Staff Writer:

Downtown Duster

Norwegian Masterpiece? “Reprise”

Fargo, N.D. Having just left the Fargo Theater after a very limited engagement, the Norwegian offering “Reprise,” is according to some experts the best movie of the year. Although I tend to shy away from value judgments, and this movie is no exception, I am going to disagree with the “best movie of the year” tag.

The movie. directed by Joachim Trier, is entirely in Norwegian, fully subtitled. But I think rather obviously badly subtitled. No, I don’t mean the subtitles didn’t match the Norwegian dialogue: I don’t know enough Norwegian to know. But subtitling is an art. The idea is to write, in this case in English, the translation of the dialogue so the audience can read it. Unfortunately, through much of the move, I and I think most others were unable to do so. The problem is that much of the subtitling was written in white letters on a white or light background making it nearly impossible to read.

But enough about that. On to the movie. The move takes place in the writers community in Oslo. There are descriptions of the first few years of the careers of a couple of young authors. the kind that write books and occasionally get them published. There are also older, established authors involved, and a few camp followers.

The movie centers around the lives of these people, their difficulties in becoming established writers, what kind of personal lives they have, and what kind are possible.

The movie is darkly shot, so much so that in thinking back about it, I’m not sure it wasn’t in black and white. It wasn’t, but it reminded me of Ingmar Bergman and Fellini. For those too young to remember, Bergman was Swedish, Fellini Italian and they both directed avant garde movies in the 60’s loaded with symbolism and supposedly conveying some esoteric message.

Reprise isn’t like those 60’s movies, but I believe there is a fair amount of symbolism, I just haven’t figured it out yet.

The movie probably deserves a lot more attention than I’ve given it: I think one needs to pay close attention to understand the point of the movie. With bad subtitles, this is hard, but it is a good depiction of the “arts” scene in Norway. I would have no way of knowing how accurate it is.

If you’ve seen any Ingmar Bergman movies and liked them, then I think you’ll like this. If you are prepared to concentrate on a movie with very little action, or want to practice your Norwegian, this could be a good bet. If you like crime dramas, love stories, or action/adventure, there’s none of that here.