Oslo can be considered both an adaptation of Pierre Drieu La Rochelle’s 1931 novel Le feu follet and a remake of Louis Falle’s 1963 film of the same name. Changing the Parisian setting and French names with an Oslo setting and Norwegian names, the story is essentially the same. It is the story of a young recovering addict who has spent a period in a rehabilitation clinic and is struggling to reconnect with his friends, family, society and himself. At the most basic level this story is about drug addiction. Its span of 80 years proves the story’s resonance throughout modern history. Its tragic nature (without giving too much away) proves that society still hasn’t come up with any resolutions for this recurring tale.
Although the film can be classed as minimalist in the sense the main character’s conflict is internal and the plot is focused on a mere 24 hour period, it maintains a classical structure through the consistent presence of causality. One small action leads to another and this cause-effect progression constantly drives the story forward beat by beat. Although the film is minimal in a lot of respects, the plot is rich and well developed and there is never a dead frame. To make a film both minimalist and captivating is testament to the screenwriting ability of Eskil Vogt and director Joachim Trier.
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.
A couple of the main themes of this piece are dependence and reliability. Anders is at a stage of his life where he needs people to be there to support him, but the people in his life are at a stage where they have given up trying to support him. As much as they try to help him, it’s clear Anders is extremely high maintenance – too much to sustain through his increasingly erratic behaviour. There is a distinct absence of Anders’ family in the film and the friends he has are unreliable. Anders is highly egocentric and constantly in need of a crutch, whether that’s a lover, family, friends, drugs or suicide, but there’s a vulnerable and childlike part of Anders that’s highly relatable, making his story ever more heart wrenching.
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.
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