Oslo, August 31st

By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Joachim Trier
Starring: Anders Danielson Lie | Hans Olay Brenner | Ingrid Olava | Malin Crepin | Petter Width Kristiansen | Tone Mostraum

Original language title: Oslo, 31. August

Country: norway

Year: 2012

Running time: 95

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1736633/

Thom says:  “Director Trier was responsible for the highly-praised REPRISE (2006) that was also lauded by this viewer so to say I was surprised at how much I disliked this film is putting it mildly. The story takes place over a 24-hour period where we see a young man weighted down who goes into a lake to drown himself. He thinks the better of it and goes back into the clinic where he is staying to dry out from heroin addiction. He has been given a day pass to go into Oslo, ostensibly to go for a job interview working for a magazine. In his past he had some renown as a writer. He also intends to see past friends and his sister. He also makes repeated telephone calls to a past girlfriend, who never returns any of his calls. The interview goes poorly, mainly due to his disinterest, and he drifts from party to party, running across old friends and acquaintances, eventually starting to drink alcohol, a definite no-no, and failing to connect with anyone. As he sloths along the film draws towards its inexorable conclusion. The outstanding photography does give us a glimpse of what a beautiful city Oslo is and one really has to consider a visit to the Norwegian metropolis. But what totally turned me off to the film was my lack of interest in the protagonist. Here’s a very attractive man, with intelligence, money, and apparent talent that has lost concentration in getting pleasure from life. He’s tried all kinds of medication to get himself better but nothing has worked. But because this is all of his own making I was unable to have an ounce of sympathy. Trier stated this film was from personal experience with friends and I respect his wanting to portray it, but I felt trapped and depressed while watching it and couldn’t wait for it to end. 1.5 cats”

 

Bruce says: “***SPOILERS***

“OSLO, AUGUST 31ST is Joaquim Trier’s follow-up to his marvelous 2006 film REPRISE.  The two films are similar in subject matter – both focus on highly educated, gifted young men who lack coping skills to function in the normal world. In REPRISE the story of a tortured young man was told in contrast to his less successful friend and literary rival.  In OSLO, AUGUST 31ST Anders (Anders Danielson Lie) reveals himself during the activities of the final day of his life, on leave from the institution where he has been incarcerated for heroin addiction for many months.  Throughout the day the 34 year old Anders is caught up in his childhood memories of Oslo and failed dreams of young adulthood.  The day begins with a failed stones-in-pockets suicide attempt and ends on a more successful note.   (Some may consider this information a regrettable spoiler but it is essential that anyone considering this film knows what is in store.)

“Anders, once he is dried off and somewhat presentable, learns that he has a job interview for a staff position on a literary magazine. When we next see him buzzing for entry into what looks like an apartment building we suspect that he might be up to no good.  But it turns out that the buzz is answered by his best friend Thomas who has given up his dissolute youth for fatherhood and responsibility.  Anders appears to be somewhat shocked to see how Thomas’ life has evolved. Anders’ body language reveals he cannot envision himself in Thomas’ shoes.

“A bit later Anders goes to the job interview which starts out well, at least from outward appearances.  However, it is interior mechanisms that are driving Anders.  He bolts.  Anders then goes to meet his sister for lunch; but it is not his sister that arrives.  Instead it is her girlfriend who says, ‘Your sister needs time.’  She tells Anders that his parents are selling the family home, a consequence of settling his exorbitant medical expenses.  As the day unfolds, it appears that everyone from his past is supportive of Anders in spite of the many bridges he has burned.  But it is those who are not present that speak loudest: his sister, his parents who are in the South of France and his former girlfriend who has moved to New York.

“Earlier Thomas invited Anders to a party.  Anders arrives hoping to meet Thomas.  The party is filled with well-heeled professionals, a milieu in which Anders may have seen himself several years prior but which now is an alien culture.  The evening begins with an innocent beer, the perfect wrong step for anyone in recovery.  Although Thomas never arrives, Anders meets a girl and they leave together.  Could she be his salvation?  Only in some other film.  Together they break into the house where Anders grew up.  He sits down at the piano and plays a Handel piece that, on the surface, is reminiscent of childhood simplicity.  But the piece is actually technically difficult to play and he flounders midway.  He gives up.

“OSLO, AUGUST 31ST is a triumph for Anders Danielson Lie.  A surgeon by profession, he was convinced by Trier to tackle the role which at a glance is not dissimilar to his role of Philip in REPRISE.  Such conclusion would be inaccurate.  Philip was enveloped in a melancholy, a mysterious force that precluded intimacy; Anders’ burden is futility.  Joaquim Trier has infused OSLO, AUGUST 31ST with nostalgic archival footage and beautiful views of a modern, more chaotic Oslo.  The jarring contrast contributes to making Anders’ alienation believable.

“Suicide in Western society is viewed as tragic and sinful, a must to avoid and – more often than not – a must to avoid discussing. Life must be saved at any expense.  But what if life is too painful for someone?  Who then is capable of weighing alternatives?  There are no easy answers and OSLO, AUGUST 31ST does not attempt to extrapolate from one man’s heartbreaking dilemma any formula that contains a universal truth.  5 cats

(OSLO, AUGUST 31ST screened at the 2012 New Directors/New Films Festival jointly sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art.)”

 

Chris says:  “SPOILERS AHEAD

***

“I imagine that not many viewers will think of OSLO, AUGUST 31 as a feel-good film because its protagonist, Anders (Anders Danielson Lie) seems so utterly doomed from the very beginning. Within the first five minutes, he tries (and fails) to drown himself in a lake in broad daylight—a scene striking in its naturalness and lack of warning, and that’s even before we discover he’s a drug addict living at a rehabilitation facility nearby. The film’s remainder follows Anders on a one-day leave to his hometown, Oslo to interview for a job as an editorial assistant and visit family and old friends.

“For all of its bleakness and despair, this is one of the more beautiful and strangely life-affirming films I’ve ever seen. The tragedy here comes from Anders’ inability to comprehend and enjoy the beauty encircling him, as seen through Oslo, which nearly acts as the film’s other main character. Neither gussied up to resemble a picture postcard nor depicted through a gritty big city lens, this Oslo is simply a canvas which makes up a life’s setting, offering its denizens spaces both subtly idyllic (an overlooking park) and prototypically mundane (a busy café) to pass their days. Unfortunately, Anders’ addiction has driven and skewed his life to such an extreme that it’s the only thing that gives him any pleasure. He’s presently caught in a catch-22: the drugs destroyed his career, friendships and romantic relationships but they otherwise gave him momentum to keep on living; without the drugs, he’s numb to these things and thinks he has no reason to go on.

“Director Joachim Trier’s previous film, REPRISE, was an uncommonly wise study of anxiety and uncertainty amongst young adults at the edge of their twenties; it also starred Lie as a man juggling the promise of professional success with encroaching mental illness. OSLO is by no means a sequel, but one could almost imagine Lie as the same young man a few years later, with addiction taking the place of mental illness as his cross to bear. As Anders, Lie gives a thrilling, heartbreaking performance—an undeniable charisma often believably lurks behind his troubled, gloomy exterior. Late in the film, he suddenly shows how
capable of beauty he himself is. Unfortunately, he can only express it to himself and it’s not enough to save him.

“OSLO is an encouraging advance on REPRISE—it’s less flashy, derivative and glib, more restrained, novel and spare. The lack of a music in many scenes (liked the aforementioned drowning) gives them a stark, chilling power, while the use of pop songs in other scenes (especially the moment when Anders encounters Oslo’s skyline heading into the city in a taxi cab) are just as affecting as they fleetingly lighten the overall mood without seeming out of place. Occasionally, Trier still tends to pay homage to other films—the ending is a far less portentous gloss on that of Antonioni’s ECLISPE—but overall, you sense he’s really coming into his own here. While Anders elicits our sympathy, Trier never suggests that he can turn his life around. The film offers no easy answers for its protagonist, but at the very least, without being preachy or heavy-handed, it employs a tragic situation to inspire us to look at our own surroundings, our own Oslo, the simple, mundane things that bring us pleasure. 5 cats”

 

Jason
says:  “(Just a heads-up, this is one of those times where I put spoilery noodling up on my blog along with the review, along with an explanation of why I’m a terrible awards voter.  Go here for all that stuff, or stick around here for the basic review. Reply where  you wish!)

“OSLO, AUGUST 31ST starts out with various off-screen voices describing their memories of the city in question, and even when the imagery that goes with those memories is of something like a building being brought down, it’s vibrant and alive.  When it’s first seen in the present, through the eyes of the main character, though, it’s all motionless construction equipment.  It’s time to rebuild after the implosion, but how to do that may take some consideration.

“The man who needs to rebuild is Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie), who has spent a fair amount of time in a rehabilitation facility for his drug addiction; he’s been given a pass to go into the city for a job interview.  That’s not until later in the day, though, so in the mean time, he might as well visit some people – an old friend, his sister, maybe a few others as one name leads to another – and the family home.  Of course, it’s impossible to forget that this is where Anders lived as he succumbed to his demons the first time.

“The very name of this movie gives it bounds; it’s not going to move far from that time and that place.  What’s interesting, though, is that co-writer/director Joachim Trier never makes those implied limits feel close or to give them undue importance to the characters within the movie.  The extent to which there is not a ticking clock is almost shocking; Trier spends most of the first third of the movie on a conversation between two characters that kicks themes around but doesn’t really push Anders through the story, and the time of day or how long it is until Anders is expected back is almost irrelevant in each particular scene.  If Trier is making points via where in Oslo each segment takes place, it’s not immediately obvious to this non-Norwegian.  And yet, as much as the story seems to be contained by its title, there’s also a sense that the environment and the passage of time is affecting Anders; it’s important without being overtly so.

“Also impressive is just how well the story is told through conversation.  It’s not just words, either – for all that the first act lays Anders’ attitude and relationship with drugs and the world around him out plainly, it’s the way Anders Danielsen Lie and Hans Olav Brenner play it that makes things interesting:  As Anders talks plainly about how disconnected and unable to relate to the world he feels without drugs, his friend Thomas seems to lose his ability to reconcile his own intellectualism with the conventional family life he’s fallen into; later, a much less confrontational-seeming talk with an old girlfriend turns out differently than expected.  It’s an impressively subdued way of showing how Anders’s self-destructive tendencies put stress on everyone around him.  There are more directly confrontational sequences between that are in some ways more complicated – as much as they show Anders as a primary source of his own problems, they make him a touch more sympathetic by showing just what sort of resistance he has to confront when he does try to get his life together.

“Anders is the common denominator to all those discussions, and Lie is in nearly every scene of the movie (those not featuring him might almost be imaginary, in fact).  He turns in a nearly flawless performance, embracing the negative aspects of his character but not making him a monster as much as a guy who who can’t or won’t stop creating bad situations.  Lie, Trier, and co-writer Eskil Vogt get that ‘sympathetic’ doesn’t necessarily have to mean pleasant or nice; at the moments when Anders seems most doomed, the audience will certainly feel for him but likely wouldn’t want to get involved any more than the other characters in the movie.  That’s a dead-on take on someone like Anders, and there’s never any doubt about it.

“Trier does a number of other things well besides getting good talk from his cast, often in a way that seems self-effacing even as it’s impossible to miss.  The scene where Anders overhears dozens of snippets of conversation in a cafeteria and seems to dismiss them as pointless or naive is kind of showy (especially for the sound team) but well short of pretentious, for example.  A moment when Anders may be about to backslide hard is clear in its intentions but also silent – and clever enough to make that silence a point.  The structure is also a little more clever and complex than it first seems, introducing a bit of interesting ambiguity to the end.

“OSLO, AUGUST 31ST had a difficult time actually getting into theaters here in the Boston area, and it’s easy to see why – the film is frequently quite bleak, but neither wallows in it nor wrings its hands enough to stir the audience’s outrage.  Even for a boutique film audience, a person in this sort of hole without an exterior force pushing them in or holding them down is a tough sell.  Still, once one accepts the idea, it’s tough to deny just how well Joachim Trier presents it while still leaving some room for home.  4.5 cats

“Seen 6 February 2013 in the Brattle Theatre (Some of the Best of 2012, 35mm)

 

Diane says:  “This is now a Buried Treasure nom. Very nice study of anhedonia/depression/isolation. Evocative, excellent use of silence, calm in its unfolding. Pacing is similar to my fave AMOUR, but this film was not as emotionally involving. 4 cats”