Norway – and Its Aftermath, is less about the terrorist attacks and more about what happened in their wake, from the trial of Breivik and its conclusion, to the physical, mental and emotional rehabilitation of a (fictional) survivor of the Utøya shootings, Viljar Hanssen (Gravli), to the ways in which Norway as a country dealt with the horror of such events happening on its native soil. Successfully mixing the broader details of this last with the personal details of Viljar’s struggle to regain his sense of self, and Breivik’s self-aggrandising polemical references, Greengrass avoids any potential accusations of unnecessary melodrama, and opts instead for a quiet sincerity that permeates the whole movie.

What this gives us is a movie that approaches the material in a patient matter-of-fact way that eschews the need for tension or more traditional thriller elements, but which does pack several emotional punches into its structure. Like much of the movie, these moments are quietly devastating, often coming out of the characters’ need to understand what happened and, more importantly, why it happened to them. To his credit, Greengrass doesn’t offer very many answers, and it’s this sense of confusion that carries much of the movie’s middle section, as conversely, it becomes clear that whatever larger motivations Breivik may have had, notoriety seems to be the one that he’s most comfortable with (there’s a horrible moment where he complains casually about a cut to his finger caused by a “skull fragment” from one of his victims). Lie is excellent in the role: smug, condescending, without an ounce of remorse, and chillingly banal; Breivik might not be a paranoid schizophrenic, but in Lie’s interpretation, he’s definitely got some kind of dissociative disorder. Gravli is equally compelling as the good-natured teen forced into some very dark corners through being a survivor, and Øigarden displays Lippestad’s patient forbearance of his client with great skill and diplomacy. In fact, this is that rare cast where everyone is on top form, and as they’re all Norwegian, that’s something that couldn’t have been better.

Rating: 8/10 – with only a tendency to drag during a middle section that repeats a number of encounters and narrative discursions to be held against it, 22 July is further proof that Paul Greengrass is one of the best writer/directors currently making movies; insightful and incisive, he’s crafted a movie that does full justice to the terrible events of that fateful day, and he does so with great skill and an abundance of straightforward honesty, something that should placate all those who didn’t want the movie made in the first place.

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Thelma (2017)

20 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Drama, Eili Harboe, Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Henrik Rafaelsen, Joachim Trier, Kaya Wilkins, Mystery, Norway, Review, Romance, Thriller

D: Joachim Trier / 116m

Cast: Eili Harboe, Kaya Wilkins, Henrik Rafaelsen, Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Grethe Eltervåg, Vanessa Borgli

Selected as Norway’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at next year’s Oscars, Thelma is a curious mix of genres that starts off slowly but which quickly gathers momentum as it examines the life of its titular character (Harboe), and explores the mystery that surrounds a series of strange phenomena that occur around her. It’s an often beguiling movie, a drama that shifts its narrative focus from time to time in order to wrong foot the viewer, and to keep them guessing as to the true nature of said strange phenomena. As well as a drama it’s a psychological thriller, a romance, a muted horror, and these are all wrapped up in a mystery that draws them together to provide a slow burn experience that is increasingly effective even when it seems that it’s not going to offer much in the way of anything really new.

Thelma is a student who has moved to Oslo to complete her studies. She’s quiet, a little removed from the other students, but otherwise there’s nothing to distinguish her outwardly from anyone else. She’s studious, speaks to her parents (Rafaelsen, Petersen) regularly, and doesn’t drink or smoke because of her religious beliefs – which are really her parents’ beliefs. Her father is a doctor, and her mother is in a wheelchair following an accident that we don’t get to know about until near the end of the movie. Thelma allows herself to be instructed by them in how to behave socially, and if she deviates in any way from the pattern her life is fitting into, then they behave suspiciously about her motives and actions until she can reassure them. More important still, she has to take the medication her father has prescribed for her since she was a child.

Things begin to change when she notices Anja (Wilkins), a fellow student. A mutual attraction develops between them, and as their relationship becomes more intimate, Thelma begins to experience strange dreams and reveries that hark back to her childhood. Increasingly confused and concerned about these experiences, Thelma submits to various medical tests but they prove inconclusive while adding to the stress she’s increasingly feeling. Her fear and uncertainty also leads to her breaking many of her parents’ rules, but the consequence of this is that her relationship with Anja begins to suffer. Needing to find some answers to the visions she’s experiencing, Thelma finds that those answers are much closer to home than she could have ever expected. (The audience will already have garnered as much from the movie’s opening scene, where a young Thelma (Eltervåg) has a rifle pointed at her by her father while he decides whether or not to pull the trigger.)

Trier is a director who likes to introduce an uncomfortable tension into the most mundane of circumstances or moments, and Thelma is no different. Thelma’s quiet, modest demeanour is reflected in the way that Trier presents the world around her, an equally quiet, modest part of Oslo that acts as the perfect backdrop for a story that slowly reveals a darkness both inside its main character and lurking around her almost like a living thing. Thelma herself is a young woman who’s almost a blank slate when we first meet her, but as the movie progresses we begin to find that she’s also a young woman who has modest personal ambitions, and who wants to break away from the religious yoke that’s been imposed on her by her parents. But this religious yoke has a reason behind it, as does the medication she takes, and as the mystery of the strange phenomena that happen around her begins to take shape and Thelma is revealed to be much more of a danger to herself and others – particularly others – Trier increases the tension within the narrative, and keeps the viewer unwittingly on the edge of their seat. You might be able to work out what’s going on, and Trier isn’t too concerned if you do, but what he does so well is to draw in the viewer and make them eager to see where Thelma’s story is going to end.

It’s clear that the movie is heading toward a tragedy, but along the way, the movie adds further tragedy to the mix, making Thelma’s emotional awakening something to be feared rather than admired. There are echoes of Carrie (1976) here, as Thelma learns something startling and frightening about herself, and there are moments of dread that are powerful and disturbing. Trier orchestrates these moments with an efficient disregard for Hollywood or mainstream conventions, and mounts them with a clear-eyed focus on the emotional traumas that arise from them. These moments carry an impact that becomes more oppressive with each reverie or actual occurrence, and by the movie’s end, Trier has successfully reached a pitch that highlights the full nature of the tragedy hidden in Thelma’s childhood. But as bleak and as uncompromising as the movie gets toward the end, Trier is able to offer the viewer a measure of hope amidst all the misfortune that befalls Thelma and the people around her.

As Thelma, Harboe – making only her second feature in a leading role (take note, BFI staff) – gives a studied, sympathetic performance that bodes well for the actress’s future. Her open gaze and gauche approach to the character works well in the opening scenes, and as Thelma begins to find herself, Harboe gives full expression to the blossoming that the character undergoes and the mixture of happiness and disorientation that she experiences; it’s like watching a teenage girl slowly coming to terms with becoming an adult, and all that that entails. Wilkins is an ethereal presence at times, with a wistful look that is enticing, and in their scenes together, she and Harboe exhibit a natural chemistry that makes their characters’ relationship all the more credible. Visually, the movie is quite austere, though deliberately so, with Jakob Ihre’s cinematography perfectly matching the emotional astringence shown at the movie’s beginning, and then subtly changing to then match the more emotional and dramatic elements seen later on. There’s also a somewhat disconcerting but effective score courtesy of Ola Fløttum that provides a further layer of unease to Trier’s poignant love story and Thelma’s journey of self-discovery.

Rating: 8/10 – some of Trier’s inspirations for Thelma will be obvious, but he uses them in such unexpected and unforced ways that they always feel suitable to the material and not just for show; a movie that gathers an inexorable momentum as it goes, this is the kind of intelligent psychological romantic horror thriller that doesn’t come along too often, but which you’ll be glad to have seen now that it has.

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A Brief Word About the BFI London Film Festival 2017

13 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Argentina, BFI, China, Drama, France, Ivan Mosjoukine, Joachim Trier, London Film Festival 2017, Lynne Ramsay, Movies, Norway, Sean Baker, Silent movie, Thriller

Each year in October, the London Film Festival takes place, and each year I endeavour to see as many movies as I can within – usually – a five day period. And with each passing year it proves more and more difficult to decide what to see. Quite simply, there’s too much choice, so much so that it’s impossible to see every movie that is shown. This year, however, and thanks to a new job, my visit to the Festival has been reduced to the final two days, the 14th and 15th. Here is my itinerary for the next two days:

Saturday 14 October:

The Florida Project (2017) – Sean Baker’s follow up to Tangerine (2015) about a family living in the shadow of Disney World and struggling to make ends meet.

The Prince of Adventurers (1927) – a French production charting the life of Casanova with the Italian lover played by Russian émigré Ivan Mosjoukine.

The Cured (2017) – an Irish horror movie where a zombie outbreak has seen a cure found, but distrust of the once infected leads to social injustice and eventual martial interference.

Wrath of Silence (2017) – more international intrigue in this Chinese movie set in a small town where corruption is rife and a mute miner takes a violent stand against it.

Sunday 15 October:

You Were Never Really Here (2017) – Lynne Ramsay’s latest is a taut psychological thriller that promises a terrific performance from Joaquin Phoenix.

Thelma (2017) – a Norwegian thriller that’s also a mystery and a romantic drama, and the latest mainstream art movie from Joachim Trier.

The Endless (2017) – this is a dark, cult-like movie about a cult and two ex-members who begin to wonder/suspect that maybe there’s more to the cult’s beliefs than they ever considered.

The Summit (2017) – an Argentinian political thriller that places that country’s (fictional) President in a personal bind that could have far-reaching effects on his personal and professional lives.

Needless to say, I’m looking forward to seeing all of these movies – and reviewing them over the coming week. Being at the Festival and seeing a range of movies that are unlikely to be released in UK cinemas (and sometimes no matter how well received they are) is a massive bonus each year, and the BFI always manages to pull together an impressive programme of movies for everyone to enjoy. Away from the special gala showings and red carpet screenings, it’s often the less well known movies that have the most to offer, and not one of the movies that I’m planning to see lacks the ability to stand out from the crowd. I just can’t wait to get started!

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For One Week Only: Women Directors – 3. Maya Deren & the Fifties

12 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Alexander Hammid, At Land, Avant garde, Chao Li Chi, Døden er et kjærtegn, Edith Carlmar, Experimental movies, France, Jacqueline Audry, Japan, Kinuyo Tanaka, Love Letter, Maya Deren, Meditation on Violence, Meshes in the Afternoon, Norway, Olivia (1951), Shirley Clarke, The Fifties, Women directors

Introduction

Women directors had been prevalent during the Silent Era, but with the advent of sound, many prominent careers foundered or were unable to continue. In Hollywood, only Dorothy Arzner maintained a career within the male-dominated heirarchy that viewed women directors as “box office poison”, and she did so by making moderately successful, conservative movies that weren’t transgressive in any way at all. In 1943, she made her last movie before making the switch to television. But while Hollywood showed no interest in encouraging would-be women directors to replace her, elsewhere, there were women who, like Ida Lupino at the end of the decade, weren’t letting Hollywood tell them how to make movies…

Maya Deren (1917-1961)

Maya Deren

An experimental movie maker, Deren made a series of short, avant garde experimental movies between 1943 and 1948 that remain some of the most impressive movies of their type ever made. Her first movie, Meshes in the Afternoon (1943) is a surreal tale of a woman whose dreams may or may not be happening in reality, and is technically astonishing for the scene where there are multiple Derens at a table (the movie was filmed using a 16mm Bolex camera). It’s dreamlike (naturally) and enigmatic, but fascinating to watch nevertheless.

She followed this with Witch’s Cradle (1944), a collection of images and static shots that wasn’t as well received, and in the same year she and her husband Alexander Hammid collaborated on a documentary short The Private Life of a Cat. She ended the year by making At Land, a haunting study of a woman’s trek through various foreign environments that she encounters; her sense of herself in these environments and her reaction to them makes for an intriguing study of isolationism and the need to belong.

In 1945 she made A Study in Choreography for Camera, a movie that packs so much about time and motion through the movement of a dancer in its four minutes that it’s almost dizzying how much Deren has managed to include in that time. It’s a movie that confronts ideas about space and time and motion that are so stimulating, it makes the viewer wonder why there aren’t more movies like it. Dance was also the main feature of her next project, Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946); its blend of dance and surrealism, allied to notions of freedom of expression, makes for some very eloquent and poetic imagery.

In 1946 her work was acknowledged with a Guggenheim Fellowship for “Creative Work in the Field of Motion Pictures”. She also won the Grand Prix Internationale for 16mm experimental film at the Cannes Film Festival (for Meshes in the Afternoon). Deren’s last movie in the Forties was Meditation on Violence (1948), a collaboration with martial arts expert Chao Li Chi that looks at the ideals of the Wu Tang philosophy. It’s a cloistered affair with the movie being rewound part way through, thus obscuring the message (unfortunately). It’s still an intriguing look at a way of living life in a particular fashion, and Chao is a mesmerising figure.

Meditation on Violence

The 50’s

At the same time that Ida Lupino made her last independent movie, The Bigamist (1953), a member of the New York avant garde modern dance movement called Shirley Clarke made her first short movie, Dance in the Sun. Clarke had wanted to be a choreographer, but she was unsuccessful at this, and on the advice of her psychiatrist, followed her interest in movies instead. She made several more shorts in the Fifties, including A Moment in Love (1957) and Bridges-Go-Round (1958). All were well-received, and Clarke continued to make her own kind of experimental movies in the Sixties.

Shirley Clarke

Maya Deren made two more short movies in the Fifties, Ensemble for Somnambulists (1951) and The Very Eye of Night (1958), two similar explorations of dance form and composition that also looked at ritual and expression as shown through movement. Deren stayed true to her beliefs about the nature of film, and her sudden death in 1961 was a tragedy in every sense of the word. She once said, “I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick”; but what she achieved in such a short directorial career was nothing short of miraculous, and she remains a tremendous influence on experimental movie makers the world over.

1953 was also the year that saw Japanese actress Kinuyo Tanaka make her debut as a director with Love Letter. Only the second woman to have a career as a director – after Tazuko Sakane – Tanaka’s romantic drama was entered into the 1954 Cannes Film Festival. She made five further movies between 1955 and 1962, one of which, The Moon Has Risen (1955) was co-scripted by Yasujirô Ozu. Tanaka had a surety of touch behind the camera and her visual style was eloquent and disarming. She maintained her career as an actress, and won several awards later on, but her movies, though hard to find now, show a smart, capable movie maker who was comfortable behind the camera because of how comfortable she was in front of it.

Kinuyo Tanaka

In France, the career of Jacqueline Audry, which had begun with the short Le Feu de paille (1943), flourished in the Fifties, and she had particular success with a series of adaptations of novels by Colette, Gigi (1949), Minne (1950), and Mitsou (1956). Audry often tackled topics that were considered controversial, such as the relationship between a schoolmistress and one of her pupils in Olivia (1951), a movie that has come to be regarded as a “landmark of lesbian representation”. With the rise of the French New Wave her more traditional style was at odds with the prevailing trends in French cinema, and she only made three movies in the Sixties, but overall her career shows she was a woman who wasn’t afraid to challenge conventional notions of sexuality and female submissiveness (even if it meant her movies were often heavily censored).

Jacqueline Audry

Another actress who made the transition to directing was Norway’s Edith Carlmar. In 1949 she made what is regarded as the very first film noir directed by a woman, Døden er et kjærtegn. It was a success, and she followed it up with a drama about mental illness called Skadeskutt (1951). Another female director who wasn’t afraid to tackle serious issues that most mainstream (male) directors wouldn’t go near, Carlmar made a total of ten movies between 1949 and 1959, and each one was both a box office success and critically well-received, a remarkable achievement for the period, and one that makes her one of the most successful female movie directors of the last seventy years.

Edith Carlmar

Even though these women were forging careers for themselves, and were making sometimes controversial, challenging and experimental movies, they remained a minority in an international industry that still didn’t trust women to be successful or able to attract audiences in the first place. But this misogyny was about to face its first real, and proper, challenge, as the movement towards female empowerment that began to express itself in the Sixties encouraged women movie makers to become bolder and to demand more of an equal place in cinema.

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The Wave (2015)

22 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Ane Dahl Torp, Åkerneset, Disaster movie, Drama, Fjord, Geiranger, Geologists, Jonas Hoff Oftebro, Kristoffer Joner, Mountain, Norway, Review, Roar Uthaug, Thriller, Tsunami

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.

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90 Minutes (2012)

04 Saturday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Abuse, Aksel Hennie, Bjørn Floberg, Drama, Eva Sørhaug, Mads Ousdal, Marital problems, Norway, Pia Tjelta, Relationships, Review

90 Minutes

Original title: 90 minutter

D: Eva Sørhaug / 89m

Cast: Bjørn Floberg, Mads Ousdal, Pia Tjelta, Aksel Hennie, Annmari Kastrup, Kaia Varjord

Johan (Floberg) has reached a point in his life where he’s made a profound decision as to his immediate future. He’s determined to put several aspects of his life behind him, such as the room he rents and a subscription he’s taken out. As he makes these changes, he’s goes about them with a sense of finality and sadness. Fred (Ousdal) is a cop who’s marriage to Elin (Tjelta) has ended in divorce. They have two young children, both girls, and Fred’s presence in their home while Elin plans a party is being tolerated by his ex-wife. When she takes a call from someone who is coming to the party and is currently playing golf, Fred assumes the man is the new love in her life, something that he isn’t happy about. Trond (Hennie) is a young man who appears to be living alone in a sparsely furnished apartment. He listens to the radio and tapes up his right hand but otherwise seems unmotivated. He goes into his bedroom, where he strips and has sex with a woman (Varjord) who is gagged and tied to the bed. Also in the room is a baby, which starts crying.

Johan arrives back home from a trip out. His wife, Hanna (Kastrup), is there. He begins to prepare dinner for them while Hanna has a shower. He is methodical and precise and makes sure that everything is just so. Fred begins to antagonise Elin by refusing to leave when she asks him to, and by complaining that she never seemed interested in golf before. He also finds excuses to remain there that involve either their children, or a neighbour. Elin loses her patience and insists that he leave. He eventually does so, and drives off angrily. Trond releases the woman tied to his bed to see to the baby. She is his partner, Karianne, and the baby is theirs. With the baby seen to, she begins to cook for them both, but when she looks out of the window, Trond becomes angry and attacks her. He drags her back into the bedroom and reties her to the bed. He snorts some cocaine, then arranges to meet a friend in order to get some more.

During their dinner, Johan prepares some gravy that he lets his wife try first. She becomes woozy and soon passes out. Fred drives around until he ends up back at his old home. He gets out of his car and goes inside to confront his family. Trond is visited by his friend and another man, who assault him and take his TV as repayment for his drug debts. Angry at being humiliated he decides to take it out on Karianne. He forces her to have sex and in the process nearly suffocates her, but stops just short of doing so. All three men find themselves on the verge of having their lives changed forever.

90 Minutes - scene

Only the second feature by talented director Sørhaug after Cold Lunch (2008), 90 Minutes is a bleak, uncompromising slice of Norwegian angst that gives the barest amount of detail for each man’s behaviour, and is coldly judgmental when it comes to the outcomes of each story. We meet each man at a stage where their individual journeys have reached a point of no return (though Trond’s is a little less cut and dried).

Johan’s actions are calculated and, in their own way, heartless and cruel. There may be an element of love involved in his actions toward Hanna, but the absence of any concrete reason for his actions doesn’t allow for any sympathy from the viewer. It’s clear he does have a reason for doing what he’s doing but Sørhaug is clever enough to make that reason irrelevant; his sadness tells us enough, and as we watch Johan carry out his plan, the sense of foreboding that builds is carefully orchestrated to the point where inevitability and hope collide, leaving a melancholy chill over the storyline that is quietly and unquestionably effective. Floberg is subdued, almost absent throughout, his careworn face providing all the information we need as to what he’s feeling. Of the three men he’s the most restrained and the most agonised, and Floberg gives perhaps the best performance as a result.

Fred is a man with unresolved marital issues and a simmering layer of anger lurking beneath an outwardly pleasant façade. Of the three men he’s the most recognisable and understandable, his jealous possessiveness a staple of marital dramas the world over. Sadly, this very familiarity stops Sørhaug from making his and Elin’s storyline from being anything more than entirely predictable, and his return to their home has all the surprise of presents at Xmas, especially after we learn he’s “taking a break” from active duty as a cop and is behind a desk. Nevertheless, Ousdal steers clear of making Fred too obvious, and makes his face almost mask-like when around other people. It’s only when he’s in his car that we see the full range of the emotions he’s feeling and realise just where those emotions will take him. As a transformation it’s unnerving and unexpectedly affecting.

As for Trond, he’s perhaps the most tormented of the three, his drug dependency exacerbating his paranoia and abusive behaviour towards Karianne. He’s an ogre, pitiless and self-absorbed, a rapist whose abusive nature has robbed him of every last ounce of decency. His actions are abominable, and it’s a measure of Sørhaug’s script, and Hennie’s abilities as an actor, that Trond isn’t allowed even the faintest hint of understanding or redemption; he’s unlikeable all the way through. Of the three storylines, Trond’s is the most difficult to watch, with its moments of domestic violence and sexual assault, and Sørhaug (again) is clever enough to thwart the audience’s expectations. The ultimate fate of Trond and Karianne and the baby is one that allows the movie to end on a note of cautious hope, but a note that nevertheless comes without any guarantees.

90 Minutes is a hard movie to like as such, its unremittingly grim mise en scene and examination of extreme misogynistic behaviour making it tough to engage with. But Fred’s story aside, Sørhaug’s script is still intrepid enough to make the other two storylines surprisingly engrossing. She also makes the camera more of an observer than a participant, allowing a more dispassionate approach to the material that offsets the horrors being witnessed. Henrik Skram’s icy score adds another dimension to the austere proceedings, and there’s sterling camera work from Harald Gunnar Paalgard, particularly in Trond’s apartment.

Rating: 7/10 – by making Johan, Fred and Trond so unsympathetic, writer/director Sørhaug runs the risk of making 90 Minutes too unpalatable for the average viewer, but there’s enough to admire in the stringent, uncompromising set ups to make up for any distaste at the characters’ actions; one that will linger in the memory and with a cathartic moment that remains appropriately unsatisfying.

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Cold Lunch (2008)

12 Saturday Jul 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Aksel Hennie, Ane Dahl Torp, Chain reaction, Drama, Eva Sørhaug, Loneliness, Marital problems, Norway, Oslo, Pia Tjelta, Selfishness

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.

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Everywhen (2013)

06 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Alternate reality, Elin Synnøve Braathen, Harald Evjan Furuholmen, Hugo Herrman, Jarand Breian Herdal, Jens Peder Hertzberg, Microchips, Norway, Police, Review, Sci-fi, Special effects, Student project

Everywhen

D: Jarand Breian Herdal / 70m

Cast: Harald Evjan Furuholmen, Hugo Herrman, Elin Synnøve Braathen, Graeme Whittington, Hauk Phillip Bugge, Rune Dennis Tønnesen, Ruben Løfgren, Gjermund Gjesme, Joseph Whittington

Set some time in the future, Everywhen shows us a world where teleportation is in common everyday usage, and education exists in the form of microchips that can be inserted into a device in a person’s wrist.  Otherwise it’s a fairly normal world, not too far removed from the world of today.  We meet Ian (Furuholmen), a teenager who is looking after his much younger, adopted brother, Dylan (Bugge) while their parents are away.  For reasons that are left unexplained, Dylan decides to take his own life one day while Ian heads off to work; he leaves a note in Ian’s pocket that he finds later on.  Ian teleports back home but finds Dylan is missing.

What Ian does find is that the world has changed.  The home he and Dylan share is different, less well cared for.  Outside the streets are strangely empty.  The police, led by Jane Scott (Braathen), are doing their best to find out what has happened to what started out as a few thousand people, but has now reached three billion.  One of the police’s tech assistants discovers a correlation between the disappearances and eight a.m. when the majority of people are teleporting to get to work, but it still doesn’t solve the problem of where they’re disappearing to (or if they’ll ever come back).

Meanwhile, Ian is surprised by a teenager with a gun (Herrman).  The teenager – never named but called The Helper in the credits – wants to know what Ian is doing in his home.  After a fight in which neither can best the other, and as the nature of Ian’s predicament deepens (here Dylan is the Helper’s younger blood relative, and he’s also disappeared), they agree to work together to find a solution to the wider problem going on around them.  This involves tracking down the creator of the teleportation system, Thomas Wilfred (Graeme Whittington).  Wilfred tells them his teleportation system is the cause of the disappearances, as he has been a victim of it himself, and is now aware that the system is a way of connecting not only with the world, or reality, that it was created in, but a vast number of other worlds/realities as well.  The drawback is that no one can travel back to their own world unless they use a particular chip…and the last two are kept in Wilfred’s office.  Ian and the Helper must find and use the chips – and avoiding the police, who are on the same track – if they are to have any chance of getting back and saving Dylan.

Everywhen - scene

Originally a school project, Everywhen is the brainchild of director Herdal (who also co-wrote the script with Elrik Moe) and editor/visual effects designer/sound mixer Jens Peder Hertzberg, and while certain allowances have to be made on account of their age and their experience when making the movie – they were both seventeen year old students – these don’t impair the movie too much, and it’s a refreshing take on a well-established sci-fi trope.  With often impressive visuals, and a good feel for widescreen compositions, Herdal and Hetzberg have created a future world that is instantly recognisable but which also introduces significant differences to make the audience aware of just when everything is happening (a holographic touch-screen device outside a school giving opening times etc. is a clever idea).  The added discrepancies between the “real” world and the world Ian finds himself in are also well thought out and often subtle enough to avoid detection on first viewing, and it’s a testament to the amount of time and consideration they’ve put into the project that these things are executed so effectively.

That said, one decision almost threatens to undermine the movie completely.  Having taken the decision to use an amateur cast throughout – and it’s obvious this is the case – the further decision to shoot entirely in English for an international release hampers things tremendously.  It’s difficult to work out exactly, but Graeme Whittington aside, there are times when it seems as if some of the dialogue is being delivered phonetically, and this can become frustrating at times, especially if the scene is largely expositional.  But while some of the performances suffer as a result, the overall effect is one that adds, strangely, to the mix.  Furuholmen and Herrman both make impressive debuts (even if Herrman does overplay the disaffected teenager once too often for comfort), and there’s strong support from Braathen and Tønnesen (as a policeman), though some of the smaller roles seem to have been filled by friends or co-students of the movie’s creators (nearly all of the police tech assistants look way too young to be working there).

With its themes surrounding what constitutes reality, and the use of highly dangerous technology as a social improvement, Everywhen isn’t the brainless, action-heavy sci-fi thriller you might expect from a couple of students who’ve obviously lifted elements from other sci-fi movies – The Matrix (1999) and Twelve Monkeys (1995) to name just a couple – but a mature, well-constructed movie that offers some thought-provoking ideas, as well as a strong emotional basis, for its storyline.  The special effects are of a consistent and polished nature that put pretty much every SyFy release to shame, and the score by William Edward offers an often striking counterpoint to events occurring on screen, as well as adding to the tension of the action scenes.

Rating: 7/10 – a good first offering from Herdal and Hertzberg, Everywhen gives more than a hint of what these two guys could do with a decent budget and a professional cast; an intriguing idea presented in a surprisingly effective way and well worth seeking out.

 

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