Movie Review: Thelma

Thelma **** / *****

Directed by: Joachim Trier.

Written by: Eskil Vogt & Joachim Trier.

Starring: Eili Harboe (Thelma), Kaya Wilkins (Anja), Ellen Dorrit Petersen (Unni), Henrik Rafaelsen (Trond), Grethe Eltervåg (Young Thelma).

 

If you can imagine Stephen King’s Carrie directed by Ingmar Bergman, who can get close to seeing what Joachim Trier is going for with his film Thelma. This is a horror story, about a teenage girl with psychic powers in the first throes of love and lust, and who naturally loses control over everything, without really realizing it. The first scene in the film sets things up so we know this isn’t going to be a typical story, as a father and daughter (around 6) go plodding through the snowy forest. The father sites a deer and raises his rifle – his daughter is transfixed by the deer – and doesn’t realize that her father has changed his aim, and is now pointing the gun at the back of her head. Eventually, we will figure out why.

 

But most of the action takes place in the present – where Thelma is a college freshman, away from her parents for the first time. We assume that they are just a little strict – they get nervous if she doesn’t immediately answer their phone calls, and know her class schedule better than she does – and even comes down to stay with her, in her apartment, on a weekend. The whole family is religious, and while it doesn’t seem to be the fire and brimstone type Christianity of Carrie, it is quietly strict. Things seem to be going okay with Thelma – she’s lonely, but smart – until she becomes friends – and then more – with Anja (Kaya Wilkins). Whatever has been lying dormant in Thelma is suddenly not dormant anymore.

 

On the surface, Thelma is a genre film – a horror film going over some well-worn terrain, combining the coming-of-age, sexual awakening of a teenage girl, and unleashing of her power upon those around her. Trier, however, takes this story seriously (perhaps a touch too seriously – I’ll get to that), making a film that really does look at this young woman, her faith, her sexuality, her family, her past and letting it play out as naturally and realistically as it can, given Thelma’s powers. None of the deaths or action is played for thrills at all. The film ends up, perhaps, where you expect it to, but it takes a different, more serious route there.

 

This approach mostly works for me – but left a few nagging complaints for me. For one, I don’t think Trier needs to spend as much as he does showing Thelma playing detective looking into her family history – savvy audience members will get there before the film even starts, so move it along. As well, it always bugs me a little – just a little – when filmmakers making a genre film seem to think that theirs is “above” the genre, and therefore doesn’t want to offer any of the baser pleasures of the genre. Carrie is a masterpiece of its kind, has a lot to say about its subject – but doesn’t hold itself above the genre. Same with Raw. Thelma wants to cloak some of those genre trappings behind a prestige sheen.

 

Still, that’s a minor complaint – and something that didn’t bother me much when watching the film. This is an engrossing film, and one that is expertly directed by Trier – more than making up for his thuddingly dull English language debut Louder Than Bombs a few years ago. Eili Harboe is terrific in the lead role as well, delivering a sympathetic performance, even as the film goes along, and she starts making increasingly questionable choices. She slowly reels you in, as does the film. I just wish Trier had loosened the reigns just a little bit – and let the genre loose.

Movie Review: Louder Than Bombs

Louder Than Bombs

Directed by: Joachim Trier.

Written by: Joachim Trier & Eskil Vogt.

Starring: Gabriel Byrne (Gene), Isabelle Huppert (Isabelle), Jesse Eisenberg (Jonah), Devin Druid (Conrad), Amy Ryan (Hannah), Ruby Jerins (Melanie), Megan Ketch (Amy), David Strathairn (Richard), Rachel Brosnahan (Erin).

 

There is a fine line – different for most people – between thoughtful and subtle and just downright dull – and for me, Joachim Trier’s Louder Than Bombs crosses that line. The talented Norwegian filmmaker – responsible for two other, highly acclaimed films (Reprise, unseen by me, and Oslo August 31, which deserved the praise) has made a dysfunctional family drama – the kind where a tragic event in the not too distant past affects all the survivors differently, and through the course of the film includes flashbacks to describe what happened. Done right, these films can be quite powerful – done wrong, and you get any number of Sundance films, drowning in quirk, which only want to elicit tears from the audience. At least Louder Than Bombs never goes that route. The problem is though, that despite strong performances from its excellent cast, there just isn’t much to Louder Than Bombs that makes the film stand out, or really stick in your mind. It’s far from a bad film – but it’s not one your likely to remember either.

 

The story revolves the family of an acclaimed war photographer named Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert), who a few years ago retired from her career, and not long after died in a car accident that may not have been such an accident on her part. While her husband, Gene (Gabriel Byrne) and older son Jonah (Jessie Eisenberg) – who now, in the present, has just become a father himself – know what Isabelle did, their other son – Conrad (Devin Druid), a moody teenager, does not. It will eventually come out of course – mainly because a colleague of hers, Richard (David Strathairn) is going to write an article about her life and work to coincide with a retrospective of her work – and he has no intention of keeping how she died a secret. Over the course of a few days – a week maybe – the three men that Isabelle left behind from her family are all staying at the same house, but cannot or will not communicate with each other – at least not effectively. Meanwhile, we get the periodic flashback to Isabelle’s last little while on earth with all of them – and see the cracks that led her to her ultimate end.

 

There are things to recommend about Louder Than Bombs to be sure. Isabelle Huppert is one of the best actresses on the planet, and her work as Isabelle is strong – she plays a woman who loves her family, but feels disconnected from it – she’s better at being in a war zone than being a wife and mother, despite the effort she gives to it. A whole movie about her character may have been a lot more interesting. Eisenberg is in fine form here as well though – a man, already going through that new father crisis that is all too relatable, who is now plunged back into his old family drama (and the life of his old girlfriend as well) – and finds that easier to deal with than his wife and new child. I wish Gabriel Byrne had been given slightly more to do in the film – his Gene is trying to move on with his life – a teacher at the same school Conrad goes to, he has started to date another teacher there (Amy Ryan – completely wasted), although this is something else he cannot bring himself to talk to Conrad about. Gene’s role is marked by inaction – he finds things too difficult to talk about, and while he makes an effort, it isn’t really a good one. Then there is Devin Druid as Conrad – who certainly has the moody, incommunicative teenager thing down pat – although Druid’s performance is so inward, his expression so blank (perfect, in some ways, for a teenager) – that he is the film’s most unreadable character – which could be interesting, except his drama doesn’t seem to be all that interesting – even as the film tries to bring him out of his shell in the end. He may have the most screen time of anyone in the film – which is a shame, because he may be the least interesting one in the film.

 

The main problem with Louder Than Bombs then, for me, is what others find striking about the film. This is a film where everything happens beneath the surface – about characters who are unable to express their feelings to each other in any real way, so externally they shut down. Internally, however, they can be raging – and there are a few interior monologues and journals, read aloud, that tell us more about these characters than the rest of the movie does. The problem, for me, is the performances of the characters don’t quite match those monologues and journals – instead of making us see these characters in a clearer light, it makes you wonder just who these characters really are. The movie never devolves into the kind of cathartic fireworks we often see in these movies – scenes where characters yell at each other, that end in tears and hugs and reconciliation. Perhaps, we should be grateful for that, because those scenes often seem phony. The problem is that Trier doesn’t come up with anything else to replace those scenes with – so what we end up with is a very quiet film, where everyone keeps everything buried that ultimately leads nowhere.

DVD Review: Oslo August 31

Oslo, August 31
Directed by: Joachim Trier.
Written by: Joachim Trier & Eskil Vogt based on the novel by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle.
Starring: Anders Danielsen Lie (Anders), Hans Olav Brenner (Thomas), Ingrid Olava (Rebecca), Anders Borchgrevink (Øystein), Andreas Braaten (Karsten), Malin Crépin (Malin), Petter Width Kristiansen (Petter), Emil Lund (Calle), Tone Beate Mostraum (Tove), Renate Reinsve (Renate), Øystein Røger (David), Kjærsti Odden Skjeldal (Mirjam).

Oslo August 31 is about Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie), who is a drug addict. He’s been living clean in a rehab facility for months now, and his time is just about up. They are even letting him go out for the day – to go to a job interview, so perhaps when he gets out of for good, he’ll have something to look forward to – something to keep his mind off the drugs. But he knows it’s hopeless. From the beginning of Oslo August 31, I knew how the movie was going to end – and so does Anders. He may not have seen how he screwed everything up with the drugs while he was still using, but now that he’s clean, he knows there is no going back.

Oslo August 31 is essentially made up of a series of conversations between Anders and others. When he first arrives in Oslo from the rehab facility, he has some time to kill before his interview, and drops in on his old friend Thomas. Thomas is married now, and has a couple of kids, but he is nice to Anders – but really has no idea what to say. He gives him sympathetic look, and meaningless platitudes of support, but they don’t really help Anders, essentially because Thomas has no idea what to say, do or how to behave when his old friend the drug addict shows up at his door unannounced. Do any of us? We then move onto the interview, which, predictably, doesn’t go too well. Anders is obviously smart and well educated, and he’s applying for a job at a shitty magazine, and he isn’t quite able to stop himself for insulting the magazine. And then when the interviewer asks him why there is nothing on his resume after 2005 things get even worse. I’m sure the rehab place prepared him for this question, but however they told him to answer it, it certainly isn’t the way Anders does.

The day goes on like this – a series of encounters Anders has with people from his past. He’s supposed to meet his sister for coffee, and then go onto their childhood home, which their parents are in the midst of selling, in part to help pay to get Anders out of trouble. But his sister is wary – and doesn’t show up, and instead sends her girlfriend to meet Anders, which angers him. And finally, it’s onto a party, where Anders knows he should not go, but he cannot help himself. Throughout the day, he calls his ex-girlfriend repeatedly. She stuck by him for years, but has now moved on with her life – and moved to New York. She never answers the phone, but Anders keeps leaving messages.

The best thing about Oslo August 31 is the lead performance by Anders Danielsen Lie. He looks like you would expect a recovering drug addict to look, but his performance is more than that. He doesn’t rely on the usual nervous ticks or increasingly anxious voice that many actors do when portraying an addict – someone either craving a hit, or trying really hard not to. He remains fairly calm. I don’t think he’s really falling apart, the way we normally see in these movies. That is because from the beginning of the film, his mind is made up. You could delude himself when he was an addict – or more accurately, when he was an addict, he didn’t have to think about the consequences of his actions. But now that he’s clean, he cannot live with what he has done.

It is true that many people are able to get and stay clean after being addicts. I bet you many of those have some sort of support system in place though – and Anders doesn’t. He was a spoiled rich kid, and while his parents gave him everything material he could want, they never gave him what he really needs. His friends don’t know how to behave around him – they are all either like Thomas, all awkward and well-meaning, or else they pretend nothing at all happened, and that Anders is the same old screw-up he’s always been. His sister is nervous about his coming out of rehab – and his girlfriend is gone, never going to return.

But Anders cannot, and does not, blame anyone else for what has happened to him. He knows the fault lie directly with himself.  And he sees only one way out. Oslo August 31 is a deeply sympathetic film about Anders. Directed by Joachim Trier, the film has a simple visual look – it basically looks directly at Anders throughout the movie. I was reminded of the films of the Dardenne Brothers who often position their camera to be looking directly at the characters face – or the back of their head – as if by looking long enough, they’ll finally be able to break through into their mind. In this case, what you would find is a sad, lonely man, who sees only one solution.