Hawaii, Oslo

I have seen this film at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival and truly enjoyed it. "Hawaii, Oslo" is one of the best if not THE best film I have seen for many years. I was really moved by the honest and human story and emotions in the film. Also, the acting is superb and the story clever. I highly recommend this film. Also I spoke to Stig Henrik Hoff, what a nice guy and great actor. THANKS!!! "Hawaii, Oslo" is one of those films you need to see again and again and you will pick up more details every time you see the film. Just about everything about the film is harmonic, the acting, the story, the music, the pictures. I think what makes this film so special is the fact that there are only main characters in this film and they seem to identify 100% with their roles. Great acting by the two boys, too - they are brilliant, too!

This is a remarkably well constructed movie that is fascinating to watch yet somehow manages to fall flat. The many characters race constantly around Oslo on an atypically scorching summer day (nobody seems to walk there, regardless of the heat and sweat, or to drive slowly) on their various frantic individual quests, briefly intersecting or passing each other unknown and unknowing, until they all come together magically in the end.

As others have already said, there is much in this movie that is derivative of earlier movies, but a good movie does not have to be innovative. However, it does - for me - almost always have to make me care about the characters, and that is what this one failed almost completely to do.

I cared about only one of the dozen or so main characters scurrying and caroming around the city like pinballs, and he was the least frantic, the most unassuming of them all: little Magne, the younger (and quieter) of the younger pair of brothers, played with exquisite, tender understatement by Ferdinand Falsen Hiis.

Magne was like a small but solid rock in this swirling storm of a movie, and it would have been been crushed under the weight of its own overwrought melodrama without him. To use a contrasting metaphor, he is like the gravity that keeps the universe from spinning out into nothingness.

Erik Poppe gets one star for choreographing this frenetic dance, and Ferdinand Falsen Hiis gets four stars for holding it together just by being in it. He makes it worth watching. ALL the adults are just too frenzied to either believe or care about.

I recently saw this film at a screening by the Desert Film Society in Palm Springs. I had wanted to see this at the 2005 Palm Springs International Film Festival where it had it's international debut outside of Norway but screenings were sold out so I was eager to see this as it had good reviews by those I know who saw it. Eric Poppe makes his directorial debut in this film. He had been a cameraman so experience in filming a movie was there but how was he going to direct this story and it's actors? Well this film had a wonderful cast of actors who although they may have not been individually great actors, collectively as an ensemble cast they played their parts with an authenticity that left the viewer as seeing these as real people not just screen characters. I like characters in a film and this has plenty. The implausibility of these stories weaving together is quickly forgotten and in place of the implausible is a wonderful story that you want to climb aboard and ride to it's conclusion. Poppe uses hand held cameras through this film's shooting so effectively that you forget that this is not a huge budget film with track and crane shots but a simple presentation that when effectively done presents the film in a straightforward manor that can be just as effective. No dependency on jerky movements and fast and stylistic camera movement but instead on honest presentation transcribed to film. The sound in this film is outstanding as well. Many films demand great acting performances to carry an other wise weak script. This film had good acting performances delivered from a balanced script. This is a psychological drama and a very good film and I would rate it a 8.0 of a possible 10 and highly recommend it.

"Hawaii, Oslo" is great, moving, well-acted and brilliantly directed.

I think it's a film about learning to love and be loved. About choices, about forgetting what one did in the past and moving on. About both accepting one's Reality and sacrificing oneself for the good of others...

The narrative is not linear, but we can understand the story easily. All pieces come together when the credits roll, and although it's a very pungently moving film, there is a sense of Hope throughout the whole thing.

All the stories within the story are finely woven, there are no plot holes. The characters are quite believable and every scene has a purpose.

I'm planning to see it again (saw it at a Nordic Cinema Showing in my city) to try and absorb it better.

This was one of the films that most people kept telling me to go and watch. I just saw it and I really must admit that i don't quite understand what all the hype is about. Reading some of the reviews of it in Misc. Norwegian newspaper one could easily be lead to believe that this was one of the best Norwegian films of all time.

It wasn't bad, but it wasn't that good either. Sure, most of the actors did a good job and in the Norwegian film industry the script was original even though it's been done before in other countries. I feel that the pace was to slow which lead your mind to focus on other things than what was happening on screen. The soundtrack could need some improving too.

Overall I would say its a 5 on the 1 to 10 scale, OK, but not groundbreaking or the film of the century as some people have stated that it is.