The Worst Person in the World

Year 16, Day 1 - 1/1/24 - Movie #4,601

BEFORE: Happy New Year 2024, and Happy New Movie Year 16!  

I suppose I'll have to explain why I'm coming back from break with a Norwegian dramedy that was Oscar-nominated two years ago for Best International Feature Film - did I lose my mind? Or am I just a glutton for punishment, setting myself up for a nearly impossible linking challenge?  Did I put this film on my list as a whim, or was I influenced by the HEAVY publicity campaign for this film around Oscar time in 2022?  I'm not sure...

Well, my process is the same as before, if you look at the films that kicked off my last few chains, which were all successful - in 2020 I started the year with "Whale Rider", which linked to just ONE other film on my list, via Cliff Curtis, to "Sunshine".  In 2021 I started the year with "Parasite", a Korean film that linked to just ONE other film on my list, which was "Okja", from the same director, Bong Joon Ho.  2022 began with "Nomadland", which linked via Frances McDormand to just ONE other film on my list, "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day", and my first film in 2023 was "Narrowsburg", a documentary that linked to, you guessed it, just ONE other film on my list, via Paul Borghese and archive footage of Robert De Niro, to "The Family". 

So, I went looking for other films that might fit the bill, something prominent but also perhaps obscure that linked to just ONE other film I'm tracking.  I made a list of about 10 possible "one-linkables", the most famous was "CODA", the Best Picture winner, and I do want to see that, but it only linked to a horror movie, "Slender Man", so that didn't seem right for January.  On to this film, which I had on my romance sub-list, however since it only links to, well, tomorrow's film, I would probably NEVER be able to work it into a month-long February romance chain - what would possibly be on the other side?  It would be a dead-end.  So it's off the romance list and it got moved into the lead-off position, the tricky thing then was coming up with a 28 to 30- long chain that would get me where I need to be on February 1.  The fact that I moved forward with THIS film should tell you that yes, I was able to work one out - and with a couple additions I padded it out to 30.  

Now, my annual (really) long-distance dedication, a lot of prominent actors and musicians passed away in 2023, so there's for sure TOO MANY to choose from.  There are people who I watched documentaries about, like Tina Turner and Sinead O'Connor and Tony Bennett (he was in that Carl Reiner doc about people active in their 90's) and Robbie Robertson from The Band.  Ray Liotta, who I just watched in "Cocaine Bear", Tom Wilkinson and Michael Gambon, Raquel Welch and Jane Birkin from classic 60's films, Richard Roundtree from the "Shaft" films and Alan Arkin from, well, everything. Piper Laurie from "Carrie" and "Twin Peaks" and Burt Young from the "Rocky" movies. Harry freakin' Belafonte and Melinda Dillon (the only person who could star in both "Close Encounters" and "A Christmas Story") and character actors like Lance Reddick and Andre Braugher. 

But I have to dedicate the next year to Paul Reubens, who will be most missed here at the Movie Year. I kicked off 2018 with his film "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday" (Movie #2,801) and I was a big fan of his Saturday morning Playhouse show, and I even got to see him live on Broadway not TOO long ago.  So it's been five years since he kicked off a Movie Year, then carried over to the next film, which was "Matilda".  Sad to see you go, Pee-Wee, the playhouse won't be the same without you.  Globey and Chairy and Magic Screen all miss you, too. 

THE PLOT: The chronicles of four years in the life of Julie, a young woman who navigates the troubled waters of her love life and struggles to find her career path, leading her to take a realistic look at who she really is.

AFTER: Oh, it was SUCH a good call to watch this one after the ball dropped on New Year's Eve.  The turning over of the calendar page is symbolic of starting over, the new year is full of possibilities and untapped potential, like literally ANYTHING can happen in 2024.  Plus it's a time when people pass resolutions about ways they're planning to improve their lives, from spending more time at the gym to spending less time on their phone, or vowing that THIS is going to be the year they get that dream job or find new love or even just to come up with a new life plan or learn to be content with the path they're already on.  Whatever happens or doesn't happen, the space between the years has come to be a time for reflection, if nothing else. 

Julie is a medical student in Oslo who's become disenchanted with med school and transfers to psychology, and then a few months later decides that she'd rather be a photographer.  Sure, it could happen, I know a lot of people maybe find medical school to be too tough, so many drop out.  But photography?  Her mother doesn't say it out loud, but clearly she thinks it's an odd left turn for her daughter.  She also does some writing, and gets a job in a book store, you know, the one near the university, until she can figure out the photography career.  

Her relationships sort of follow the same pattern over these four years - she starts a relationship with Aksel, a comic book artist who's 15 years older, and they move in together, but soon they start to clash over the idea of having a child.  He's for it, but she's against it, as there are things she wants to do in life first, the problem is, she's not exactly sure what those things are.  One night Julie crashes a wedding reception and hangs out with Elvind, a barista.  They hit if off, but since they're both in relationships that seem to be working they engage in intimacy exercises (like smelling each other's sweat, or inhaling each other's cigarette smoke) but NOT sex.  Because that would be weird, they only just met. 

Julie then turns 30, and perhaps that's a trigger, because she finds herself dreaming about Elvind and falling out of love with Aksel, who's always complaining that his comic strip character "Bobcat" got turned into a movie and they sanitized it for kids. The American equivalent would maybe be the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which was a cool, gritty comic book back in the day before becoming a very safe cartoon. Elvind happens to come into the bookstore, and that's another trigger, because soon Julie's breaking up with Aksel and Elvind ditches his overly liberal girlfriend Sunniva who's all about vegetarianism, combating climate change and fighting for the rights of indigenous peoples.  Yeah, good luck with all that.  Julie doesn't want kids, Elvind doesn't want kids, everything seems to be back on track, it's just that the break-ups make Aksel and Elvind describe themselves as feeling like "The worst person in the world."  I get that, break-ups are tough, whether you're the breaker or the breakee, when there's another person your girlfriend is seeing or even worse, when there's not.  That means she just wants to break up with you because she can't stand you. 

Oh, there's more heartbreak and anguish to come, because Julie learns she's pregnant, just before she finds out from Aksel's brother that he has incurable cancer.  She goes to see him, but man, how awkward is it to go visit the man who wanted to have kids with her, and tell him that she's unexpectedly expecting?  But this all feels REAL somehow, like this all maybe happened to someone the writers knew, from the inadvertent drug trip to the dream about running through town to get to the coffee shop.  Renate Reinsve reminded me of some kind of Norwegian Rose Byrne, and I wonder why someone hasn't made an English-language version of this yet.  Or is this already the Norwegian version of the "Bridget Jones' Diary" films? 

A lot about this film spoke directly to me - like Aksel being older and realizing that the things he enjoyed when he was younger, like comic books, no longer held much appeal for him, but he still bought and read them out of habit. Yeah, I feel that. Plus my career's been stuck in neutral for some time, 30 years running the same animation studio, and even though I started a new second job two years ago in a college movie theater, there's not much room for advancement there, not unless I'm willing to wait a few years for someone to quit so I can move up. I'm actually doing well financially, when the theater is very busy I can work a lot of shifts and so my bank balance is back to pre-pandemic levels, but the animation director I work for is so far in debt after making a new feature that I'm convinced he's going to have to shut down the studio any day now. Looking for a new primary job after 30 years seems very stressful, and I wish I could just work part-time but I can't afford it.  I'm too young to retire and too old to start something new, it seems. 

But it seems the valid message here is that not all career paths are linear, same goes for relationships if you practice serial monogamy. There are times in life where you find yourself right back where you started, or in the same place but with a different person, or in the same place at a different company.  Wait, didn't I just leave this scene?  I guess wherever you go, well, there you are.  So I'm trying to look on the bright side, I'm sure I wasn't the only person who lost a job because of the pandemic and had to scramble to find something else to do, and I'm damn sure I wasn't the only person to get divorced and had to put my life back together in a new way.  There's something to be said for treating parts of your life like a farm field that has to lay fallow for a season or two so things can grow again - or treating your career like a forest, you might have to burn down part of it so the rest of it can thrive and grow back someday. 

And if you DON'T know where you're going, as George Harrison once sang, then any road will take you there.  But you'd better start soon, because you just don't know how long the journey will be. Look, when I was a kid I loved animals, and I thought I'd grow up to be a veterinarian, then I realized that meant operating on them, cutting in to them, and I realized that was not for me.  Then I thought I'd be a pilot, but realized how tough THAT was - so OK, my Mom said I was good at impressions and I'd be the next Rich Little, which clearly the world didn't need.  Music, singing a capella, I tried it for a while, and it's fun but not a solid career.  Ah, but when filmmaking came into my head, I figured I'd cracked the case. Guidance counselors warned me against it because I wasn't the most social kid in high school, and filmmaking is all about being social and networking and getting along with people.  Well, OK, they were right, I'm still not good at that, but I've had a career in independent filmmaking for 33 years, so who was more right in the end, them or me?  I can stand on my record and if the ride ends tomorrow, I can still be proud of what I've done, but then I'll have to start something else, that's all. 

Also starring Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Herbert Nordrum, Hans Olav Brenner, Helene Bjorneby, Vidar Sandem, Maria Grazia Di Meo, Lasse Gretland, Karen Roise Kielland, Marianne Krogh, Thea Stabell, Deniz Kaya, Eia Skjonsberg

RATING: 6 out of 10 signed graphic novels