Döden er et kjaertegn (1949)

Erik is a mechanic. His colleagues are constantly bullying him about girls. One day, a rich dame arrives at the gas station and flirts with him. She knows what she wants. And, after a bit of hesitation on the guy's side, she gets what she wants. Erik breaks up with his kind-hearted girlfriend and moves in with the dame. The film shows how their lives are torn apart: love transforms into misery and violence. An over the top melodrama, Döden er et kjaertegn is as infatuated and as crazy as its character. In other words: don't expect sober lessons on attraction and lust - expect a brutal, woozy story with a sordid end. Obsession all the way.

Edith Carlmar directed the film. She is rumored to be Norway's first female film director. Can this really be true? Anyway, Döden er et kjaertegn belongs to a sleazy noir tradition I cannot help but adore.

Insomnia (1997)

I have no clue what the point of the American version of Insomnia was. The Norwegian original is far superior in every sense. The starkly penetrating, white light of the far north makes the film truly memorable. Stellan Skarsgård acts the part of the sleepless cop who is placed in a small town up north where the sun never sets. He's there to solve a murder case: a 17-year old girl has been killed. The suspect is a shy author. The sleepless cop tries to hook up with the concierge at the hotel. Erik Skjoldbjaerg directs with a steady hand. Even though the film takes us to the familiar territory of grizzled cop who is haunted by inner demons the result still manages to add a new touch to the genre that explore the darkness of men who are bogged down in trouble. The location plays a conclusive role. This version of Northern Norways is far from cute postcards. This is dirty backstreets and dangerous-looking nature.

Hunger (1966)

Per Oscarsson is perfect for the role as Hamsun's restless wanderer in the film adaptation of Hunger (Dir. Henning Carlsen). His acting exudes a fidgety energy that takes us straight into the world of Hamsun's suffering writer who walks the streets of Oslo without finding much comfort anywhere. He has no money and whenever he manages to get some, he gives it away. He looks at himself as a Writer, a finer person than the ordinary bourgeois people - desperately, he seeks to keep up the appearance of being an honorable person. The oscillation between shame and pride is a crucial theme. The protagonist grew up in the country but for some reason he has ended up in the city, where he leads a life of poverty and humiliation. He visits the pawn shop and he tries to sell his articles to a newspaper editor. Carlsen's film manages to create a feeling of social realism that simultaneously is situated within a subjective point of view. We see Oslo as the tormented protagonist sees it. It is many years since I read the book, but my impression is that the film is a much more open-ended affair than the book. The main character never becomes a hero, the stereotypical suffering Artist. Carlsen and Oscarsson zone in on isolation, the frenzy and the humiliation the main character experiences. One example is the encounter between the main character and a girl he meets on the street. My memory of the book is that we are lead to look at these people as two tragic lovers, two equals, and that this doomed man needs a moment with a woman who understands him. The film shows the strangeness of their relation, and the distortion of reality. Oscarsson's performance is expressive, but it is also fragile. His face really lends itself to this character: through the contorted, scared face we see a complicated character. // For all its portrayals of humiliation and destitution, Hunger is also a grimly funny film. It is funny in the way it looks at fragility: it describes a world in which reality is always on the brink of dissolving. In this case, this is both funny and unnerving to watch.

Zero Kelvin (1995)

Re-watching an old favorite film is a risky project. Zero Kelvin was a great film when I was 16. I was still impressed by the visually stunning landscapes and cinematography when watching it 15 years later, but well - some things just do not work so well anymore. A poet goes to Greenland to work as a trapper with two other man - a roughneck and a scientist. Immediately, problems arise between him and the roughneck, who is played by Stellan Skarsgård, who does not exactly hold back. The film revolves around the dynamics between the three men, and Greenland basically remains a backdrop for how the psychological drama plays out. This makes the film a bit problematic - the psychological points become dramatized in a way that sometimes feels cheap: arctic feelings, arctic landscapes. Love/hate, twin souls, repressed feelings, accusations, mirroring etc. The biggest flaw of the film is that the roles are strictly defined according to the three social characters: the poet (sensitive), the scientist (rational) and the wild man (wild). It is true that things happen that blur these stereotypes a bit, but the film remains at the level of crude generalizations - these characters never come out as real people - or the generalizations are not employed in an interesting way. - But still: a beautiful film.

Aberdeen (2000)

I remember this much: Aberdeen (dir. Hans Petter Moland) is a good film. Trying to recall my initial experience of watching it, I couldn't really atriculate why. Perhaps for this reason, I was a bit disappointed while watching it a second time. The images of a frail relationship between father and daughter still moved me, and I was still impressed by the bleak locations of the film - but a few flaws were hard to ignore. Stellan Skarsgård is great as the drunkard, father of a daughter whom he barely knows. Sometimes he overdoes the trick, but when you see him barfing in the car, you believe what you see, and you feel with the man. Being an alcoholic does not look cool, it does not look nice; it looks like piss and puke and bad, yet ambivalent, conscience. Usually, he stays away from the sentimental, but there are a few lapses. Lena Headey's role is trickier. She is the rebel, a person who is not afraid to speak her mind, and her mind tends towards the dark and cynical. Headey is great, fierce. Sometimes, her lines and gestures are simply too streamlined, and we know all to well what we are supposed to think about her: sad, sad girl who lacks the ability to form deep commitments. A cliché about 'wild women'. The miserable turns into miserabilism. Charlotte Rampling, whose performances tends to be dazzling and mesmerizing, does not really shine here; she is given too little space.

The dramatic nerve of the film, family bonds, usually skews the path of treating family relations as a black-and-white issue. These people, father, daughter, a dying mother, obviously have many problems with each other, they piss each other off, they are disappointed at one another - but at the same time there is something else also, a form of absolute responsibility. Aberdeen is beautifully shot and one of the great merits of the film is the way shabby places come alive: an oil rig seen from a distance, an ordinary-looking road, a sleazy diner. On the downside, there are a couple of heavy-handed twists that appear both unnecessary and that digress from what makes this film so good: the intimate, spunky moments between father and child.

Edward Munch (1974)

Clearly, Edward Munch (dir. P. Watkins) aspires to be as artful as the painting's of the artist in the title. I am torn between regarding some of the segments of the film as preposterously pretentious and appreciating the film's sense for rhytm and adventurous stylistic jumps. One at least has to admit that this is not your common biopic trodding along the familiar path of an artist's life with predictable emotional peaks. Interestingly, the film has a a mostly Norwegian cast but the narrator is English. The life of Munch is contextualized by means of a dry voice enumerating historical events during the relevant years. Sometimes this technique works, at other times not at all (I am still not at all clear about what the director aims at here, what kind of contextualization). I was not familiar with the ouevre of Peter Watkins before watching the film, but now I would surely like to see his othe films (about the Paris commune for example, or The War Game). At least, Edward Munch fights against conventional cinema - it tries to rely on the cinematic form to create a new style of film, a new way of assembling material. Does it succeed? Sometimes. Some of the films convey how different forms of art intersect: it is fascinating to watch Munch scrape away at the canvas, you even hear a very detailed world of sounds in Munch's work on his paintings. - The film manages to capture the texture of the paintings in a way that was both thrilling and interesting. The lopside of the film is predictable enough: emotional artist who gains recognition late in life, but who stoically bears the spite of the reviewers and the audience. And: sexual frustration, always sexual frustration in the artist's life that is then of course transported right onto the canvas (one image: a girl's body from the point of view of the male gaze in coitus, yesyes).

Arven (1979)

The setting of Arven, a Norwegian film directed by Anja Breien, might not be very original; rich familly member dies and old quarrels and difficulties come back to haunt the rest of the family. But Arven turned out to be a good movie, even a funny one, granted you are not a stranger to black humor. Kai Skaug was a successful owner of a shipping company. He leaves a big inheritance for his family to fight over. This does not sound like a very nice story, but Breien creates a full-blown neurotic family tragedy about greediness and contempt, against the background of a very subdued Schubert piece. Anita Björk as the resentful matron Märta is simply magnificent. So are the rest of the actors. Breien has a good ear for pitch; how people talk, how people keep silent.
Arven revolves around small-mindedness and petty secrets. But it is also a film about stuff. Skaug Sr. lived in a house that was almost a chateau. His relatives quarrel about his belongings. Breien ironically focuses on furniture, bric-a-brac, carpets, art - to introduce us to the tensions within a family. In one priceless scene, we see two women fight over an ugly pillow. They both grasp the pillow, exclaiming, "It is mine!" It is almost as if these things (and, god, the money!) consitute the only reason why family members communicate with each other at all.
What makes Arven such a delightful movie is the close attention it pays to facial expressions. The story is not limited to the dialogue; it is inscribed in the character's faces; grumpy, alarmed, aloof, worried, haggard.
You can watch the film here.