The Bothersome Man
7.6 /10 1 Votes
76% Rotten Tomatoes Budget 14 million NOK Duration Country Norway | 7.4/10 IMDb 8/10 Letterboxd Genre Comedy, Drama, Fantasy Music director Ginge Writer Per Schreiner | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date Norway: 26 May 2006 Cast (Andreas), (Anne Britt), Per Schaaning (Hugo), Birgitte Larsen (Ingeborg)Similar movies Lost Highway , Dear John , Rise of the Guardians , Ryia and Skina , Dumbo , Ek Thi Daayan | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
One morning, Andreas (Trond Fausa Aurvag) wakes up in a strange apartment in a strange city and has no idea how he got there. His boss (Johannes Joner) gives him instructions for a job he doesnt remember having. He marries Anne Britt (Petronella Barker), an interior designer, and, almost without even realizing it, settles into a comfortable but predictable routine. Slowly, Andreas realizes that the citys clean, calm and complacent citizens are the front for something very sinister.
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The Bothersome Man (Norwegian: ) is a Norwegian film from 2006. It was directed by Jens Lien after a script by Per H. V. Schreiner. In the main roles were Trond Fausa Aurvag, Petronella Barker and Per Schaaning. The story is about a man suddenly finding himself in an outwardly perfect, yet essentially soulless dystopia, and his attempt to escape. The film was well received by critics, and was awarded three Amanda Awards in 2006.
Forty-year-old Andreas arrives in a strange city with no memory of how he got there. He is presented with a job, an apartment - even a wife. But before long, Andreas notices that something is wrong. Andreas makes an attempt to escape the city, but he discovers there's no way out. Andreas meets Hugo, who has found a crack in a wall in his cellar. Beautiful music streams out from the crack. Maybe it leads to "the other side"? A new plan for escape is hatched.
Synopsis
As the movie begins, Andreas Ramsfjell (Trond Fausa Aurvag) is underground in a train station watching a couple kiss; however, the kiss lacks any sign of aesthetics - on the contrary, it looks hideous and abominable. Andreas seems to be increasingly unsettled until eventually he steps forward and jumps off the track in front of a subway train and the scene abruptly ends. In the following scene, he is on a bus which lets him off at a deserted gas station in the middle of nowhere. An older man greets Andreas with a welcome sign and escorts him into a car. From here he makes his way into an ideal city, where he soon finds himself with a corporate job, a furnished apartment and a beautiful girlfriend (Petronella Barker). The seemingly perfect life soon proves to be vacuous. Andreas seems to be the only person in the city capable of experiencing sensation and emotion. The only respite from the emptiness is a meaningless materialism. As the slightly uncomfortable turns into the absurd, Andreas tries to escape, but finds there is no way out of the city. The beginning scene is revealed again in the midst of his misery after he gets his heat broken and he steps out onto the train tracks, only to find that not even suicide is a way out of the perfect city. Eventually he meets Hugo (Per Schaaning), a cleaner who has found a crack in the walls of his basement from which lovely music streams out. The two dig frantically, in secret, through the wall and discover it leads into a house, presumably back in the real world. Andreas manages to get his arm into the house and grabs a handful of cake from the table, but both of them are caught and dragged out of the basement. Andreas gets thrown out of the city on the same bus that brought him there. The film ends with a violent ride into a frozen wasteland where the bus leaves Andreas, alone in a snowstorm.
Cast
Production
The story for the film was originally written for radio theatre, two years before it was adapted for the screen. Director Jens Lien tells that he was very affected by Schreiners script, and that the first time he read it he was unable to sleep. Schreiner and Lien had earlier collaborated on short films, but this was the first feature-length movie they made together. The movie was chosen for the Critics Week of the Cannes Film Festival, and jury member Christophe Leparc expressed great admiration for the film. The "lovely music" in the basement is actually a recording made for thereminvox.com by theremin veteran Howard Mossman, who remains uncredited.
Reception
Den brysomme mannen was generally very well received by the Norwegian press. The newspaper Aftenposten awarded five out of six points, calling the movie "advanced" and filled with literary and filmatic references, yet not without a wider appeal. The television station NRK also ended up on five, calling the film thought-provoking and funny, and "very, very good".
International reviews were good. Steve Rose, writing for The Guardian, gave it three out of five stars. Noting the cultural references to other dystopic works, he complained that the movie failed to get "beneath the surface of this shallow parallel reality". The A.V. Clubs Noel Murray called the movie "paced and plotted well throughout", though he felt it veered "too far into fantasyland" towards the end.
The film was awarded three Amandas in 2006: for "Best Direction", "Best Screenplay" and "Best Actor" (Aurvag). It was also nominated in the categories "Best Film" and "Best Actress" (Barker). The movie also won several international awards, including the ACID Award (Agence du Cinema Independant pour sa Diffusion) at the Cannes Film Festival, and the Golden Starfish at the Hampton International film festival.
Soundtrack
The film heavily features music by Edvard Grieg. The score is composed by the Norwegian composer Ginge.
Locations
The volcanic desert scenes were shot in Iceland (source - director q&a on YouTube)
References
The Bothersome Man WikipediaThe Bothersome Man IMDbThe Bothersome Man Rotten TomatoesThe Bothersome Man LetterboxdThe Bothersome Man themoviedb.org