Uncompromisingly dark character study

Magenta_Bob

A man wakes up in a bathroom. He seems disoriented and is covered in blood. He tries to pull himself together the best he can; he washes off the blood, he leaves the house, and carries on with his day. He goes to work, he goes shopping, he goes to work and he visits his mother. Meanwhile, he is ostensibly confused, afraid, in pain and full of anxiety.

Jesper Ganslandt's puzzling drama about an unknown man's odyssey is an uncompromisingly dark character study and one of the most unsettling Swedish films of the decade, at least. The intrusive and somewhat naturalistic direction, with a shaky, hand-held camera following the man from only a few feet's distance, creates a very unsettling feeling; it places the viewer right next to a person who could break down at any minute. This feeling is enhanced by the performance of the brilliantly casted Olle Sarri. Apart from being an excellent performance in itself, Sarri is mostly known for his role in a Swedish sitcom which creates a disturbing contrast to the character he plays here.

If I said that the viewer gets very close to the main character physically, we are certainly not invited into his mind. First of all, we are given very little information throughout the film about what has actually happened to the man. There is very little dialogue in the film, and much of it consists of hearing the main character talk on the phone. We only get to hear his side of the conversation, and he mostly says phrases like "yes" and "I will", which hardly leaves the audience with many clues. The few conversations that take place in person are either completely insignificant, or works on a symbolical level, such as the brilliant scene where a boy tells him about a dream he had, or when his mother is describing a painting she made – the former captures the recurring theme about alienation, whereas the latter suggests, and serves as a metaphor for, the man's possible assault on his son.

When the film is over, we hardly know more than we did from the start; at best, the things that we guessed from the start seem to have been true, if still far from obvious. This might leave some viewers frustrated or feeling robbed, but in a film that has constantly been designed to allow the audience to fill in the blanks, and as a closure to a brief and enigmatic glimpse of an unstable man's life, it fits perfectly.

score 8/10

Magenta_Bob 6 January 2011

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2365129/