Oslo, 31 de Agosto

Oslo, October 31st (2011)

A highly realistic, intimate view of a young man who has completed a drug abuse program and is trying to rejoin his life. It's a rough ride, sometimes boring, sometimes raw, but it's the real thing, and if you have an interest in this kind of common problem without watching a documentary, this is the movie.

Though set in Oslo, there is a universal quality to all of this. Yes, the leading man, Anders, has the usual problem getting jobs. But that's just the beginning. It's about friends who want to help and friends who expect him to help them be wild. It's about old girlfriends, new girlfriends, parties where you can't drink, family that wasn't adequate, and on and on.

And the temptation of real drugs, beyond drink.

It's odd to realize, but I think the bottom line is that most young people live in a culture that's on the edge, on purpose and for good reason. And there is a percentage of people who can't handle that, who need to go over the edge, and will always go over the edge. Some of those people understand it early and save themselves, others never can. And life is a series of crises.

This isn't a feel good movie about a man who succeeds (I'm not saying here if he succeeds or not—just that it's not some sunny happiness after a round with the devil). This is about what it might be like to be in the shoes of Anders, or anyone like him, and how almost impossible it is to rise up. And his friends and family are partly to blame, sad to admit.

The final few minutes of the film are poetic—elegiac might be a better word—and the opening to the film is similarly daring and edgy. It's odd and perhaps too bad the the middle—the bulk of it—is more prosaic. It's good, it's really good, but without the poetry we are sure to sink into empathy and sadness, watching what is surely so believable it is, somewhere, all too real.

The sober rationality of the young Norwegian intellectual classes provides a perfectly blank canvas on which to paint the conversely complex neuroses of the anti-hero, Anders. Anders is an intelligent and gifted opinionist and writer, but his addiction has left him riddled with insecurity. The film focuses on the most pivotal moment of this young man's life as he's tragically stuck between recovery and regression: that moment is both sprinkled with glimmers of hope and drenched in melancholia. Anders' contradiction is the eternal paradox of the addict, and perhaps Trier is presenting it as an allegory of the modern human condition. Anders Danielsen Lie gives an incredible performance as the enigmatic hero and the acting throughout is consistently authentic, convincing and engrossing. The soft-focus cinematography (Jakob Ihre) works well with a particularly engaging sound design which, along with very conscious direction, editing and general production design, makes for technically masterful cinema with an aesthetic that is both selectively minimal and enjoyably rich. Oslo is a tragedy. Its simple, melancholic tone and metropolitan landscapes make the film undeniably reminiscent of the French New Wave - think Hiroshima Mon Amour in present day Oslo. The film is minimal and stylized, presenting social realism in an artistic form without losing any of its dramatic potency to surrealism. Utterly convincing and captivating: an instant indie classic.

This guy gets out of rehab. One of the reasons he's been there is Oslo, but it's Oslo he returns to, when leaving.

Life is about to proceed. The lives of others, that is. The guy from rehab slowly understands that he is dead and there is no way of getting back to what he anyway never had. Oslo is merciless.

Strong drama about the hopelessness a person feels while entering middle-age knowing that he has no experiences, no history, except for the well-known feeling of being worthless. Which isn't an experience in itself. It all ends with a cliffhanger. The chasm is the possibility of getting older.

I think I learned about this film when I searched for the highest rated films on Rotten Tomatoes. I saw it had earned nearly universal high marks, so I decided to check it out.

It follows a recovering addict named Anders who is granted a leave from the rehab clinic where he is currently residing to go into Oslo for a job interview. While in Oslo, which he has not visited in some time since going to the clinic, he meets a number of old friends, attempts to reconnect with a former girlfriend, and visits some old haunts.

That is essentially all in the way of plot. What makes the film so affecting are the conversations he has with these friends about life, feelings of regret, lost opportunities, etc. The conversations seemed so authentic and realistic; the writers never gave into the temptation of injecting false notes of sentimentality..

Even though Anders is an addict, this isn't really an "addiction movie." His addiction is always there in the background, but the themes that the film explores are far more universal and general. And the lead actor's performance was very poignant and impressive. I definitely recommend this to anybody interested in a strong dialog and character-driven film.

The most hard-hitting and resonant film I've seen in a long time, Oslo August 31st sets itself up with serene, fuzzy home footage and tales of blissful memories spent in the titular city of Oslo only to cut to the bleak life of Anders, a former heroin addict on his first day of life out of rehab. Searching for a meaning and a purpose in this new life he finds little in his friends' bourgeois city routines, which he neither desires nor feels he could achieve anyway, and their claims that "it'll all get better" fail to move a mind constantly probing and analysing the reality of his situation.

He soon undergoes an intense conversation in a park overlooking the city with his closest friend, wherein Anders pours out his thoughts of the time the two have spent apart, and the precision of their rapport matched with the lead's acting make the whole scene feel horribly real.

Anders wanders the often-empty city like a ghost, sitting in a café surrounded by the hollow dreams of others ("Plant a tree. Swim with dolphins. Write a great novel") and dwelling on the weight of his own existence. In two minds whether to leave the city, increasingly desperate and always beautifully shot, we follow him through the night until sunrise, when Anders appears to us in a sequence at his most unpredictable.

Undeniably disturbing, yet intimate and tender, this is a film that already feels close to my heart, one unafraid to bring up difficult questions and brilliantly able to provoke an idea of the absurdity of it all.