The Worst Person In The World
Added 2022-04-02 03:17:02 +0000 UTCI am literally mere minutes from finishing the film. So I have a lot of things to process. Many people have wanted me to review this one, and I was never sure why. I'm still uncertain why. It had a lot of touching moments in it that I can certainly relate to, that certainly affect me emotionally, and yet I feel like I haven't really arrived at anything. Nor do I feel that I understand much of the protagonists motivations for anything. I feel as though she became more opaque as the film continued, when the script needed to find an anchor for all the ideas it seems to be harboring about modern romantic relationships. It's a film about an aimless generation of millennials without much of a binding...at least these are my initial impressions. Please...enlighten me with your thoughts, if you have seen the film yourself.
Comments
I agree with you 100%, this one was a puzzler and didn't come together; it really felt disjointed. I thought the mushroom scene was one of the weirdest things that I seen since the drug trip in "Trainspotting". Hell, maybe the film would have made more sense if I was on acid? ;-)
Brian Wright
2022-04-09 01:54:08 +0000 UTCIt's probably the most self aware part of the picture. Its at the point where she breaks up with Aksel. She had this cartharsis and blows it off as the signal to go. She found her shiny new toy. In itself that's the making of a great story! However, that self awareness is left right in the moment. Even the psychedelic scene could have been cathartic, but it's just another "oh those crazy kids..." Scene. Her man says "we won't do that again.". I laughed. Because it might get too real. Unfortunately even that could have made for a great story but then you might "ground" this character, and offer something more than a surface (say obligatory) empathy.
Atticus Xey
2022-04-04 21:52:17 +0000 UTCHaha I'm relieved to hear you say this. The devices are far too lofty in concept (yet feel shallow at the same time) to be grounded in anything. And there's an air of pretension to it, in my opinion. I do think that line is fantastic though. The line about being a supporting player in your own life. I was thinking the same thing. If only they could somehow make something interesting out of that line conceptually...rather than just using the excuse that "the character is supposed to be aimless, and therefore the movie is." That's lazy yo. XD
Deepfocuslens
2022-04-04 21:42:16 +0000 UTCAt the halfway point into the film Julie says, "I feel like a spectator in my own life; like I'm playing a supporting role in my own life." Watching this is how I felt. I feel that Joachim Trier had a real opportunity to make something truly great; I thought of James L. Brooks' Terms of Endearment, and how you have these characters running around being assholes until life suddenly pulls you back into the moment - into you - "okay, time to grow the fuck up." What this film does is almost pulls us back to "reality", but instead treats the mortality as another device to drive the story. There's a really good movie in here, but I think it's blown by its own glibness.
Atticus Xey
2022-04-04 21:08:56 +0000 UTCWow, now I definitely need to rewatch the movie with your criticisms in mind. We’ve got some interesting differences of opinion on this one, not just between us but amongst the community. I had a similar experience to Tyler. I didn’t expect to like it as much as I did when I first saw it, but it stayed with me long after that viewing. I remember the parts that connected with me. Not every movie does that, even if I liked it. And I agree with a lot of what Jackson said as well. But Arthur also had a good point: just because a film inspires you to reflect on your own life doesn’t make it good on its own. It’s funny, I didn’t think this film would be one to inspire so much debate. But after you post your review, I’ll be wanting to check out this film again.
Bennett Oliver
2022-04-02 14:40:46 +0000 UTCI really appreciate this response cause I also really like the movie but honestly have been having a hard time figuring out why I connected with Julia so much. But you're 100% right. I'm also in a spot where I'm going down the traditional male career path of grinding away at a job I don't hate but I'm not overly passionate about just as a matter of supporting my family. But I also have that little urge at the back of my head to burn it all down and throw myself into passion which I hope will give me the emotional satisfaction I don't get right now. Shit. That's way too much for a Saturday morning.
Tyler Shobe
2022-04-02 11:14:04 +0000 UTCFair enough. I think I agree that they get their point across early and very succinctly but I also wasn't bored by them. I enjoyed those little detours from reality just for their novelty.
Tyler Shobe
2022-04-02 11:07:07 +0000 UTCI did like this movie but I found myself spacing out and thinking about my own life. I don’t know if that was a flaw or feature of the film. But it seems you had a similar experience. It evoked introspection in my own life but didn’t have much on its own.
Arthur Augustyn
2022-04-02 10:32:57 +0000 UTCI liked it a lot. I understand what you’re saying about her seeming opaque, but for me the film’s message is much more simple. I’m not sure it’s about the aimlessness of the millennial generation specifically, and I’d compare it to how I felt watching Licorice Pizza. Julia and Alana I found to be incredibly similar. I just got swept up in the basic emotion of it. I’m at a point in my life where a lot could change and I need to make decisions, and yet I’m terrified of committing to any of them. I often feel as though I’m just on the brink of doing something insane, like Julia does. For her motivation, sometimes I think it’s okay for us to speculate. For me I feel like she’s being pulled between a very traditional path for a young woman and a more rebellious Nordic attitude that wants to challenge social norms. But I’m fine with there being multiple interpretations of that. You mentioned that the cancer thing felt really hammy and I really disagree there. I’ve seen so many movies that either shove the sentiment down your throat or focus on the acceptance of death (I’m thinking of something like The Bucket List). I really appreciate that this movie was just honest about how much it fucking sucks for everyone involved. The finality of it just puts everything into perspective, how trivial other things are in comparison. I adored this movie, but I understand a lot of your criticisms. I think sometimes when I really get lost in the magic of a movie, I care less about the full cohesion and more about what it makes me feel. As you say a lot of your issues with the film were due to her opaqueness as the film goes on and by that point I think I was just fully invested, and I think I just care about those flaws less than you do.
Jackson Littlewood
2022-04-02 09:21:14 +0000 UTCI wrote a long response, and it got deleted somehow. This always happens. I'm not gonna go into too much again. Also I have a review to shoot, so don't wanna reaveal too much. But I disagree with a lot of what you say in terms of what you gain. I think it is about aimlessness fully. IT's embodied through a young woman in her late 20s. The young man she dates represents a certain type of modern relationship and the old guy represents a time when traditions and responsibilities were more paramount. nothing really that interesting there. And the whole cancer diagnosis thing to me was very hammy. It felt like a very dramatic way of driving a point home about time, and the meaning we find once we lose things to it before we can get our shit together. It has a lot of commentary on the modern world...but grounded in what? It talks about modern politics, relationships, aimlessness, overwhelming amounts of information, etc.. But they just kinda exist in these awkward spurts and never find a way to weave themselves into the story, or her experience in a thought provoking way. It's a tough thing making a movie about a lost person who represents a lot of women in a similar position...because you run the risk of creating an unfocused or aimless script. And unfortunately that's what we have here in my opinion. A lot of points to make, but they feel like bullets. Some thin sketches of meaningful characters or conversations that could give us insight into the aimlessness. So...what do we learn in the end? You say we learn to find ourselves before we can let others in but...she didnt find herself. She became more opaque. She understood what she lost and made peace with it, while also getting to hear the most important person to her, tell her she is a good person. But I dont get any sense that she will stick to anything beyond this point. It would've been nice to get some insight into that aspect, her creative aspirations, rather than just focusing on the love life. There are shows and movies that explore the aimlessness of millennial, and modern relationships, with so much more depth.
Deepfocuslens
2022-04-02 07:02:07 +0000 UTCI wouldn’t say it’s about a generation of aimless individuals so much as one in particular. Aksel very much knows who he is and what he wants (it is very much refreshing to have a male comic book writer be depicted as the wisest and most mature person on the movie and not some tired case of arrested development). Einvind has no ambition, and he seems to be happy with that. Despite centering on two relationships, I don’t think the film is trying so much to be a commentary on modern relationships as be a character study of a woman who is too restless and terrified to settle into a concrete version of herself. It is of course why she keeps changing majors, as well as why she doesn’t want kids (being a mother is WAY too permanent for her). And it’s ultimately why she changes boyfriends. Being in a relationship long enough with someone as insightful as Aksel can lead to revelations of oneself as reflected in the other’s eyes, and she wasn’t comfortable dealing with that. When he sees that she has talent in something, it means that she has to commit to it, and that’s no good to her. There’s also the fact that she didn’t love him, and was chafing at being his girlfriend. With such a blurry sense of self, she’s not in any kind of state to love anyone. Being with Einvind can be seen as an act of regression. He’s a lovable lunkhead, so he’s easy to be around. With this relationship, she doesn’t have to think about things. She can just drift. Things start to take a turn with the double revelation of her pregnancy and he cancer diagnosis of Aksel, and I like how the film presents it. All due respect to those who have dealt with it in real life, but the dying-of-cancer plot line can be the hoariest, most mawkish of plot lines in movies, and I think Joachim Trier handles it just right. It forces Julie—and the film—to get real, to realize that she’s wasting her life by not committing to it. Yes, confronting the finiteness of life by witnessing the early death of a loved one is an old story, but it’s done here with enough taste and honesty (Aksel’s final monologue is heartbreaking) so as to feel real and not programmed into the movie. If there’s anything the film says about the world we live in, it’s that it offers so many distractions and possibilities that we can get lost in them and allow ourselves to stay that way. It’s why Aksel laments collecting so many things his entire life, and why Julie finally commits to a profession. Aksel’s impending death forced them to separate out what’s important. And in the end, I think Julie feels opaque because we don’t know who she is. She doesn’t know who she is yet. She’s only just begun to find out. One of the few things we do know is that she can put her mind towards anything, so we know she’ll do fine as a photographer. It only matters that she stays with it. Julie is unformed throughout the film, but Renate Reinsve is so winning in the role that we’re willing to go with her even when we know she’s screwing her life up. It makes it all the more satisfying when she grows up a little. What the film says about modern relationships is that, in an increasingly individualistic world, people need to find themselves before they can let others in. I haven’t seen many other films that deal with contemporary relationships and the people that enter into them, so maybe they’ve covered the same ground and have done it better (need to catch up on Noah Baumbach to confirm that, particularly Frances Ha), but I certainly appreciated how this film handled it. Reading your criticisms does make me want to see the movie again though.
Bennett Oliver
2022-04-02 06:37:22 +0000 UTCI'm pretty much the same as Jim. Its been a minute since I've seen it but basically I thought it was both funny and moving with great lead performances from Reinsve and Danielsen Lie. I hear your criticisms and now I want to see it again. 2021 for me, was one of the worst years for movies in awhile and its possible I might've overrated it.
Stephen
2022-04-02 05:48:31 +0000 UTCI liked it a lot, though I don’t know if I can rebut your criticism. I just know that I was affected by it, especially the boyfriend’s speech about life being different when you don’t have to think about the future anymore. There are a lot of ideas floating around in it — the purpose of art, what it means to be a good person, what do we owe other people — but you’re right that it doesn’t completely cohere. Maybe I’m grading on a curve amid all the mediocrity I’ve seen in theaters lately.
Jim Barnes
2022-04-02 05:22:46 +0000 UTCSure, that's certainly an aspect of things. But...what's the film really about? what is it trying to say about the information age, aimlessness, and how that contributes to lack of fulfillment as mortality creeps in? It's hinting at ideas. Things begin to take shape but...it feels like a collection of moments that aren't really formed. They just bounce along, and then by the end I feel as though I've missed the point of it. Ideas exist like the political angles you mention, but they just exist in little clusters. They dont really contribute amount to anything in the big scheme of things in the end.
Deepfocuslens
2022-04-02 04:37:34 +0000 UTCFor me many of the fantasy sequences made their points almost instantly, and felt like they didn't add anything interesting to the film. They mainly just state the obvious and then stretch out the thin conceits they stand for, and then we don't arrive anywhere interesting once the sequence is over. I dunno. Felt empty for me. The mushrooms sequence was a bit more compelling but...it also stated a lot of obvious ideas without having much to say about them...so therefore it just kinda feels shallow and redundant, imo.
Deepfocuslens
2022-04-02 04:33:40 +0000 UTCI honestly wasn't blown away by it immediately mostly cause I feel like every year we get some millennial focused coming of age movie in this vein and this one just used the gimmick of a couple fantasy sequences to make it stand out. But it really crept its way in my subconscious and I find myself thinking about it quite a bit and have this urge to watch it again. I still don't know why it has stuck with me but it has and I need to rewatch it.
Tyler Shobe
2022-04-02 03:42:49 +0000 UTCThe aimlessness of millennials... Why plan for a future that may not exist due to climate change? This is what came to mind for me. But yes, Julie was opaque and the script was, we'll, not good.
Brian Wright
2022-04-02 03:38:46 +0000 UTC
