22 July

Per­haps it’s just a case of poor tim­ing that means we’ve received two fea­ture films about Anders Breivik’s attack on Oslo and Utøya with­in the same year. These things do have a habit of com­ing in pairs – the sum­mer of 2006 saw the release of Oliv­er Stone’s World Trade Cen­ter and Paul Green­grass’ Unit­ed 93, both focus­ing on the events of ⁹⁄₁₁. This autumn sees Erik Poppe’s U‑July 22 and Green­grass’ 22 July both deal with the dev­as­tat­ing slaugh­ter of 77 peo­ple (pri­mar­i­ly teenagers) at the hands of a far-right extremist.

Open­ing on the morn­ing of 22 July, 2011, Green­grass focus­es in on three indi­vid­u­als: teenag­er Vil­jar Hanssen (Jonas Strand Gravli), Nor­we­gian Prime Min­is­ter Jens Stoltenberg (Ola G Furuseth) and Breivik him­self (Anders Danielsen Lie). After show­ing Breivik car­ry­ing out the bomb attack on Oslo’s par­lia­ment build­ing, the film con­tin­ues to the social youth sum­mer camp on Utøya Island. A har­row­ing sequence depicts Breivik hunt­ing down and killing 69 teenagers, before show­ing the after­math, in which Breivik stands tri­al and Vil­jar attempts to recov­er from the trau­ma he sus­tained on the day, both phys­i­cal and mental.

The dif­fi­cul­ty about mak­ing a film about recent trau­mat­ic inci­dents – par­tic­u­lar­ly those that occurred in the West­ern world – comes in the fact it’s hard to tell audi­ences any­thing not gleaned from the news cycle. We’re exposed to shock­ing images, we see vic­tims tear­ful­ly recount­ing details of their trau­ma on the wit­ness stand. In the case of Breivik, his tri­al was wide­ly cov­ered by the media, and he did not shy away from mak­ing his inten­tions known. Green­grass’ film fails to real­ly tell us any­thing new about the dev­as­tat­ing impact of the Oslo and Utøya attack, and in split­ting his film between three sto­ries, nev­er man­ages to real­ly find a par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pelling angle.

Although Strand Gravli gives a com­mit­ted per­for­mance as teenage vic­tim Vil­jar, his sto­ry of reha­bil­i­ta­tion feels over­fa­mil­iar (bring­ing to mind David Gor­don Green’s Stronger). It feels entire­ly inap­pro­pri­ate to jux­ta­pose this with a nar­ra­tive thread fol­low­ing Brevick’s impris­on­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly since he is unre­pen­tant about his actions and stead­fast in his abhor­rent polit­i­cal beliefs. Green­grass clear­ly doesn’t want his audi­ence to feel sym­pa­thy for Breivik, but what does it achieve in recre­at­ing his like­ness, or to show a tear­ful Vil­jar con­fronting him in court?

The pri­ma­ry fail­ure of 22 July is that it takes a three-prong approach to its sub­ject mate­r­i­al. Indi­vid­u­al­ly the sto­ries are intrigu­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly that of Geir Lippes­tad (Jon Øigar­den), the defence lawyer assigned to Breivik. Wrestling with his per­son­al feel­ings and pro­fes­sion­al duty, as well as the pub­lic per­cep­tion of him (Lippestad’s fam­i­ly start receiv­ing threat­en­ing phone calls after the tri­al begins), Lippestad’s nar­ra­tive feels the most com­plex, but too quick­ly we’re pulled away from him to the con­cur­rent plot­lines, as if Green­grass has tried to merge three films into one.

The result feels like emo­tion­al bat­tery, designed to evoke dis­tress in its audi­ence with­out hav­ing any­thing new or inter­est­ing to say. Films about recent acts of extreme vio­lence can help us under­stand and make sense of the dif­fi­cult world we live in, but 22 July feels like a cyn­i­cal attempt to pack­age trau­ma for mass consumption.