Norwegian film has become famous around the world primarily thanks to twisted authors such as Bent Hamer (Kitchen Stories), Jens Lien (Den brysomme mannen), Erik Skjoldbaerg (Insomnia), Aksel Henniej (Uno) and the lunatic Pal Sletaune (Junk Mail). However, at the moment its rising star is Joachim Trier, even though he was born in Copenhagen. After his two excellent former films - Reprise and Oslo, August 31 – ensured him the attribute as the most intriguing offspring of the Norwegian new wave, his newest American transfer (Louder than Bombs) has not even recovered from jet lag and it is already evident that it is not the good old Trier that we love. And tis in spite of the fact that in his latest films he worked with stars such as Isabelle Huppert, Gabriel Byrne and Jesse Eisenberg. This Trier is much closer to the rhetoric of Atom Egoyan or Jason Reitman. It is a film about emotions, dreams and regret; a film woven of fragments from the past of a war photographer whose work for an agency ends in tragedy at a Middle Eastern battlefield. It is an allegory about communication in the recourse of the real and the intimate, artistic and virtual (author photography, stories that are secretly written by the younger son on his computer, father and his videogame). Nevertheless, the film remains in one’s memory thanks to the character of Jonah’s former girlfriend Erin (portrayed by the excellent Rachel Brosnahan, whom we remember from LaGravenese’s Beautiful Creatures).
As Joachim Trier happened to migrate to America, thus other Norwegian authors closer to mainstream fascinated by genre film began to flirt with the imagery of Hollywood B-films, even though their total budget is such that Michael Bay for example would merely cover the catering expenses on one of his films. In his historical film The Last King Nils Gaup balances half way between the TV series Vikings and Game of Thrones. Roar Uthaug (The Wave) counts on the esthetics of Hollywood disaster films because all of his slides and tidal waves that threaten one fjord do not initiate some other internal marital avalanches such as Ostlund’s avalanches (code: Tourist). Rather they serve as some sort of an action fly-wheel, no matter how much that same Norwegian wave has a similar dramaturgical effect as the Thailand tsunami in the drama The Impossible by Juan Antonio Bayona. However, before the spectacular wave happens in the films, Uthaug observes film landscapes in the manner of a luxurious tourist/ecological commercial, with unspoiled fjords whose panoramas have not yet been perturbed by numerous cruise ships.
On the other hand, in his film Ragnarok (do not confuse with the Japanese anime with the same title), which evokes the rhetoric of myths about Vikings, Mikkel Braenne Sandemose introduces an archeologist and his friend portrayed by the Norwegian alfa male Nicolai Cleve Broch (code: Uno), who are trying to decode a sign on a mystical rock and go on a hunt for the Norwegian equivalent of the monster Nessie. (Dragan Rubeša)