“The Worst Person in the World” is not a phrase that applies remotely to any of the major figures in Joachim Trier’s masterfully earnest comedy-drama of that name, let alone its’ puzzlingly relatable protagonist Julie (Renate Reinsve), whom the title would seem to most obviously indict. The title seems to be taken from a line of one of her love interests over the course of the movie, Eivind (Herbert Nordrum) talking to his then wife, and it’s not a very conspicuous comment. Why balloon it to such prominence? Clearly, it doesn’t reflect any deficiency in Julie’s character, could it be some internal label, some feeling of self-loathing?
It wouldn’t surprise me, The Worst Person in the World is a movie very conscious of the inescapable, sometimes indescribable melancholy of adults of a certain age (Julie turns thirty midway through the film) going through the motions of daily life while double-guessing their choices for the present and future. It sounds very specific, but it’s not -that deep uncertainty that hangs over ones’ feelings and decisions as they question the route of their life and perhaps pursue newness and spontaneity in a way that masks it, it’s a very widespread kind of depression in this day and age. Julie doesn’t have to say out loud that this is the case for it to be true, though she does at one point vocalize to her partner her anxiety at simply moving on from one thing to the next and feeling like “a supporting character in my own life”. It’s no coincidence this comes on the heels of her plucking herself out of her own life, experiencing a day of elation quite removed from that malaise that gets her down, and it’s the turning point of the film.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, the movie is divided into twelve chapters plus a prologue and epilogue that range from sizeable stretches to just a few minutes, but each are significant touchstones of Julie’s story. Also employed is a narrator and a number of sharp hyper-textual devices. Trier demonstrates a sense of visual rhythm too akin to Edgar Wright in some sequences, and lets loose especially in a freaky and unhinged drug trip -yet is all the same grounded and meditative through much of the films’ overhanging mood. His big broad stylings are in harmony with his small, subtle ones, the way that he lights a scene or uses slow motion. A fast-paced flood of web pages to communicate a new obsession exists on level plane as a slowed-down moment of two people on an intimate night sensually blowing smoke into each others’ mouths. However while I appreciate and am impressed by examples of the former, it is those graceful instances of the latter that resonate most pervasively. The best sequence in the film is when Julie imagines the world stopping around her for an ideal romantic sojourn with Eivind -her jubilantly jogging through the quiet streets of Oslo, delighted by the beauty of the frozen moment is a sublime thing to behold, an infectiously lovely bit of cinema, shot, choreographed, paced, and acted with fresh delight.
The performance of Renate Reinsve is delightful and captivating through the films’ every fibre. She brings out believably every interesting, contradictory tenet of Julie’s personality, conveying so clearly and passionately even her unspoken thoughts and feelings to the point you understand exactly what crosses her mind through beats with no dialogue. Alongside Agathe Rousselle and Virginie Efira, it’s one of the great overlooked performances by the Academy this year. Julie is a terrifically written and realized character, a woman of multitudes in her interests and aims. We’re introduced to her having gone to medical school, switched to psychology and then finally turning to photography as her calling. By the time the prologue is up and she is in a relationship with Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie) an older artist known for a popular underground comic (that seems to just be Norwegian Fritz the Cat), we already have a very good sense of her free-spirited though self-affirming approach to life. One of the big recurring themes through the next several years is her opposition to having children, while Aksel who loves kids, wants a family. And she rejects any attempts of Aksel to diagnose that disposition, to connect it with her estranged relationship to her father. Aksel has a tendency towards this kind of presumption, to intellectualizing sources for any given personal or psychological condition, in contrast to Julia, who’s more about uncritically feeling things and keeping reserved the nature of her anxieties. It’s the doom for their relationship, but what’s remarkable is how the movie never passes judgement on this. Julie and Aksel’s differences are merely that, and the relationship dissipates subtly to the point he understandably doesn’t notice. It’s one of the better illustrated movie break-ups I’ve seen: sad but not mistaken, passionate but not overzealous, and conveying an understanding deeply of both points of view.
There’s a lot of authentic nuance like that the movie picks up on, while never straying far from Julie’s subjectivity. It leaves room for her mistakes and misjudgments, choices made in bad faith, an attitude bordering on avoidance of her depression -but these don’t define her character or her conscience. They are a part of her human experience taken alongside her openness and empathy. If the title means to identify her, maybe it is a reproach of the expectations of what people (of what women) have to live up to, how they should live and what choices they should make. The film asks is it really so bad that Julie effectively cheats on Aksel if being with Eivind is so fulfilling and freeing -even if the former didn’t really do anything wrong and the latter is far from perfect himself. It also asks if she is right to still care about Aksel, even after their break-up and in the wake of a sort of fall from grace, in hers and the public’s eyes. It’s a valuable conversation and one that feels uniquely suited to contemporary audiences -especially millennials.
The film is immensely modern on a number of fronts both technical and textual -it depicts accurately and amusingly understands the ubiquity of the internet, and politically it addresses current discussions of gender politics (one short chapter is titled “Oral Sex in the Age of #MeToo” -a think-piece Julie writes), the ethics behind climate change and Indigenous activism, and most explicitly the vitriolic theatrics over ‘political correctness’ that have become a staple of the so-called ‘culture war’. These aspects engender realness and a certain contextual shrewdness uncommon of a lot of movies in how they’re applied; but inasmuch as they organically inform a value system for the characters, it is the characters themselves, Julie specifically, her understanding of the world, her wants and desires that may either conform or clash with these values, that are the most intrinsically immediate to a twenty or thirty-something living through these specific uncertain times. We can relate to the ways she thinks and feels, to that desire for stability yet yearning for something new, to those moral/psychological contradictions that effect us deeply, make us think we’re the worst person in the world for entertaining them only to do so anyway because fuck it, we can’t always be worried or sad about something. That sense comes across gloriously here through every moment light or harsh, funny or dim.
Joachim Trier’s Oslo is beautiful -this is the third of a trilogy of movies he has set there. The city is crisp and charming, active yet calm, its’ personality apparent everywhere. It stands in well then for the movie itself. The Worst Person in the World doesn’t resolve in the contentment of so many romantic-comedies, of which it technically is one. It can be read ultimately as pessimistic or optimistic or even a bit of both -which is what I am most inclined to see. The city stays the same and Julie presses on, still with doubts, still sombre, still perhaps with those demons and dreams alike, but still assured as well in light of all of this and all she’s been through; and there is just the slightest hint of a palpable tranquility in that.
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