A Pior Pessoa do Mundo

The Worst Person in the World is Triers last film in his Oslo trilogy (Reprise, Oslo August 31th), and it's about a women named Julie (Reinsve) whom is struggling to find her place in the world.

Virtue is the quality of being a good person and doing the right things, both for yourself and for others. I believe that Trier is problematizing this in this film by asking the question about whether or not you should do whats expected from the world around you, like settling for a more or less standardized life in forms of career and familiy, or if you should be out there and experiment to find your place in a rather confusing modern society.

Julie is on her way into her thirties and is in a relationship with Aksel (Danielsen). She is an indecisive individual when it comes to what to make out of her life. Aksel, being in his mid forties, is ready to have a familiy of his own, but Julie is not ready for that just yet. Her search for an meaningful existence leads her to another man named Eivind (Norddrum), which she falls in love with. She leaves Aksel in hope for that this time, things will be different, but will it be so?

This film is beautiful and intelligent. The way it depitcs todays social relations and culture in Norway, and probably other places in the world, is spot-on. All characters are deep and profound, where everyone of them playes an important role in the story no matter how big their part is on the screen. Everything seems to be in its right place.

The Worst Person in the World is another great film by Joachim Trier.

'The Worst Person in the World (2021)' is a deeply moving experience. It resonates with me in a way that very few films do. I feel it. It isn't just entertainment, it's something more. Exactly what that is, I can't quite say. Through a seemingly simple story of one woman's life, the picture works its way into your mind, your heart, your soul itself and provokes powerful emotions that you didn't even know movies could provoke; not just sadness or joy or excitement or longing (all of which it provokes in droves), but the kind of emotions that can't be put into words, the kind that weigh on your consciousness and shape your relationship with yourself and the world around you. It's difficult to describe, really, and I'm sure I'm probably slipping into hyperbole. I've lost any sense of objectivity (what little I usually have, at any rate) when it comes to discussing this picture, because its ultimate impact is one that I just can't shake and I'm not sure I ever want to. It's a profoundly affecting affair, one that overcomes any of its initial slowness or slice-of-life limitations, thanks primarily to its uncompromisingly complex nature. It's one of the most honest pieces of fiction I've ever seen, crafting characters who seem like they could walk off the screen and representing reality - or, at least, our lived experience of it - in a way that most kitchen-sink dramas could only dream of doing. It presents a plethora of powerful and often poignant ideas that keenly represent the human condition, all while remembering that its protagonist is the one driving the action and that it owes her a fully-formed narrative that entertains as much as it stirs. Its infrequent formalistic touches are absolutely delightful, but it's the rock-solid 'regular' stuff that matters the most. These moments are told not with style, but with substance; the actors often tell entire libraries worth of stories with their eyes alone. Indeed, this is some of the best acting I've seen in a long time, capable of conveying thought and emotion without so much as a single word. It's often all in the eyes; you could get lost in the pupils of its two leads. The chapter-based structure lends vitality to a plot that may otherwise have felt a little aimless, and the writing is simply divine. The feature just nails everything it sets out to achieve. The more I think about it, the more I like it. It's the sort of thing that proves ratings are insignificant. How can you assign stars to something like this? I can't put my feelings into words, let alone stars. I can't quantify it by the same metrics I use for other films. Even if it isn't as entertaining as the ones I enjoy the most, it's almost certainly much more powerful; very few of them make me feel the way this one does. Maybe another viewing is necessary to determine the picture's true score. Then again, maybe this right here - what I'm feeling right now - is more than enough. It isn't the sort of thing I experience very often; as such, it's a bit hard to process. What else can I say? This is honestly the kind of film that I could see changing your life in one way or another, however small and seemingly insignificant. As I mentioned earlier, it's a deeply moving experience.

Greetings again from the darkness. It's often fun when an innovative filmmaker turns a stodgy genre upside down and offers us a new take. And who better to flip over the frequently stale mode of romantic-comedies than Norwegian auteur Joachim Trier? Co-written with his frequent collaborator Eskil Vogt, the film could also be described as a dramady or a thirty-ish coming-of-age tale. Regardless of the label, it's entertaining and thought-provoking, as well as being a bit dark in parts (some of these also being quite funny). This is being called the final film in Trier's "Oslo Trilogy", three loosely connected films including REPRISE (2006) and OSLO, AUGUST 31 (2011).

Each of the films represents quite a shift in tone, and this latest revolves around Julie, played exceptionally well by Renate Reinsve. Trier structures the film as 12 chapters plus a prologue and epilogue. The prologue is brilliant and allows us to quickly grasp what we need to know about Julie. She changes her life goals multiple times - from doctor to psychologist to photographer, and later while working in a bookstore, she decides to be a writer. Thankfully we are spared the details in her essay on oral sex in the #MeToo era. Julie is impulsive to a fault. She has confidence but can't commit to a direction - she's confident in her uncertainty.

As she approaches 30, Julie is struggling to find her way. She's not so much lost as struggling to deal with her jumbled thoughts. Can you lose your identity if you haven't yet formed one? That seems to be the crux of Julie's inner-struggles, even as she finds a seemingly good fit for a partner. Aksel (a terrific Anders Danielsen Lie) is a successful graphic artist, and he seems to understand Julie. Their relationship builds over time, even as their individual visions and goals diverge. The best life partner still comes with challenges when you still aren't sure who you are as a person.

Julie feels herself slipping away, and that's when her impulsive nature reappears. During a special event for Aksel, she walks out and spontaneously crashes a local wedding reception. This leads to a meet cute and flirty time with Eivind (Herbert Nordrum). Both he and she are in steady relationships, but only Bill Clinton could determine if the time Julie and Eivind spend together is cheating or not. Ms. Reinsve perfectly captures the spirit of Julie. Although she's often a bit flustered, when she does smile, she radiates like a young Shelley Fabares.

Much has been made of Ms. Reinsve's performance and she certainly deserves the accolades. However, we shouldn't overlook the outstanding work of Anders Danielsen Lie in a difficult role. Filmmaker Joachim Trier's previous work also includes THELMA (2017) and LOUDER THAN BOMBS (2015), and his creativity is most welcome. Two sequences stand out in his latest. In one, the world shifts into 'freeze frame' mode as Julie runs through the streets of Oslo to find her new love, and in the second, we follow her in the midst of a drug hallucination after experimenting with mushrooms. In the story, Trier focuses on the dynamics between partners and how the stages of life can complicate things. It's charming and funny, but also quite serious, as he certainly doesn't buy into the ideal that movies must have happy endings. In regard to the title, rather than describe Julie, it's more likely meant to explain how many people think of themselves as they make decisions and mistakes - it's really a show of humanity. And quite a good one.

Opening in limited theaters on February 4, 2022.

What a wonderful film. It's amazing how when you leave Hollywood behind, you find gems like this. Acting, script and direction are all excellent and the film is engaging from start to end.

It's been a couple of hours since I watched this, and I'll admit, it's been hard to figure out how to give some thoughts on it through text.

I will say it resonated with me emotionally- far more than your average movie. I really felt it, y'know? Not in a way that's going to make me reshape my life or change what I'm doing day to day necessarily, but there was something to it that makes me sure it's going to stick in my brain for weeks, maybe months or even years to come.

I can't go much further than that. It's a wonderful, sometimes funny, sometimes bittersweet, sometimes soul-crushing film, and all the emotions are explored and interweaved perfectly.

There are so many great scenes... the scene where time freezes, the "what is cheating" scene, the scene in and around the hospital, the scene with the magic mushrooms... it's almost like every single chapter in the film is a highlight, and it all fits together almost perfectly.

It's a special film- the more I think about it, the better it gets, and the more it resonates. Also features some of the best acting I've seen in a while from its two leads, Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie. They're so compelling it's almost alarming how invested you get in their characters, maybe because they begin to feel like real people, at a point. Especially in the last half-hour or so- I was blown away by how real they felt, and how easily I believed that these two characters had known each other for years.

Might be a 5/5 on a rewatch, in all honesty. Life being tough and all at the moment, I was distracted by some of my own problems while watching these fictional characters deal with theirs. But the moments of crossover were extremely cathartic, and as a film, it flows so well, and didn't feel two hours long, despite having pacing that wasn't afraid to slow down from time to time.

Well, how about that.

I actually wrote quite a lot.

Good films will do that to you.