Norway

U – July 22 (2018)

André Crous

The terrorist attack of 22 July 2011 is recreated in meticulous detail by focusing on people’s reactions to the horror rather than explaining the inexplicable.

U - July 22Norway
4*

Director:
Erik Poppe
Screenwriter:
Erik Poppe
Director of Photography:
Martin Otterbeck

Running time: 90 minutes

Original title: Utøya 22. juli

There is nothing to be done, because all of it has already happened. But for nearly 90 unbroken minutes, we accompany one girl as she flees the attack, hides from the gunfire and struggles to understand what has happened in this idyllic outpost in the Norwegian countryside. This is a depiction of the terror inflicted on a group of youths in July 2011 on the island of Utøya.

Director Erik Poppe’s brave decision to centre his entire film on one character is, without a doubt, the best possible choice he could have made. Not only does it keep the viewer in the dark about the full extent of the carnage, thus keeping us in suspense throughout, but it also anchors the emotions in one place instead of weaving a necessarily incomplete tapestry of various strands. In the film’s opening moments, following an incongruous sequence in the capital where a bomb has exploded, Kaia (Andrea Berntzen), right on the cusp of becoming an adult, looks straight into the camera and says, “You’ll never understand.” It turns out she has an earpiece and is speaking on the phone to her mother, who has called to inquire about her following the explosion in Oslo.

From this moment on, we follow Kaia wherever she goes, though at a slightly less intimate distance than Mátyás Erdély’s camera in the similarly lensed Son of Saul. She has recently fallen out with her younger sister, who made slightly inconsiderate comments in front of their fellow campers, which Kaia considered inappropriate. Thus, they get separated early on, and within a few moments, youths are rushing from the forest as shots ring out.

What follows is persistent confusion about the source of the attack, about whether it is even an attack, about what measures should be taken to elude the gunman and about how much longer this will take. Unlike a conventional work of fiction, there are no clear leaders, and even the villain is a big unknown, as we barely catch of a glimpse of him, with two or three chilling exceptions.

For 72 minutes, the actual length of the attack in 2011, we hear the bone-chilling shots on the soundtrack – sometimes farther away and seemingly duller, at other times up close with booms loudly reverberating enough to shake us in our seats. This is the music of the film, which doesn’t have a musical score and thus relies on the diegetic sound to provide it with the relevant soundscape.

In the foreground, Kaia is trying to deal with something she never expected she would face. After all, this is the calm, peaceful Norwegian countryside, not an American school. We already catch a glimpse of this distance from danger in the first few minutes, when there is some very superficial discussion about the bombing in Oslo. The only person who seems to be clued into the danger of what is going on is Issa (Sorosh Sadat), whose background makes him more sensitive to how others’ actions will shape people’s perception of him.

In retrospect, the Oslo-set opening sequence is wholly at odds with the rest of the film. Geographically, it is separate from the bulk of the film, which takes place on the island of Utøya. Temporally, it takes place a mere two hours before the events on the island but is shown almost exclusively through documentary (including surveillance) footage. Most importantly, however, it is not presented from Kaia’s perspective. Thus, we have two distinct sections in the film, even though both were the result of actions by the same man: the far-right terrorist, who luckily goes unnamed here, with even the actor uncredited. But the film would have been much better had it limited itself to the island. In that way, we would have learned about the bombing in Oslo the same way the children do: from each other, with much remaining opaque.

There is nothing exceptional about Kaia, and that is good. She is not immediately concerned with locating her sister because the adrenaline has overwhelmed her. Her efforts to save her sister and others are not heroic nor complicated: She does what she knows, but she knows as little as everyone else and is mostly functioning on a primal desire for survival by playing a potentially fatal real-life version of hide and seek.

Because we experience the story from Kaia’s perspective, we know almost nothing of the situation in general, except that people are in danger. We see them running, trying to get away; we see them after they have been shot; we see them dying; and we see them when they are already dead. As time passes, the body count increases, and we slowly the gravity of the invisible but very audible danger. Of course, this tight focus poses the director numerous dramatic challenges, including how to keep the story as realistic as possible and not inject unnecessary fictional drama or sugar into the mix.

Poppe appears to take the gamble late in the film that his apparent single-take staging absolves him of criticism that the narrative takes a melodramatic turn, but because of the focus on the single character, it is hard not to take notice. Hiding out with Magnus (Aleksander Holmen), a boy from the west coast city of Stavanger who openly admits the youth camp piqued his interest not because of the politics but because of the potential to meet girls, Kaia strikes up a cute conversation with him that sets up an emotionally manipulative ending to the film. The camera work is very well executed and whatever cuts there are invisible to the naked eye.

This is an ambitious and at times visceral, though not entirely successful, dramatisation of events on that tragic day in July 2011. The direction sometimes draws attention to itself, and beyond Kaia, her unanswered phone calls to her sister and the desperate phone calls between her and her mother, the film doesn’t offer much in the way of characterisation. It emphasises the confusion among the young people by having them ask the same questions over and over again – a natural and entirely logical response to this wholly unnatural event – but, except for the opening minutes, there is little chemistry between the characters, and it feels like a staged 72 minutes of tension rather than an ordeal filled with flesh-and-bone human beings.

That being said, this is a remarkable story told in a fresh way that makes the experience an unforgettable one. But if the director had spent as much time on developing his characters as he clearly did on blocking his actors, this could have been an extraordinary film.

Viewed at the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival.

Oslo, August 31st (2011)

André Crous

Norwegian wunderkind director Joachim Trier’s second feature is devastatingly intimate as it gracefully follows its main character, a former drug addict, around the capital for one life-changing day.

oslo-31-augustNorway
4*

Director:
Joachim Trier
Screenwriters:
Eskil Vogt
Joachim Trier
Director of Photography:
Jakob Ihre

Running time: 90 minutes

Original title: Oslo, 31. august

The silence that bookends wunderkind Joachim Trier’s slightly ethereal but always solidly grounded Oslo, August 31st is potent. It channels our curiosity more than our emotions, but it also envelops this powerful film about life post-addiction in a soft bubble with a core that is complex and deeply felt.

The main character, 34-year-old Anders, does not even speak a word until more than 10 minutes into the film. By the time he does, however, we have already seen him try to commit suicide by weighting his clothes with rocks and walking into the river à la Virginia Woolf. He backs down and – in another subtle moment of bookending, this time intra-scenic – the camera, which has stayed on him throughout the scene and without cutting away, tracks back across the waters to the river bank. When he comes back out, we see he has lost his jacket, and this loss of a level of protective clothing is the first layer whose disappearance eventually reveals a man terrified of rejoining society.

The framework within which the action takes place is the special day, August 30, for which Anders has received permission to travel into Oslo. After an extended period of time recovering at a drug rehabilitation clinic, this marks the first time he is able to return to the city of his former, wilder self. While the purpose of his visit is to go for an interview at a magazine, he takes the opportunity to meet up with an old friend, Thomas.

Once they meet, the film suddenly reveals itself to be something very special indeed. “I’m a spoilt brat who fucked up”, Anders admits to his friend, who has recently become a father and thus part of the mould of the city’s social fabric, unlike Anders, who is single and whose clinic is located outside the city limits. Not coincidentally, Thomas is wearing a shirt while Anders has on a much more informal grey T-shirt.

The two men’s conversation is pointed and lightly skims over issues of life and death. They know they have to discuss these things, but they don’t quite know how. Above all, their words make it clear that Anders’s opinion of himself is scraping rock bottom. Thomas is kind and understanding, and he tries his best to be supportive, but he is walking on eggshells around Anders, and when his friend suggests he might commit suicide, Thomas is so stunned he has no idea how to react. These scenes, taking place on a peaceful summer morning in a park in the city centre, bring with them a mixture of tenderness, nostalgia and desperation whose power takes the viewer’s breath away.

Their meeting ends on a slightly surreal note, as the moment of their separation, albeit with the faint prospect of seeing each other at a party later in the evening, is replayed in front of our eyes. The result is both ominous and strikingly beautiful, as we can just about feel time slipping through our fingers as it turns from reality into a memory.

This first social interaction of the day, meant to console Anders, brings with it a surge of feelings that taint the rest of his day. Even though he arrives at the interview and appears to be connecting on an intellectual level with the magazine’s editor in chief, when the questions turn personal, he experiences intense humiliation and retreats into himself. It is one of the saddest moments in the film, as we realise that the possibilities are plentiful, but for Anders, the greatest obstacle is overcoming the broken image he sees when he looks in the mirror. He doesn’t want anybody’s pity; what he really wants is a solution, but one that still makes him feel good about himself.

It is hard to ignore the sadness at the heart of Oslo, August 31st, especially during those moments when Anders looks at the people around him blissfully going about their lives, seemingly without a worry in the world. These scenes lead to a voice-over contemplation – heartfelt yet tinged with melancholy because of their absence – of his parents’ role in forming his life. 

The rest of the story develops with Anders walking on a knife’s edge as he tries to be the same guy as he was before, but different. A planned meeting with his sister doesn’t go as planned, and when the late-night party offers old friends who haven’t changed much, the past catches up with him. This final act is by far the most disappointing aspect of the film, as it veers towards territory we expect rather than the original, meticulously crafted dialogues, interactions and styles we relished up until this point. 

Anders Danielsen Lie shines in the lead role as his namesake. Determined to somehow make it through the day in a city he knows like the back of his hand but in a state that frequently has him on the verge of tears, the character is deeply affecting, even when the answers to our questions are often opaque. Trier’s film draws strength not only from the director’s empathetic view of humanity but also from Danielsen Lie’s sensitive performance that draws deep from the well of emotions inside the actor and washes over the story (and us) with the force of a silent tsunami.

North (2008)

André Crous

Norway
4*

Director:
Rune Denstad Langlo
Screenwriter:
Erlend Loe
Director of Photography:
Philip Øgaard

Running time: 78 minutes

Original title: Nord

Jomar Henriksen is feeling blue, but he has decided to strike while the iron is hot – the iron being the gas stove in the little wooden structure, somewhere close to Trondheim, that functions as living quarters for this 30-year old who has been depressed since his wife and young son abandoned him following an accident he had on the slopes. He has panic attacks, spends most days lying in bed, popping pills and drinking spirits (often at the same time), and watching the National Geographic Channel on television, which is currently focused on tunnel disasters.

But an unexpected visit by Lars, the man his wife left him for, makes Jomar reconsider the static trajectory of his existence, and so he goes on a trip up north (passing through a tunnel when he takes this decision), to bridge the abyss of the accident and stretch back into the past to reconnect with his family, and with other members of society.

This is a Scandinavian film, so you should expect a fair amount of deadpan behaviour from the characters, though the film seems positively action-packed compared to other well-known ventures such as the Norwegian The Bothersome Man, or the work of Swedish director Roy Andersson, not to mention the Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki. The fine observation of Jomar’s awkward road-trip and his gradual recognition that he must (and can) regain some sense of existence are made possible, in large part, by the very perceptive screenplay written by acclaimed author Erlend Loe.

Nord has a very small cast: scenes rarely, if ever, consist of more than three characters. Norway’s desolate, snowswept, winter landscape is beautiful and as it becomes ever more prominent towards the end of the film – including the gorgeous shots of either a snowmobile or a skier on the clean, white mountainsides – the film finds direct influences or indirect commentary on the events on the ground. A particularly striking moment occurs when the northern lights appear above a lonely shack in the snow while Jomar recounts the day of his skiing accident.

These characters that Jomar encounters on his journey up north prepare him, in subtle ways, to face the rest of the journey and also demonstrates that he has a good heart that has been numbed but not broken by recent experiences. He meets a teenage girl, Lotte, who is slightly abrasive in the way that most teenage girls are, but never annoying; she has her own problems of isolation. When Jomar’s snowmobile breaks down he is saved by Ulrik, barely out of his teens, who is always suspicious that Jomar might be gay – a sign that Ulrik might be a little confused about himself. And finally, close to his destination of the Tamok Valley, he finds an old Sami man who spends his days in a big tent, having chained himself to his snowmobile.

The film consistently ensures that the viewers have a smile on their faces, and the cinematography does an admirable job of capturing the beauty of Norway. I was somewhat disappointed that the meeting between Jomar and Lotte, the teenage girl, was omitted, and we do not share much of Jomar’s perspective on the bleak wilderness around him, but the sad music (mostly strings, though one memorable moment is provided thanks to the Norwegian band “Kaizers Orchestra”) sets exactly the right tone for the story.