You should.
You might not have loved the movie that brought him to our attention in the U.S., because I know Dream Scenario had some detractors, but hopefully you at least became aware of him through it. He's just followed that up with The Drama, the new Zendaya-Robert Pattinson film that I like almost as much.
I deepened the dive two days after seeing The Drama with his film immediately prior to Dream Scenario, when he was still making films in Norway, which is called Sick of Myself. That leaves only one Borgli feature (2017's DRIB) that I have yet to see.
I don't usually see consecutive films by the same director, but that did happen on Tuesday and Thursday of this week. And wouldn't have, except that one of my writers brought it up in this ongoing Facebook chat we have going with two other writers and ReelGood's former editor.
He recommended it, which turned out to be the right call. I don't think I like Sick of Myself as much as I like Dream Scenario or The Drama, but I like it enough to give it the same rating I gave the other two (4 out of 5 stars).
The thing I like most about these films? You can tell they are from the same director but only just, and only in ways I'm having trouble trying to explain. I think you could say all of Borgli's films that I've seen are the end result of some high concept social experiment. Or maybe that they depict one of the options in a game of Would You Rather? They are only mildly surreal looks at some mildly absurd scenario, and they examine how the characters would realistically react to such a scenario. That might not even be the right classification for Sick of Myself, in which character reactions are slightly more satirical, but they're all in the same neighborhood without directly shouting out each other and begging to be compared to one another.
For example, when I saw Dream Scenario -- you know, the one where everyone in the world simultaneously starts dreaming of a character played by Nicolas Cage -- I loved it, but still reserved a part of my brain that said snidely "This guy might just be the latest person to attempt to rip off Charlie Kaufman." In fact, I even wrote a post about it.
But The Drama has nothing about it that would evoke Kaufman, and yet I can still tell it's Borgli. The concept of this one is that a couple questions their upcoming wedding after a revelation she makes in the days leading up to it. That doesn't sound particularly high concept, but the high concept is what the thing is that she reveals, and we spend the rest of the movie debating ourselves whether it's disqualifying or not. It's a highly unexpected and unusual thing, and if you want to read me reviewing it while dancing around that spoiler, you can check that out here. I don't actually have a filmmaker in mind who might have influenced the making of this film, and that's exciting in itself.
Sick of Myself? I wasn't planning to review this, unlike the other two, because it's from 2022. So I hadn't considered whether I would spoil things about it or not. Let's just say it's about the crazy, self-destructive lengths to which a personal will go to be noticed, either within their relationship or independently of it. And I suppose it made me think a bit of the films of Ruben Ostlund, though that could just be the Scandinavian connection.
It's notable alone to like three consecutive films by the same director, about the same amount, especially when that same amount is in the four-star range on Letterboxd. It's then more notable to say that each of these films balances a profound sense of the absurd with a real honesty in the way its characters interface with each other around that absurdity, without the films directly resembling each other in style.
And the fact that he's a new discovery makes it all the more exciting, and really prepares me for whatever he might make next.
So yeah, I've got Kristoffer Borgli on the brain. And if I'm not running out to rent DRIB, it's probably only because I really don't expect to find this one -- having already been surprised enough already to find Sick of Myself available to rent on AppleTV.
No comments:
Post a Comment