By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Hans Petter Moland
Starring: Charlotte Rampling | Ian Hart | Lena Heady | Stellan Skarsgaard
Country: norway, sweden, united_kingdom
Year: 2002
Running time: 113
IMDB: http://us.imdb.com/Details?0168446
Bob says: “ABERDEEN is a film I’ve never heard of, by Hans Petter Moland, a Norwegian director I’ve never heard of, but the blurb looked interesting enough, and the cast included Stellan Skarsgard and Charlotte Rampling, who’s my frontrunner for last year’s best actress (UNDER THE SAND), so I thought I’d give it a shot.
“The story involves Kaisa (Lena Headey) a young executive (or possibly attorney) with a cocaine habit who’s mostly estranged from her mother (Rampling) and almost completely estranged from her father Tomas (Skarsgard) an alcoholic oil rig worker from Norway. Her parents had never married, and she’d lived with her father for a period during which he’d been home for two weeks at a time, then spent the next two away at the rig, leaving young Kaisa to fend for herself. Kaisa is awoken one morning by a telephone call from her mother, who tells her that she’s spoken with Kaisa’s father for the first time in years and convinced him to come to Aberdeen to enter a rehab program, and she needs Kaisa to go to Norway and escort her father back to Scotland. As it turns out, he knows nothing about this plan (I won’t give away the mother’s actual reason for gathering the family together, although it’s revealed relatively early in the film), but agrees to go nevertheless. Due to circumstances involving their various addictions, they are unable to fly back and have to take a ferry and drive the rest of the way, so what follows is a road movie, with Kaisa and her father stuck with each other for what is for them an uncomfortably long period of time.
“Had this been a Hollywood film (RAIN MAN is a pretty obvious analog), we’d have watched Kaisa and her father slowly learn a few important things about themselves and each other. Through the difficulty of being thrust together, they’d learn that while they’re very different people, the best things about them are shared. After all, they’re family, and what’s more important than that? Yeah, right. This is not a Hollywood film. While there are hints at common ground between these two people, most of them are flaws they share. Just about every attempt they make to get along blows up in their faces. If it weren’t for Colin, a well-intentioned trucker who helps them out, not only would they probably never make it to Aberdeen they’d more than likely end up killing each other.
“The character of Colin (played with a good deal of subtlety by Ian Hart) develops over the course of the film into much more than a good Samaritan.Both Kaisa and Tomas glom onto him, finding in this stranger many of the traits they wish they could find in their family and themselves. As such, he’s both their savior and a constant reminder of their own failures.
“A single flashback is repeated a number of times in the film: Kaisa as a small child jumps off her swing set to welcome her father home from the rig, and he embraces her and gives her a clown nose (which she hangs onto over the years). I think the most important thing about this sequence is the fact that it stands out so much from the rest of the film it’s presented to us as if its the only happy memory Kaisa has of her childhood. Moreover, there is a sign in the shot that simply reads Aberdeen, so were
given a hint that the goal of this journey isn’t just the city of Aberdeen, but a return to a simple, rare moment of familial happiness. But like I said, this is not a Hollywood film.
“The cast is just flawless. Skarsgard’s Tomas is a complete image of a true drunk. Just about everything he does is about making sure he has access to a drink whenever he needs it, he can’t be trusted for a moment, and the few acts of altruism he performs really aren’t he either does the right thing because his attempt to act selfishly fails and he has nowhere else to go, or in the case of his final fatherly sacrifice, he’s really just conceding defeat and grabbing at what little consolation he can. Lena Headey presents Kaisa initially as a strong, self-confident woman, but all of her bravado comes out of a complete lack of self-respect and an inability to connect with anyone, and she always ends up taking things much too far. Rampling (whose performance is very brief) appears to be the calm, level-headed one, but behind her apparent good intentions and understanding lie dishonesty and selfishness. The only self-discovery the travelers seem to gain from this journey is that they’re troubled and alone, and theres really no indication that theyre going to use that knowledge to try to make things better.”
Diane says: “In ABERDEEN, a woman on her deathbed in Scotland asks her daughter, Kaisa, to go to Norway to fetch her father, so she can see him one last time after many years. Kaisa, a young exec with a cocaine habit, ends up on a three-day road trip with Dad, an alcoholic whom she dislikes intensely, during which their roles change. The story is told a bit on the broad and clichéd side, but how I cried! Charlotte Rampling’s role is limited to a few scenes of beautiful dying woman, but Stellan Skarsgard and Lena Headey give very good perfs. I think I love everything I’ve seen Skarsgard in….He doesn’t show much of a range, but his acting is always good.” 4 cats
Mary says: “I can see why so many of you liked this movie. The characters seemed so real – excellent cast. I’ll be keeping them in mind come nomination time!”
Michael says: “Lena Heady is strong as a young, bitter woman whose dying mother makes a final request of: find her estranged, alcoholic father and bring him to her bedside. The subsequent journey is an unsurprising period where father and daughter form an uneasy bond, yet it all works somehow. Great performances from Heady, as well as Stellan Skarsgaard and Charlotte Rampling
as her parents. HOLLOW REED’S Ian Hart also turns in a fine supporting perf.” 4 cats