Norwegian

THE WAVE: tension, more tension and a really scary tsunami

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THE WAVE
THE WAVE

Here’s what you want in a disaster movie: 1) a really impressive disaster and 2) lots of suspense about which of the main characters will survive.  The Norwegian The Wave successfully delivers on both counts.

As a non-Norwegian, I didn’t know that, every few decades, an unstable mountainside somewhere in Norway breaks loose, plunging hundreds of tons of rock into a fjord; this triggers a tsunami, which rages down the fjord, destroying everything and every one that doesn’t reach high ground.  Norwegian geologists are even perched above these fjords to trigger early warning systems.  A siren goes off, and everyone downstream has TEN MINUTES to climb to safety.  As disasters go, this is pretty novel – not your ordinary earthquake, fire, flood, shipwreck and not even your ordinary tsunami (Hereafter, The Impossible).  In The Wave, the tidal wave itself is pretty impressive, and the special effects are believable.

But the best part about The Wave is the tension produced by, not one, but TWO ticking clock scenarios. The filmmakers build the tension as we wonder just when the upcoming disaster is going to hit and whether the characters will have time to escape.  And then, there’s an excruciating race-against-time to save family members from a hopeless situation.

The main characters are sympathetic, the acting is very good and the dialogue is very witty for the genre.  Ane Dahl Torp plays the mom, and her character’s off-the-charts take charge heroism and resilience is a big part of the fun.  I’m not a real fan of disaster movies, but I still stayed with The Wave for its entire length.

I saw The Wave at Cinequest, where it gripped and exhausted the audience (in a good way).   It will be released theatrically in the Bay Area on March 11.

 

Cinequest: CHASING BERLUSCONI

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CHASING BERLUSCONI
CHASING BERLUSCONI

In the bawdy Norwegian comedy Chasing Berlusconi, a beleaguered harness racing driver gets into trouble with menacing (and very, very funny) Finnish loan sharks, which precipitates a farce involving two shady dim bulbs and a pair of even dumber cops.  Oh, and then there’s the driver’s nyphomaniacal wife. Did I mention the racetrack owner with a piercing, sudden cackle and a predilection for toupees and cowboy hats?  (The movie’s title comes from a racehorse named for the Italian scoundrel/politician.)

This all makes for very good lowbrow comedy.  And lowbrow it is, featuring jokes based on impotence, penis length, horse poop and the like.  Chasing Berlusconi also features very clever references to Columbo, The Wire and Fifty Shades of Grey.  The characters of the racetrack owner and the lead loan shark are especially funny.

I loved filmmaker Ole Endresen’s hilarious King Curling at the 2012 Cinequest.  That story had a very original hook – to win a curling tournament, the protagonist needs to stop taking his meds, and then tries not to slip into psychosis.  Chasing Berlusconi isn’t the comic masterpiece of King Curling, but it’s worth some guffaws.

Chasing Berlusconi plays again at Cinequest March 1 at the California Theatre and March 3 at Camera 12.

 

Kon-Tiki: slow raft to Polynesia

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In 1947, Norwegian ethnologist Thor Heyerdahl and a five man Scandinavian crew constructed a Stone Age raft and floated almost 5,000 miles from Peru to French Polynesia to prove his academic theory.   Kon-Tiki tells the story of that voyage, which was a helluva challenge.

The balsa wood raft was tied together with indigenous fibers.  The crew had an intermittently operable radio, a sextant, some canned food and little other modern technology.  The raft could not be steered, so there were many nerve-wracking days when they were drifting toward a current headed the wrong way.  There were storms, sharks and all the usual hazards (except for Life of Pi’s tiger in the boat).  The crew gets more and more sunburned and their blond beards grow bushier and bushier.

It’s a good story, but not really suspenseful.  After all, Heyerdahl’s book about the expedition sold millions of copies, especially to boys of the Baby Boom generation (like me), and his documentary on the voyage won an Oscar in 1951.  So it’s not really a spoiler to acknowledge that they made it safely to their destination. 

Kon-Tiki portrays Heyerdahl as an affable but testosterone-fueled guy with unflinching (and oft misplaced) confidence that everything is going to work out for him.  As a result, he recklessly puts at risk his life and his crew’s (as well as his marriage).  It’s a mildly interesting characterization.  As they say, it’s better to be lucky than good.

So Kon-Tiki is okay. I just wish it had acknowledged and addressed this fact:  Heyerdahl was wrong.  His theory that ancient Peruvians floated west and settled Polynesia flew in the face of nearly all anthropological, linguistic and archaeological evidence.  Since the 1940s, of course, new scientific tools have been discovered, and DNA analysis now confirms that he was entirely, utterly, completely wrong.  And, because he lived until 2002, Heyerdahl had to know it or live in ridiculous denial.  So why not make a film about a guy who endures an amazing, life-risking ordeal just to find out that it was all in vain?  I think that would have made the film more memorable.

The Norwegians Got Funny This Year

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KING CURLING

This week’s DVD pick, the dark Norwegian comedy thriller Headhunters, has some big laughs. But it’s just one of some very funny Norwegian comedies this year.  I also liked the teen sex comedy Turn Me On, Dammit!.  Who knew that the Norwegians could be so damn funny?

My favorite comedy this year is King Curling, set in a sport that even the Norwegians find to be odd and boring, is HILARIOUS.  The star of a curling team suffers a psychotic breakdown and, after years of treatment, is released from an asylum heavily medicated.  To win money for a friend’s lifesaving operation, the curling team must win a tournament and the star needs to go off his meds to regain his game skills.

It’s a broad comedy, but the key is that the actors aren’t trying to be funny, a la Will Ferrell.  Instead, they play it absolutely straight, relying on the characters, situations and dialogue to generate the laughs.  And laughs, they are aplenty.

The curling star tries to maintain composure despite his recurring hallucinations of floating pink lint.  One of the Norwegian curlers, a womanizer with unusually low standards,  keeps lapsing into American gangsta street talk.  Another has a long-lost father who turns up as, of course, a Rod Stewart impersonator who doesn’t sound remotely like Rod Stewart.  And then there’s the kissing dog.  It’s a top drawer broad comedy.  Here’s the trailer for King Curling.

 

DVD of the Week: Headhunters

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The smug Norwegian corporate headhunter named Roger Brown (don’t ask) explains his motivation at the very beginning of the movie:  at 5 feet, 6 inches, his insecurity about keeping his six foot blond wife leads him to cut some corners.  As ruthlessly successful as he is in business, he feels the need to also burgle the homes of his clients and steal art treasures.  So the dark comedy thriller Headhunters (Hodejegerne) begins like a heist movie.  But soon Roger becomes targeted by a client with serious commando skills, unlimited high tech gizmos,  and a firm intention to make Roger dead.

Roger Brown is played brilliantly by Aksel Hennie, a huge star in Norway who looks like a cross between Christopher Walken and Peter Lorre. The laughs come from Roger’s comeuppance as he undergoes every conceivable humiliation while trying to survive.  As a smoothly confident scoundrel, Roger is at first not that sympathetic, but Hennie turns him into a panicked and terrified Everyman when he becomes a human pinata.

Headhunters is based on a page-turner by the Scandinavian mystery writer Jo Nesbo.   There are reports that Headhunters will be remade soon by Hollywood.  In the mean time, see Headhunters and have a fun time at the movies.

Turn Me On, Dammit!: wise, sympathetic and funny

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Alma is pushing 16 and lives in rural Norway, in a tiny community so remote that her mom works in a turnip factory.  Her hormones have been unleashed, and she can think of nothing but sex.  She spends her free time having poignantly innocent (and incomplete) sexual fantasies, masturbating and running up phone sex bills.  Her schoolmates misinterpret her encounter with a boy and ostracize her as the village slut.  So begins this wise, sympathetic and funny Norwegian coming of age comedy.

The humor comes from the film’s knowing view of human nature and, especially, of teenagers.  One of Alma’s pals aspires to move to Texas and end capital punishment by raising awareness.  For another, no amount of lip gloss can be enough.  None of them can figure out how to pilot their budding urges without embarrassing awkwardness.  And all the while, Alma’s beleaguered mom tries to figure out what to do with her.

The laughs are mostly chuckles instead of guffaws.  Turn Me On, Dammit! is only 76 minutes of long, which is just the right length for this story.  It’s a good-hearted and funny movie.

 

Oslo August 31: authentic, but why?

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The Norwegian drug addict Anders has been clean and sober after ten months in rehab, and has earned a day pass for a job interview in Oslo.  In rehab, he has had plenty of opportunity to take stock of himself and the impact that his drug habit has wreaked upon his disappointing career and upon his family and friends.  Anders concludes that the best response is to take his own life.  First, he takes advantage of his day pass to seek out his best friend and his own family.

Oslo August 31 is well-crafted and utterly authentic.  But, why was this movie made?  What is its contribution to art or entertainment or our knowledge or our experience?  Where is the payoff for the audience that makes the grim inevitability worth ten bucks and 95 minutes?

There’s one particularly spell-binding scene with superb sound design.  As Anders is waiting for someone in a cafe, he eavesdrops on the other patrons.  As he glances from table to table, we hear the conversation of each set of diners.  It’s very cool.

Unusual for a film about drug addiction, Oslo August 31 depicts only one instance of hard drug use – and that injection is not to get high.

The Danish director Joachim Trier previously made Reprise, a wonderful film about sanity and the creative process in which two young novelists send in their manuscripts at the beginning of the film, just before one suffers a psychotic breakdown.   Reprise was #4 on my list of Best Movies of 2008.

Headhunters: from smoothly confident scoundrel to human pinata

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The smug Norwegian corporate headhunter named Roger Brown (don’t ask) explains his motivation at the very beginning of the movie:  at 5 feet, 6 inches, his insecurity about keeping his six foot blond wife leads him to cut some corners.  As ruthlessly successful as he is in business, he feels the need to also burgle the homes of his clients and steal art treasures.  So the dark comedy thriller Headhunters (Hodejegerne) begins like a heist movie.  But soon Roger becomes targeted by a client with serious commando skills, unlimited high tech gizmos,  and a firm intention to make Roger dead.

Roger Brown is played brilliantly by Aksel Hennie, a huge star in Norway who looks like a cross between Christopher Walken and Peter Lorre. The laughs come from Roger’s comeuppance as he undergoes every conceivable humiliation while trying to survive.  As a smoothly confident scoundrel, Roger is at first not that sympathetic, but Hennie turns him into a panicked and terrified Everyman when he becomes a human pinata.

Headhunters is based on a page-turner by the Scandinavian mystery writer Jo Nesbo.   There are reports that Headhunters will be remade soon by Hollywood.  In the mean time, see Headhunters and have a fun time at the movies.

Cinequest – King Curling: surprising hilarity from the Norse ice

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This Norwegian comedy, set in a sport that even the Norwegians find to be odd and boring, is HILARIOUS.  The star of a curling team suffers a psychotic breakdown and, after years of treatment, is released from an asylum heavily medicated.  To win money for a friend’s lifesaving operation, the curling team must win a tournament and the star needs to go off his meds to regain his game skills.

It’s a broad comedy, but the key is that the actors aren’t trying to be funny, a la Jack Black or Will Ferrell.  Instead, they play it absolutely straight, relying on the characters, situations and dialogue to generate the laughs.  And laughs, they are aplenty.

The curling star tries to maintain despite his recurring hallucinations of floating pink lint.  One of the Norwegian curlers, a womanizer with unusually low standards,  keeps lapsing into American gangsta street talk.  Another has a long-lost father who turns up as, of course, a Rod Stewart impersonator who doesn’t sound remotely like Rod Stewart.  And then there’s the kissing dog.  You gotta see this movie – it’s a top drawer broad comedy.

It’s playing again at Cinequest tonight (March 2) and tomorrow (March 3).