World Stops For Julie/Reinsve: Joachim Trier’s THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD (2021)
Film Analysis in 10 Slides
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Awards
At the Cannes 2021 premiere of the Norwegian film The Worst Person in the World, Renate Reinsve won the award for Best Actress for her performance in the film. Anders Danielsen Lie was given the award for the Best Supporting Actor by the National Society of film Critics, USA. The film’s cinematographer Kasper Tuxen won the Silver Hugo for his work in the film at the Chicago International Film festival 2021.
Synopsis
The film follows Julie (Renate Reinsve) in her late twenties, chronicling her life over four years. Faced with plenty of choice she explores various passions, professions, and relationships with men. After falling for a successful comic-book artist Aksel (Trier regular Anders Danielsen Lie) who is 15 years older than her, she bumps into his diametrically opposite kind — the young Eivind (Herbert Nordrum), a barista — and falls in love with him. Along with his long-time co-writer Eskil Vogt, director Joachim Trier has reworked familiar tropes for contemporary audience in this last part of his Oslo Trilogy. The other two are Reprise (2006) and Oslo, August 31st (2011).
Reprise (2006)
In this first feature film of Joachim Trier, Philip (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Erik (Espen Klouman Høiner) are best friends since childhood with ambition to become writers. While Erik’s manuscript for his novel, submitted together with that of Philip, is rejected, Philip’s novel gets accepted, making him a star in the literary circle of Oslo. However, Erik and Philip experience the vicissitudes of life later. Its voice-over reminiscent of François Truffaut’s Jules and Jim (1962), loose structure and themes such as identity recur in The Worst Person in the World. Both the films are set in Oslo like the other film in the Trilogy: Oslo, August 31st.
Oslo, August 31st (2011)
This second film of Joachim Trier is loosely based on Pierre Drieu La Rochelle’s novel “Will O’ the Wisp” and Louis Malle’s film The Fire Within (1963). Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie) is a recovering drug addict with suicidal tendency. He explores the possibility of returning to normal life by taking a day’s leave meeting his friend, trying to contact his former girlfriend, and attending a job interview. But he will have to account for the years lost to drugs. With a sensitive performance by Anders Danielsen Lie and empathetic direction by Trier, this critically acclaimed film shares its protagonist’s sense of lost time with that of Julie in Trier’s The Worst Person in the World. Renate Reinsve who plays Julie appears for a brief while in the party scene in this film.
Structure of The Worst Person In The World
Ostensibly the film has the structure of a novel with 12 chapters apart from a prologue and an epilogue. Its use of chapters to narrate the story is something it has in common with a few other films of 2021 such as Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog and Wes Anderson’s French Dispatch. Trier has put together a number of episodes in the life of Julie in The Worst Person in the World. It is as though Julie is writing her own story on the fly so it has gaps. The organization of chapters and the voice-over, as in Reprise, have helped the film in covering four years in the life of its female protagonist. Yet another way of looking at the structure is the way the film unfolds. Julie falls in love with Aksel, has a relationship with him which breaks. She repeats this with Eivind. Therefore, the structure is that of doubling which leads to some learning for Julie.
Renate Reinsve
Trier’s masterstroke is to cast Renate Reinsve in the role of Julie. The antecedent of Julie is the eponymous female lead played by Diane Keaton in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977). As for the title of Trier’s film, it refers to the character of Eivind who feels like the worst person in the world for betraying his girlfriend, Sunniva. By the same token, the film’s title applies to Julie too. Such an epithet in fact makes the character interesting. Moreover, the vivacity and energy that Reinsve brings to her performance is dazzling. Towards the end, Aksel seems to miss her and calls her a damn good person!
World Stops For Julie/Reinsve
In the much talked about set piece in the film, Julie leaves Aksel, goes to meet Eivind and then returns to Aksel. During this period the entire world comes to a standstill except Julie and Eivind. It points to the surfeit of choice and the romantic fantasy of trying them. This very well executed scene also signifies the approach of The Worst person in the World. It is a coming-of-age film that revolves almost entirely around the whimsical Julie. The other characters don’t have much role although Aksel has a memorable performance in the end.
Cinematography
The Worst Person in the World was shot on Kodak 35mm film by Danish DP Kasper Tuxen. Reason why the film looks so different from most of the contemporary films which don’t use the celluloid. DP Tuxen has captured the Oslo exteriors and the interiors mostly using natural light. The film’s virtuoso scene of stopping the world for the heroine to meet Eivind and get back to Axel has been pulled off very well. One wonders why it couldn’t be done in a single shot/ long take. Perhaps it would have been logistically much more challenging.
Closing Thoughts
Trier makes a tribute to his favorite film — Federico Fellini’s 8½. A fantasy sequence in the Fellini film shows the protagonist Guido controlling all the women in his life in his harem unlike in his real life. In an inversion of it, Julie imagines, under the influence of magical mushrooms, that all her ex-boyfriends overpower her although she calls the shots in the rest of the film.
The Worst Person in the World may not break new ground. However — aided by its casting coup of Renate Reinsve as Julie and a modern reworking of the trope of the woman who explores various avenues in her search for identity — the film has struck a chord with the audience, especially the millennials.
