Sult
For the
first review of 2019 it is time for another of those special Danish entries in
the Danish edition of the 1001 List. This one is called “Sult” and is a
glorified piece of work. It is based and apparently closely follows a famous
novel by Norwegian author Knut Hamsun and made quite a splash in 1966 with a
Best Actor win in Cannes.
Needless to
say I was both curious and excited to watch this movie for the first time.
Sadly, it was not for me at all.
“Sult” was
devised as a Scandinavian co-production with participants from Norway, Sweden
and Denmark and the idea was that while the action takes place in Oslo, 1890
and all the characters are Norwegian, the actors would talk to each other in
their own language. It is true that there is enough similarity that we
generally understand each other, but from a viewer’s perspective it is very
confusing and disturbing to listen to and, well, it simply does not work. Yet,
this is merely a technicality.
The story
is about a young poet, Pontus (Per Oscarsson) who is going around in Oslo. Pontus
has no money and no food. He gets evicted from his crappy apartment and hunger
is gnawing at him. He hopes to make money by publishing articles and in the meantime,
he tries and fails to get jobs for which he is unsuited.
I can
understand a story about suffering. Hunger is not fun and poverty is a very
real issue. I can also understand a story about unemployment, there are good
ones around and I can sympathize with the issue. The problem here is that there
is no need for Pontus to suffer. I lost count of the number of times he is
offered food, money or a place to sleep, but he always refuses, choosing his
weird sense of pride rather than people taking pity on him. When he has money,
he gives it away.
Instead Pontus
is simply being stupid. In the beginning he is arrogantly stupid, then plain stupid
and as the movie progresses his hunger is adding confusion to his stupidity. In
other words, he is an ass. This makes it a tremendously difficult movie for me
to watch. How can you help a person who does not want to be helped? Well, you
can let him rot and that was basically where I ended up. I lost interest in
Pontus and the movie and it became a very hard movie to get through. It is not
made easier by the fact that this is all that is happening throughout the
movie. There is no progressive plot, except that Pontus is getting more and
more hungry, driving himself into disaster.
One could
argue that pride and stubbornness are virtues and Pontus is an uncompromising
example of this, but my counter argument is that he is an example of extreme arrogance
and idiocy and a complete failure at facing reality. Not something to be
encouraged.
“Sult” was
an ordeal to watch, not for the suffering but for the stupidity. I had to chop
it up and watch it in small bites and even then I had to do something else on
the side, while I just could not wait to get this over with. That is hardly a
description of a good movie and so my verdict is accordingly.
Technically
this is probably a fine movie, but the result is so difficult to watch that I
cannot recommend this to anyone.
Hmmm ... I was wondering about this one. Speaking of Scandinavian, husband's mother tongue is Swedish but he says he always speaks English in Denmark because the Danes generally can understand him but he can never understand the answers.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds about right. Danish and Norwegian is very similar, our countries were combined for 400 years (what Norwegians call The 400 year Night...) and there is little trouble understanding each other. Swedish is more different. I can usually get along understanding Swedish unless it is dialect, but in my experience Swedes find it more difficult to understand Danish. When I was in Finland I found that nobody would understand me even if I understood them and so I had to talk English.
DeleteIn this movie one of the Danish actors had so much trouble understanding Per Oscarsson that the director had to tie a string to his leg so he would know when to speak his lines.