Oslo through the eyes of Joachim Trier

The Nor­we­gian cap­i­tal has been a char­ac­ter in almost all fea­tures made by Oslo-raised Joachim Tri­er, often masked as mere­ly a back­drop to the del­i­cate­ly dis­si­pat­ing human rela­tion­ships which are a trade­mark of his films. Trier’s account of the city is imbued with a quo­tid­i­an roman­ti­cism that bleeds melan­choly once care­ful­ly dissected.

For him, Oslo is first and fore­most its peo­ple and that’s pre­cise­ly why a few of his films – Reprise, Oslo, August 31^st, and The Worst Per­son in the World – are known as the ​‘Oslo tril­o­gy’. In all three the pro­tag­o­nists grap­ple with their own iden­ti­ty as twen­ty/thir­ty-some­thing men and women, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a mid­dle class gift­ed with what seems like end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties, and the real­i­ty of wrong choic­es amidst priv­i­lege and despair. It is through inhab­it­ing lives and sur­round­ings in equal mea­sure that the films claim their arrest­ing intimacy.

An archiv­ing impulse marks the open­ing of Oslo, August 31^st, where old coun­cil films meet per­son­al accounts includ­ing those of the film­mak­er and his co-writer, Eskil Vogt. ​“It’s not Oslo, it’s the peo­ple I remem­ber”, says the nar­ra­tor and through that sen­ti­ment of rem­i­nis­cence the film com­mem­o­rates the lone­ly and the lost who haunt the city, sim­i­lar to the film’s pro­tag­o­nist. A recov­er­ing drug addict (Anders Danielsen Lie) rides a taxi through a tun­nel, the end of which reveals a meta­mor­phos­ing Oslo: enlarged con­struc­tion sites and shiny build­ings perk up as they orches­trate the sky­line anew.

This way, the film doc­u­ments the repur­pos­ing of the water­front – Fjord City – in favour of high-rise build­ings, well before its com­ple­tion in 2016. Now known as the Bar­code Project, the site plays a cen­tral role in Trier’s lat­est film, The Worst Per­son in the World. Despite its con­test­ed rep­u­ta­tion among locals, the Bar­code fos­ters the bur­geon­ing love between the pro­tag­o­nist Julie (Renate Reinsve) and the charm­ing barista she leaves her for­mer rela­tion­ship for, Eivind (Her­bert Nordrum).

By imbu­ing this new­ly-built high-rise part of town with the couple’s amorous thrill, Tri­er affirms both a locus for new mem­o­ries and an ever-chang­ing Oslo, the streets of which can be retraced again and again for the plea­sure of dis­cov­er­ing its famil­iar­i­ty anew. Julie’s run through the city in a ​“frozen time” sequence repro­duces the real, almost straight, path from her ex Aksel (Danielsen Lie)’s bohemi­an apart­ment in the posh area of Uranien­borg towards an Åpent Bak­eri cof­fee shop – Eivind’s work­place –in the hip and gen­tri­fied Bar­code in the east­ern part of cen­tral Oslo.

It is also sym­bol­ic for the move between a rela­tion­ship with an old­er man who is also an estab­lished com­ic book artist, and her infat­u­a­tion with a cheery and unpre­ten­tious man her age. As Julie and Eivind final­ly kiss, we catch a glimpse of anoth­er sym­bol of the ​‘new’ city, the Oslo Opera House, which served as a back­drop to one of the emo­tion­al­ly explo­sive scenes in Trier’s super­nat­ur­al thriller Thelma.

Green­ery is equal­ly impor­tant for the tril­o­gy, as all films fea­ture parks as loca­tions of nar­ra­tive impor­tance. In Reprise and Oslo, 31^st August we see Frogn­er – Oslo’s biggest park in the west part of the city – giv­ing shel­ter to tough con­ver­sa­tions about life and death. Can­did­ly, we lurk around its swim­ming pool (Frogner­badet) at dawn and explore the curios­i­ty of the so-called ​‘echo spot’ in the mid­dle of Vige­land Sculp­ture park, while the char­ac­ters cel­e­brate an end­less sum­mer night.

The Worst Per­son in the World, how­ev­er, prefers to mute all dia­logue in the park­land, leav­ing us with the minu­ti­ae of looks and ges­tures instead, as the cou­ple greet the sun­set atop the St. Han­shau­gen hill, famous for its big mid­sum­mer celebrations.

The coex­is­tence of new and old refers to both the life and rela­tion­ship choic­es Julie strug­gles with, and to the ter­rain of Oslo’s ever-chang­ing image. Her mean­der­ing path of self-rein­ven­tion mim­ics the psy­cho­geo­graph­ic walk she takes in the film’s first act. Julie leaves a lush recep­tion at the top of a hill over­look­ing the city, and this is Eker­berg, one of the old­est inhab­it­ed places in the city (Gam­le Oslo).

A qui­et, wan­der­ing walk along the scenic Kongsveien road encap­su­lates the inti­ma­cy one estab­lish­es with a road to nowhere. In a sin­gu­lar moment, Julie paus­es to gaze at the panoram­ic view and the camera’s slow 180-degree pan cir­cles back to her face; it’s as if that ​‘new’ Oslo has been imprint­ed on her expres­sion of melan­cholic rev­er­ence. At the wed­ding par­ty she crash­es at the end of her wan­der, she meets Eivind for the first time. Their play­ful flir­ta­tions expand beyond the house walls and a mis­chie­vous promise not to meet again turns the unre­mark­able cor­ner of Arups gate and Egedes gate into a grav­i­ta­tion­al cen­tre for their secret­ly shared world.

In Reprise and Oslo, 31 August, Oslo dou­bles as an antag­o­nist – it’s the place against which the male pro­tag­o­nists define them­selves. This sense of nation­al and per­son­al belong­ing com­pli­cates the rela­tion­ship between peo­ple, their social envi­ron­ment and city itself. The pro­tag­o­nists inhab­it afflu­ent neigh­bour­hoods in the west of Oslo, such as Frogn­er, Majorstuen and St Han­shau­gen, and they often feel trapped in the famil­iar tidi­ness there.

In the third film, how­ev­er, there is a notice­able shift tak­ing place. Along­side Julie’s indi­vid­u­al­i­sa­tion, the film adopts a wider view of what Oslo already is, keep­ing in with the chang­ing times. In map­ping the city, Tri­er returns to places anew and a loca­tion­al over­lap between the films attests to a sin­gu­lar Oslo with­in the tril­o­gy. It is the same city and it isn’t. As a sig­nif­i­cant oth­er, know­ing it bet­ter means know­ing more of it.

Joachim Trier’s films can be read as urban sto­ry­telling, even if the direc­tor him­self hes­i­tates to align with a soci­o­log­i­cal or ana­lyt­i­cal point of view. Instead, he sim­ply doc­u­ments, on the one hand by read­i­ly includ­ing famil­iar Oslo spots, and on the oth­er, by trans­lat­ing a cer­tain mood – or the way light bounces off a cer­tain street in sum­mer – onto the big screen. In his act of chron­i­cling the here-and-now lies a desire to arrest time, much like Julie’s soli­tary run through a motion­less city in a sequence, both push­ing against real­ism and re-enchant­i­ng the real already there at the turn of a corner.