Directed by Joachim Trier — Screenplay by Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier.
At the end of last month, I turned thirty years old. In the build-up to that turning of a corner, I must admit that I was feeling some kind of quarter-life crisis. Turning thirty reminded me that I should probably rewatch (and finally review) Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World (Norwegian Title: Verdens Verste Menneske), for reasons that will be obvious to those who are familiar with it, but if you aren’t, then please read on and I’ll elaborate. In any case, The Worst Person In the World is the much-lauded third film in Joachim Trier’s acclaimed Oslo Trilogy, the first two films of which — Reprise and Oslo 31. August — I reviewed just last year. As I pressed play and rewatched the Danish-born Norwegian director’s Oscar-nominated hit, I’ll admit that it hit me harder than it had on my first viewing. It is yet another example of the kind of intelligent filmmaker that Trier is, and I suspect it will carve its own place as a true classic for how it speaks to the quarter-life crisis.
Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World follows a soon-to-be-thirty-year-old medical student in Oslo named Julie (played by Renate Reinsve). Julie is facing feelings of self-doubt about the track she is on in life. It occurred to her that she originally only went to medical school because her grades were good enough for it, and so she now, on said whim, suddenly decides to pursue other careers like photography. At that same time, she also encounters a comic book artist fifteen years her senior named Aksel (played by Anders Danielsen Lie). Julie and Aksel hit it off, and he gives her something she thinks she desires — a feeling of life, or perhaps adulthood, having finally started for her. And yet, she has misgivings about the whole ordeal once she meets his friends. She’s not ready for children. She feels infantilized by his friends. Soon she, again on a whim, finds herself at a private wedding house party at which she knows no one. Here she encounters someone named Eivind (played by Herbert Nordrum) who, she feels, matches her energy more, and, even though they are both in a relationship, this encounter inspires her to once again question all that she knows to be safe and comfortable. Because what does she really want? Does she know?
The Worst Person in the World is a rich, deep text about someone who feels lost in early adulthood as the passage of time at study has sent them into something akin to being astray. Here we find a person who made a decision about her life out of esteem and practicality but not passion several years before we meet her. Now she feels like she’s ready for life to begin. She’s ready for a pattern of adulthood, comfortability, sense of belonging, forward momentum, and creative energy that people in their 20s and 30s crave at some point or another. But she wants it on her own terms (at her own pace), and she’s, frankly, not sure how to make that happen with everything that happens around her. There is something so innately timely and human about it that it is tough to put your finger on how exactly all of it has been so carefully baked into the film with such skill and insightfulness. Through it all, Trier’s leading lady Renate Reinsve delivers an energetic and modern performance with no false notes.
On the surface, it may sound like a fairly simple coming-of-age dramedy for someone in their late 20s, but, as it always is, ultimately what is important is how a film is about something. At one point, there is a truly glorious sequence in which our main character runs through the streets while time has stopped entirely so that she can imagine herself escaping her mundane relationship and instead rekindle her intimate romance with Eivind. This is such an effective way of showcasing desire and infatuation moments before dissolving everything safe that she knows. There is an inventive, odd, and explicit sequence showcasing Julie’s doubts about time, her body, and her relationship with her father, which pairs well with an earlier montage sequence in which we are guided through her family lineage at that age. Though significant portions of the film are shown through handheld camerawork, there is a moment with a noticeably shaky camera movement during an increasingly intense argument between Julie and Aksel (when she is seated and he calls her behavior pathetic) that effectively breaks the spell of the relationship, in a way that I thought was fascinating — it may have been a (happy) accident, but it works for the scene because of how real and messy a break up on-screen should be depicted. It’s also a film that is split neatly into 12 chapters, a prologue, and an epilogue, and which, on top of it all, also features sporadic narration from a female voice (an unspecified individual). It is jam-packed with the kind of light but evocative everyday wisdom through which the filmmakers cast a wide net with which its audience is properly enmeshed and affected. And, as a whole, I think it is an expressive rumination of what it means to be human and to become oneself under the pressure of modernity.
Vogt and Trier — both born in 1974 — were obviously in their forties when they made this film, and yet it feels so current and so much like these two individuals have their fingers on the pulse of generations that are younger than them. Obviously, they’ve been through a similar quarter-life crisis, and they also manage to include a character in the film that speaks to the kind of mid-life depression that they may feel hits them from time to time with Anders Danielsen Lie’s Aksel. Anders Danielsen Lie is fantastic as Aksel, and I think the scene in which he is negotiating the future of his doomed relationship with Julie shows the kind of elegant actor that he is. He is phenomenal at showing the pains of being at that point in your life and having to start over romantically, and he is soul-crushingly good in the scene in which Aksel reveals how he feels the world is leaving him behind
From top to bottom, Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World is a work of art that possesses infectious feelings of excitement at the beginning of new love, but, at the same time, it is a complex film in that it is also so much more than just a romantic drama — it is thoughtful about turning thirty, i.e. turning a corner in life, and what that means in our time with unending options at our fingertips. Trier’s film has these playful visual techniques — and moments of magical realism — to give us key insight into the inner workings of his protagonist, but it is also more than just a mastery of visual artistry, he and co-writer Eskil Vogt once again showcase that they are perceptive filmmakers who can eloquently touch your heart. It is a deeply relatable film that I suspect speaks to so many of us in part because of how perfectly and accurately it captures generational feelings of ennui and aimlessness in a way that is in conversation with Trier’s previous films. Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt’s 2021 film captures the zeitgeist in a way that isn’t merely superficial. It is keenly aware of the way we feel insufficient and unaccomplished because of both this unshakable yet unspecific feeling that the world is somehow constantly on the brink of something terrible, but also because of how we struggle to build on what past generations did for us and for themselves. One of the first masterpieces of the 2020s, it is heart-achingly sweet in its portrayal of newfound love before a crossroads, it is crushingly haunting in how it shows the effects of major life decisions, and it is made with the kind of penetrative precision that manages to speak to the human experience.
10 out of 10
– Review Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
I'm Jeffrey Rex 