The re-birth of Norwegian Cinema!

I know that headline sent chills through your spine ... although rebirth may be the wrong word here: while Scandinavian cinema has been relevant since Carl Th. Dreyer first picked up a silent movie camera, movies from Norway have been strictly relegated to the film festival circuit. Overshadowed in the last several decades by the very dark shadow of Ingmar Bergman, I can only remember a handful of movies from Norway that I've seen -- beginning with 1987's The Pathfinder (notable for being the first movie in the Sami language), the dreadful The Ice Palace (the longest 78 minutes of my life, and one of many mistakes I made at the Houston Film Festival), and the sweet, nostalgic Herman from 1991 (also at the Houston Film Festival). All three were Norway's official entry in the Academy Awards; all three were passed over by the Oscar nominating committee).*

In the last twenty years, Denmark has dominated international screens again (starting with Lars von Trier's Zentropa through last year's After the Wedding), notwithstanding Bergman's unfailing talent (his last, Sarabande, being equal to his great works of the Seventies), and with occasional entries from Finland (mostly by Aki Kaurismaki). (The films of the fifth Scandinavian country, Iceland, are even more hard to find--anybody see '101 Reykjavik'? -- so they haven't had a chance to establish an identity).

But when was the last film from Norway to make a splash? The only two I can recall getting a U.S. release were 1996's Hamsun (starring Max von Sydow) and 1997's Insomnia (starring Stellan Skarsgaard, effectively remade in English with Al Pacino and Hillary Swank--the first case in history of an American remake being superior to the European original!).

Until now, that is, when an edgy, youthful film has gotten some well-deserved attention over here -- appropriately titled "Reprise," because it is very much a return to the themes that first drew American audiences to European films in the heyday of the Sixties: the slow, painful growth of young people into adulthood. These are the difficulties faced by the two nascent writers Philip & Erik in Olso, as envisioned by director Joachim Trier.

Aside from their literary ambitions, these two are indistinguishable from the Glaswegian layabouts in "Trainspotting," the Berlin ne'er do wells in "The Edukators," or most directly, the three delinquents in Godard's classic "Band a Part" (three films this one calls to mind in both subject matter and kinetic visual style). True, Philip & Erik are more law-abiding than the characters in those movies, but judging from the places and people they hang with, you wonder how and where they ever got their intellectual stimulation to become writers. But writing is the thing that binds these two together through Phillip's mental breakdown (poetically realized early in the movie in flashback with a few wordless but telling scenes). The tension between the three protagonists (including Philip's girlfriend, beautifully played by Viktoria Winge) as they inevitably grow apart as one becomes a serious writer and the other doesn't, is uncomfortably real. What's the future for this Norwegian gem from 2006? Well, it was the country's official entry in the Best Foreign Film category of the Oscars ... and it didn't make the cut. Better luck next time, Norway.

* The Academy's many oversights may be a thing of the past, thanks to a key rule change for 2009. We can only hope.