A Pior Pessoa do Mundo

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.

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.

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.

Reading the other reviews I am amazed polarizing this film seems to be. When I watched the film a few days ago at the Viennale (Vienna International Film Festival), I would never have thought that it could breed controversy. My feelings about it lie somewhere in between those comments. I never felt it to be boring but I also never thought it groundbreaking in any way. The film, especially in the beginning, has a light approach to the story, almost as if taking its main protagonist not too serious. The narration and chapter style enhances this impression. There are many, quite entertaining, cinematic ideas and moments, most remarkable the long "freeze" sequence and some animation scenes. I found those very fitting in a positive sense since the aim of the character was to find her own way of being. The male versus female relationship question about prospects, identity, future are discussed at length. Sexism is also a theme that creeps up. The film develops a deeper meaning toward the end while the final episode was a kind of let down experience which I don't want to elaborate, otherwise I would need to mark this with spoiler alert.

The acting of all is first class and touching, but why there is such an excitement on the side of the critics eludes me.

The main character, Julie, became annoying in the first 5 minutes and stayed that way. Couldn't muster any empathy for her and as the film stayed with her closely the decent acting and cinematography couldn't engage me. One of those films where I was waiting for it to be over.