Trond Fausa Aurvaag stars as Andreas, a solitary 40 year old man who opens this film by leaping to his death under an oncoming subway train (we hear a gruesome crunch, not the last of these we'll confront). We next find him, bearded and disheveled, arriving as the lone passenger on a bus that delivers him to a forlorn old gas station in the middle of a barren high plain reminiscent of U.S. Great Basin country, though presumably it's shot in Norway or Iceland. So, this is a flashback, right? Well, not so fast, there. Seems more like a flash forward the more we learn. Everyone's expecting him: the old man who takes him from the desert to a posh contemporary apartment house in a city full of pale gray blue modern buildings, at its center, surrounded by older urban neighborhoods. In the closet of his apartment is a complete wardrobe of clothes that fit him. He asks what job he has been assigned and is told he will be an accountant in a large downtown firm. He cleans up, shaves and arrives for work next morning, where he is warmly greeted by everyone, and starts to work as if he has all the requisite skills for the job.
He meets various people over the next weeks, takes a lover, relaxes. But there are unsettling aspects to his new life, for that is what it appears to be. Alcohol no longer makes him or anyone else high. Food looks great but has little flavor. Even sex, while easily available, seems bland . The women he takes up with seem more interested in the quarters they live in, and his ability to provide for them materially, than they are in him.
Horrid events occur: he sees a suicidal man, now dead, impaled on a sharp edged wrought iron fence. At the office, on impulse, he slices off his finger in an automated paper cutter. People seem to take such occurrences in stride, showing little or no affect. There are uniformed attendants in gray blue jumpsuits, driving gray blue minivans, who calmly, mutely service people like these. When they take Andreas home and he unwraps the dressing from the stump of his finger he finds it (magically) whole again, without a trace of trauma. Hmmmmm.
Things go on like this. Andreas attempts suicide again in the local subway but, while battered terribly (over the course of a night, he's hit and dragged by three different trains), he is able to walk away. Bloodied and looking like a cadaver when he returns to his lover's house, she merely smiles and mentions they have been invited to friends' for dinner later in the week. Hmmmmm.
Later he discovers an underground shaft that appears to lead to another world. He and an associate blast a tunnel but, just short of his goal of escape from this bizarre dystopia, the men in gray blue arrive, drag the two away, seal up the tunnel, but immediately release the men without incarceration, trial or any other punishment than enforcement of their unwanted stay in this odd paradise.
But Andreas continues to be bothersome. He acts unhappy, which turns out to be the worst offense here, one that in time leads him to be expelled from the community. He's taken back to the desert, forced into the cargo bay of the bus, and driven away. At some point the bus stops, Andreas kicks the door open, and disappears into a white, featureless expanse marked by howling winds, like the middle of a blizzard. The bus pulls away, the screen fades to final darkness.
There you have it. I strongly disliked the film, and more than once had to resist the urge to leave, though it does hang together, and its protagonist is a mildly interesting character. This film will certainly be a candidate for my annual Metaphysical Melange Award. What we seem to have here is purgatory, or hell, or heaven, a nether world where you go after death but where, unlike in Sartre's formulation, there is indeed an exit. My grades: 5/10 (C) (Seen on 02/02/07)
