Beyond Sleep

When I was at high school, long ago, I read the 1966 novel on which this movie is based: Nooit Meer Slapen (Never sleep again) by the late Dutch writer W.F. Hermans. The book read like a slow burner on existentialism and loneliness in the Norwegian wilderness.

I was pleasant surprised that this story was finally made into a movie.

Beyond Sleep leans heavily on close ups of leading man Reinout Scholten van Aschat who plays a young geologist searching for meteor impacts in Norway. He is beautiful with his green eyes and red beard. Scholten van Aschat is a real cinematographer's dream. The agony and anguish he has to play is inarticulate because he is a typical polite Dutch boy who doesn't complain easily.

Betrayal is the main topic. On screen there is a lot of controlled anger (that gives the movie a thriller element) and the counterpart of that, delusions and paranoid hallucinations. Fate and irony overwhelm the young geologist. The results of the expedition are the total opposite of the expectations.

This is piece of trash. Why would anyone wrote a novel like this is beyond sleep....and why would anyone make a movie about that stupid novel is beyond sleep.

Just don't watch it, you'll regret it.

Just sleep man!

This film tells the story of a geologist, who goes to the wilderness in Norway to hunt for craters. He finds himself hopelessly lost in the wilderness, and while looking for a way back, he even manages to lose his compass as well.

Honestly, the above story line was all I managed to catch out of 107 minutes of screen time. All I see is a group of men walking around in really beautiful tundra. However, there is a limit of how many times I can watch people walking up a hill then down a hill, cross a stream then cross another stream. The story goes nowhere, and even if it did, it is painfully slow. The guy takes ten minutes to cross a stream and look at his compass, then another three minutes to try to retrieve his compass, then spends two minutes walking to and fro to indicate that he is lost. All could have been shown within one minute. I regret having watched this film, as there is only great scenery and nothing else.

Boudewijn Koole is one of the best Dutch directors. His first feauture length film was "Kauwboy" (2012). After that he made two films situated in Scandinavia. "Beyond sleep" (2016), reviewed here, and "Disappearance" (2017).

"Beyond sleep" is an adaptation of a novel by the well known Dutch writer Willem Frederik Hermans (1921 - 1995). Fate messing up with even the most careful kind of planning is one of the recurrent themes in Hermans novels. In "Beyond sleep" a student (Alfred played by Reinout Scholten van Aschat) is looking for evidence for the theory of his deceased father. Being busy with other things he missed the evidence that is practically happening under his nose.

Fate making fun of planning is however (in my opinion) not the main theme of the film. The main theme is suspicion. Alfred is on an expedition with three Norwegian fellow students. Gradually he discovers that a Norwegian professor has rediculed the theory of his father that he tries to prove in his thesis. Can he still trust his fellow expedition companions or are they influenced by this professor?

The suspicion has en ever increasing impact on Alfreds psyche as also the midsummer night sun and the insomnia take their toll. In this respect the film resembles "Insomnia" (1997, Erik Skjoldbjærg & 2002, Christopher Nolan).

Koole succeeds in visualising the changing mood of Alfred by increasingly using close ups where at the beginning of the film wide overwiews over the Nordic landscape dominated. Sidney Lumet used a different but related technique in "12 angry men" (1957), making the film ever more claustrophobic.

Nooit meer Slapen - Beyond Sleep is one of the best novels in Dutch literature. The author Willem Frederik Hermans maintains a pessimistic philosophy in which misunderstanding, reality and lack of control of ones own destiny are important themes. The novel captures them all when a a PhD candidate goes on an impossible trip to the Northern parts of Norway ins search of proof that geological structures are meteor craters.

The scenery, the mosquitos, the lack of darkness, the language misunderstanding, and the anxiety to disappoint don't lead to catharsis. It is not the most optimistic of novels so to speak.

Set in today's time. The movie captures the Novel's atmosphere and emotion very well.

I wonder if it will resonate with people who have not read the novel recently.