Souls are beautiful explosions – Newspaper Kommersant No. 154 (7355) of 08/24/2022

The tragicomedy “Everybody Hates Johan” by the Norwegian director Hallvar Vitso, based on the script by the famous writer Erlend Lou, is being released. Quiet, despite the large number of explosions in the frame, the charm of the picture was appreciated Yulia Shagelman.

We first see Johan Grande as a fat-cheeked, blue-eyed baby in the arms of his mother (Ine F. Jansen), who aunts him and teaches him to say “mother.” Both are dressed in sweaters with a national pattern, behind them are the waves of the fjord, as blue as children’s eyes. The only thing spoiling this idyllic picture is that it is 1943 and Norway is occupied by the Nazis. But Johan’s parents are not one of those who meekly sit and wait for bad times to end by themselves: they blow up bridges, hindering the advance of the enemy and getting a lot of pleasure from it. True, their comrades in the resistance consider them not at all comrades due to the fact that they act independently and manage to blow up a couple of bridges, while the rest are preparing such operations for weeks and waiting for a signal from the allies from London. However, Ella and Johan Grande Sr. (Pol-Ottar Haga) do not suffer from their unpopularity: they love each other, their son and explosions, and this is quite enough for happiness.

They continue their subversive activities even after the war, destroying the remaining German mines in Norwegian soil, until one of them takes their lives with it. So little Johan (Adrian Leknes) remains an orphan, and he is taken in by his uncle (Trond-Ove Skredal) and aunt (Ingunn Beate Eien), lighthouse keepers, who teach the boy to be strong not only physically, but also mentally. In addition to the love of dynamite inherited from his parents, he has two new ones that he will carry through his whole life: to the neighbor girl Solvor (Gabia Petruskaite), whom her mother does not allow to hang out with a strange boy from a strange family, and to a wild horse, which he calls Ella in honor of my mother. The years go by, the children grow up, the reclusive Johan is still not liked in the village, and this hostility reaches its peak when Solvor, the only one who treats him with sympathy and even more, becomes the victim of another explosion arranged by him (mainly own negligence, but who will understand).

After this accident, Johan leaves for America (there is always something to blow up) and returns fifteen years later, having turned into a huge bearded man (Paul Sverre Walheim Hagen, who has already managed to play two Norwegian national heroes, Thor Heyerdahl and Roald Amundsen), even more strange and gloomy than before. He stubbornly tries to regain the favor of Solvor (Ingrid Bolso Berdal), who now moves in a wheelchair, but she, in turn, hides in her misfortune, like a snail in a shell, and, it turns out, is not ready to forgive him.

Despite the tight running time (a little over an hour and a half), the director-debutant in the full meter Hallvar Witso, whose short film “Yes, we love” received a special mention at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014, and Erlend Lou fit into the picture the whole life of their hero and almost eighty years of Norwegian history, from 1943 to 2021. True, after the end of World War II, big events bypass the island of Titran or get to it late – for example, Aunt Johana decides to burn her bras in 1973, when the fashion for such a manifestation of protest against patriarchy had already passed. The passage of time here can only be traced by slightly changing styles of sweaters, new models of cars and the development of transport: in the late 1950s, Johan leaves the island by boat, and in the 1990s, the Vietnamese “bride by mail” Pei (Vy Vimolmal) is already brought to him by plane . The absence of external shocks makes internal ones even more important, but it is customary to disguise all emotions and experiences here with a stoic worldly philosophy: most often in the film, the phrase “What is, is,” is heard, which different characters describe everything from love to death.

The authors also never change their even, slightly ironic intonation, in which humor, in places quite hanging (take, for example, the ridiculous, as in a joke, death of a patriotic postman (John F. Brungot), who has a strong personal dislike for the Grande family) , in equal proportions mixed with melancholy. Nothing funny happens to the characters here – as soon as happiness appears on the horizon, a new misunderstanding, misunderstanding and mismatch interferes with it. However, being upset about this, as the creators make clear, would be completely counterproductive, so the characters can only take all the blows of fate with inescapable patience, and the audience should try to find the bright side in all this. And the last film – although you should not expect explosions of laughter, unlike real explosions, from “… Johan” – quite provides.