The Worst Person in the World

Despite its title, The Worst Person in the World is a good-hearted and forgiving romantic drama about finding your way in life, finding yourself, and discovering everyone around you. Although I was initially concerned about the long running time, the two hours spent in the company of the movie’s endearing characters just flew by quite nicely. Despite that, however, I wish the ending of the whole narrative was a lot more gripping. [KVIFF 2021] (09/14/2021)

An interesting, skillfully made attempt at a generational film, the acceptance or rejection of which largely depends on whether you are, or consider yourself to be, part of the generation that is the subject of the director's interest. Speaking of Joachim Trier, it is of course speculation on my part, but I would bet that he put a large part of himself into the character Axel. The unfortunate Axel is the character that I relate to the most in terms of age and life attitudes, and he is also the most sympathetic character. I consider his media battle with the assertive feminist to be the most entertaining and intellectually valuable moment of the film. The pleasant Renate Reinsve plays (for me) an unpleasant Julia because she is scattered and emotionally unstable, constantly searching for herself until the final credits. She represents a growing group of people who delay important life decisions for as long as possible, mainly because life on the increasingly economically suffocating but still damn rich West seems to offer (seemingly) endless opportunities and risk-free experimentation. Few people realize that this world and the life strategies that stem from it are irreversibly ending due to the ecological crisis and the unprecedentedly rapid transfer of wealth to emerging East Asia. The variety of topics that Joachim Trier presents in his film gives every viewer a chance to find "their own thing" among them. Overall impression: 75%. (09/05/2021)

There's no question that The Worst Person in the World has cinematic value. At certain parts, I even felt like I was watching something so amazing that I wasn’t even sure I could fully grasp it in the moment. The deft use of music, sound, and silence was just perfect. So was the cinematography and the visuals of the film. Some of the conversations, the moments – my God – are so incredibly good and pleasantly uninhibited. The choice of actors fantastically complements the visuals I mentioned. And yet there were so many times I was wishing it was over already. I wish the chapters had gone by faster, and that they would never lose their original freshness. So they wouldn't sink into suffocation. I was literally craving even the smallest joke so I could drop the weight from my shoulders for a bit. A film in which I can see fragments of genius, but also feel an almost torturous lack of comprehension. (04/09/2022)

At first glance, this is just another conversational relationship movie whose ending is reminiscent of clichéd Hollywood schlock. But the first thing that came to my mind when I woke up the next morning was HE and SHE, intensely, as if I knew them personally, and the story they gave each other. The sunset scene still pains me to this day. When was the last time we saw such an apt and sincere relationship flick? Joachim Trier is a perceptive psychologist with a unique feel for finely drawing characters, which he enlivens with nice filmmaking ideas – stopping time at the moment of falling in love and the fitting animated depiction of a mushroom trip influenced by the weight of one’s current thoughts on life. Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie are an outstanding acting duo. (03/17/2022)

Considering how Aerofilms is cramming this film through every orifice (I've seen its trailer a good fifteen times) and is clearly trying to patch up two years of COVID losses with it, I automatically went to see it already in an oppositional mindset. And thus began our fantastic mutual war that lasted until the very end. One of my first attacks was the accusation that it’s all well and good to build up an independent and idiosyncratic heroine when the film assigns her to such an idiotic and one-dimensional male character. Except that when it lets the characters talk about something other than relationships for a while, suddenly they're not so dumb and they actually drop some pretty interesting details. But what if these passages too are describing some classic male cliché, which I don't realize because I AM the cliché? And then there were those moments when I resisted jumping in on any of the suggested topics because I feared I was walking into a trap. A couple of times this proved justified, and yet I still occasionally fell for the traditional audience feel-good cliché "She's literally me!" (definitely in the scene where the heroine wanders around town, squeezing herself into someone else's party, where she’s advising others "from a medical position" on how to raise their children with two semesters of medicine under her belt), only to laugh at the film afterwards about how it has to help itself with a cancer plot. But that is suddenly the strongest passage, with a real palpable presence of finality, and it made me think of Verhoeven's Turkish Delight. By the end of the battle, I had almost acknowledged my full surrender before the film finally couldn't help itself and had to demonstrate that theme of female independence through the dilemma of having/not having a child and I was terribly annoyed by the last shot because who the fuck puts a monitor right next to the stove?! So the win goes to Trier, however in boardgame terms he didn't make it to Major Victory in the end but only to Minor. But I worked up a sweat. (03/21/2022)