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Elling
***
Cinema
Reviews - Week of March 21, 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. Norway.
89 minutes. Directed by Petter Naess. Written by Axel Hellstenius; from a
novel by Ingvar Ambjørnsen. Starring Per Christian Ellefsen, Sven
Nordin, Marit Pia Jacobsen, Jørgen Langhelle, Per Christensen, Hilde
Olausson, Ola Otnes, Eli Anne Linnestad, Cecilie A.
Mosli.
I plodded along to "Elling" last
Saturday with an attitude of scepticism -- if the movie had not been nominated
for last year's foreign film Oscar, and if one of my buddies wasn't looking
forward to it so, I probably would not have bothered. The ads are quirky,
but not in an especially charming way, and I figured we've already seen enough
movies where the mentally ill are seen as loveable little teddy
bears.
But the movie is a winner, and I started to be
won over pretty early on. Just because the characters are crazy, that doesn't
mean they are not smart. Elling (Per Christian Ellefsen) is a man-child who
lived with his mother for forty years; when she died, he cowered in a corner,
unwilling to face the outside world until the men in white coats came to
make the decision for him. He has a fear of the outdoors, intolerance for
anyone but momma giving him advice, and basically fits the profiles of
agoraphobia and seriously arrested development. Then again, he's logical
about it: When he doesn't talk in group therapy, he tells us on the voice-over
that it is because his affairs are none of their business. It's very nice
of the Norwegian government to arrange this treatment, he says, but the nerve
of these people!
His roommate at the mental institution is Kjell
Bjarne (Sven Nordin), the kind of guy you might call a big lug, but who Elling
describes an "an orangutan". He's obsessed with girls, even though he's never
had one. He likes to bang his head against the wall whenever he gets frustrated,
for such long stretches that by the time he finishes he has probably forgotten
why he bothered in the first place. He also likes eating -- a lot. Every
meal is, "The best bloody food I ever tasted!"
The guys are relocated to the city and set up
in an apartment, where a social worker called Frank (Jørgen Langhelle)
tells them they must go out, do their own shopping, answer the phone. Elling
is no fan of the routine. He's inherited sharp, snooty logic and even specific
opinions from his mother; he snips at everyone in the manner of a middle-aged
woman, complains about prices, adores the Norwegian Labour Party. And he
definitely doesn't want to leave the house. Don't even think about asking
him to use public toilets.
You see how the description of this stuff is unable
to escape making it sound like cutesy madman foibles, played for effect.
But you have to be there, and listen to the way characters express themselves.
"Elling" uses mental illness as a feature rather than a gimmick. I was
entertained by the fussiness of Elling, the doofiness of Kjell, the dual
helpfulness and seeming cruelty of Frank -- they're complicated people, and
in each of them I saw both the value and the damage. Most important, I was
convinced they were real personalities, rather than sets of
traits.
"Elling" moves with a sweet comic grace; it's
fairly one-joke, but that's okay, because the fun of this kind of material
is spending time with the people, getting to understand their natures and
how they react to situations. This is a pretty lousy review, because I'm
summing up, and it's all about the details. I could reveal some of the film's
lines, but why spoil them?
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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