FILM REVIEW: PIONEER

Mike (Wes Bentley) and Knut (André Eriksen) in Pioneer.

You can go Norway

By Miranda Inganni

After a deadly accident on the sea bed, a Norwegian diver intent on completing his risky deep sea mission encounters intrigue and subterfuge in Erik Skoldbjærg’s latest release, Pioneer.

In the early 1980s, scientists discover a huge oil field in the North Sea off the coast of Norway. The only trick is figuring out how to build the pipelines deep below. Enter the Americans, who have much greater experience and resources when it comes to such matters. The governments of both countries know there is the potential to make a great sum of money. But at what cost?

Petter (Aksel Hennie) and his brother, Knut (André Eriksen), are sent on a test dive down to 360 meters below the ocean’s surface with anther crew member, Jørgen (David A. Jørgensen). Tragedy strikes and one of them is killed. Petter is convinced that his breathing gas line was cut, causing him to briefly blackout and ultimately do the damage that killed his fellow diver. But how can he prove it when it becomes clear that there is a coverup?

Both the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate and the American company, Deep Sea Diving (who they are working alongside, but not necessarily with), try to deflect the investigation. There is huge money to be made and neither company wants their name to be sullied nor to be found at fault.

As Petter tries to discover the truth about what happened at the bottom of the sea, dead bodies keep piling up. Will Petter discover the truth and try to right some of the wrongs, or will he be drowned by the greedy corporations and their minions?

Co-starring Wes Bentley (recently seen in The Hunger Games), Stephen Lang, and Jonathan LaPaglia as the American team; and Jørgen Langhelle, Ane Dahl Torp and Stephanie Sigman helping to round out the Norwegian players, Pioneer features some great acting. Additionally, cinematographer Jallo Faber captures the claustrophobia and bleak hopefulness  of deep sea diving (the penultimate shot is fantastic).

 

However, I could have done with a lot less of the Darth Vader-esque underwater breathing. We get it. Petter is isolated, cold, and completely dependent on artificial apparatus to stay alive., but the score by Air is annoyingly (but successfully!) complementary.

 

Lastly, the organization who winds up with the oil at the film is particularly, politically telling, considering Norway's current status as one of the best places, if not the best, place in the world to live. (Thanks to Norway's "welfare state" of high taxes Norwegians have the second-highest level of satisfaction with their standards of living. It also has the largest government surplus in the world. Norway's per capita GDP is $57,000 a year. It is ranked number one in the world for the best place to grow old. It also has the highest gender equality in the economy. And, perhaps most importantly, Norway now has the highest Human Development Index.)

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PSIFF 2013: KON-TIKI

A scene from Kon-Tiki.

No our way

ByMiranda Inganni

On the Academy’s short list for Best Film in a Foreign Language, Norway’s Kon-Tiki takes viewers back to 1947 when Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl (Pal Sverre Hagen) and five other men travelled 4300 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean on a balsawood raft.

A visionary who insisted Polynesia was first found by indigenous people from South America (namely, Peruvians) Heyerdahl could not convince anyone that the much-held notion that Asians from the East founded and populated the area was incorrect. If he wanted scientists, journalists and the world to take him seriously, he would have to make the journey they made some 1500 years ago using the same materials. Proving to the world that his theory was correct was worth risking everything to Heyerdahl and so they set sail from Peru.

Once on their way, the six men have to face the reality of their journey and the real possibility that they might not survive, or end up nowhere near their destination. Between fights, fending off sharks and men falling overboard, Heyerdahl documents the trip (the resulting documentary film won the Academy Award in 1950).

While there are a few overly dramatic moments and a few unnecessary CGI shots, co-directors Espen Sandberg and Joachim Ronning’s Kon-Tikiis an extravagant, energetic and entertaining film depicting an epic historical journey.

 

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TRIBECA 2012: JACKPOT

A scene from Jackpot.

Murder after numbers

By John Esther

In the opening scene of Jackpot (Arme Riddere), a trio of drunken idiots walks right into the door of a strip joint near the Norway-Sweden border, only to be blown out the window by gunfire. Mayhem and murder ensues with only one survivor, Oscar (Kyrre Hellum), to bare true/false testimony.

Primarily using an interrogation scene to drive director Magnus Martens’ film, we learn – in ways reminiscent of The Treasure of Sierra Madre, Memento, The Usual Suspects and Fargo  -- Oscar and his ex-con co-workers at a plastic Christmas tree factory legally come into a large sum of money. Unfortunately, money can destroy the best of victories, especially ones among thieves.

Violent, predictable and splattered with morose humor, if you are willing to suspend disbelief back to the days before DNA testing, this Norwegian holiday tale, written by Jo Nesbø (Headhunters), makes for moderate, middlebrow entertainment. The film’s strongest suits are Lina Nordqvist's excellent production design andthe performances from its cast, including Hellum, Henrik Mestad as an arrogant detective, Mads Ousdal as Oscar’s lifelong buddy and Fridtjov Saheim as a crooked ex-cop.

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FILM REVIEW: HAPPY, HAPPY

Kaja (Agnes Kittelsen) in Happy, Happy.

The fears of a frau

By Ed Rampell

Norwegian director Anne Sewitsky’s feature debut, Happy, Happy is a Nordic screwball comedy about marital mayhem, infidelity, closeted homosexuality, slavery and more for adults. Written, shot and produced by women -- screenwriter Ragnhild Tronvoll, cinematographer Anna Myking and producer Synnove Horsdal -- Happy, Happy is also a Scandinavian equivalent to a chick flick.

Kaja (a fetching Agnes Kittelsen) is a wistful wife in a sexless marriage with Eirik (Joachim Rafaelsen). The couple have one son, Theodor (Oskar Hernæs Brandsø), and they live not so happily ever after in a rural part of Norway, where they rent a spare house on adjoining property to an unknown couple: the prettier Elisabeth (Danish actress Maibritt Saerens), Sigve (Henrik Rafaelsen) and their adapted African son, Noa (Ram Shihab Ebedy).

Kaja is curious about the newcomers, whom she disparagingly compares herself to and places on a proverbial pedestal. But far from being the deal couple Kaja imagines them to be, we soon find out that Elisabeth and Sigve have retreated to the countryside due to problems their own marriage is experiencing. The mixture of the two couples proves to be a combustible combination, and all hell breaks loose.

In the hands of a more somber helmer -- say, the Ingmar Bergman of 1973’s Scenes from a Marriage or Francois Truffaut of 1981’s The Woman Next Door -- Happy could have devolved into a tragedy. Instead, Sewitsky directs with a deft, droll touch, saving the film from being about endless, dreary Nordic nights filled with contemplation of the sheer meaninglessness of life, existential angst, oh woe is me, blah, blah and blah. Sewitsky’s comic panache spares us, and a quartet of upbeat musicians periodically appear from out of nowhere to serenade and amuse viewers with folksy tunes sung in English in the otherwise subtitled film.

Although her husband belittles her, Kaja is the central character, not the more glamorous, upscale, colder Elisabeth, precisely because the somewhat cloddish Kaja is essentially a warm woman, full of yearnings for love. Often, when you see films the behavior of characters seems completely inexplicable. But if you listen closely to the dialogue, when Kaja briefly, offhandedly recounts her personal back story, it all makes sense. Kittelsen’s performance reminded me of Sally Hawkins in Mike Leigh’s similarly titled 2008 Happy-Go-Lucky and in 2010’s Made In Dagneham.

The sex scenes alternate between fun and funny (I could almost imagine Lina Wertmuller shooting some of the sequences, with her tongue firmly ensconced in cheek). The exuberance of new love and sexual awakenings are, of course, intoxicating, those rare moments when we feel truly, fully alive. If I have one criticism of this film dealing with sexuality it’s that while there’s full frontal male nudity, the women are, for some strange reason, less revealed. This works against the storyline, as it is largely about Kaja’s self-revelation.

The sexual interplay (and lack of) of the adults is mirrored by the strange role playing of the two sons, which takes on a First World/ Third World twist, as the blond-haired, blue-eyed Theodor “enslaves” his black neighbor. Some viewers may find this subplot to be disturbing, even offensive.

Yet somehow things manage to work themselves out, due to the writer and director’s comic-tragic vision of this journey we call life. Despite the vicissitudes of her relationships, Kaja manages to come into her own as a newly empowered, confident, independent woman. And like Nora before in another Scandinavian work of art, Kaja too leaves her doll’s house.

It’s an affirmation of life that after the dreadful mass murder at Norway this past summer the first Norwegian film to reach our shores is called Happy, Happy -- and seeing this movie, which won Sundance’s World Cinema Jury Prize, I did feel, well, you know: Happy.     

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