I’ve been watching all of the New York Times 100 Best FIlms of the 21st Century with my wife and she recently picked The Worst Person in The World from the list. I’d seen this film suggested many times and I’d never watched it, frankly, because it looked…boring.
It’s a Norwegian film (I typically love Scandanavian films and television) directed by Jaochim Trier and it stars Renate Reinsve as a young woman who explores her love life and career path.
Well, my inkling that the film was boring was correct. It is an incredibly slow burn, for the first half anyway. It really does pick up after that. I’ve never watched a film that was such a drag in the beginning have such a turn around in the latter minutes. Not that the latter parts are action-packed by any means, it’s just that consequential things start to actually happen.
Nothing really consequential happens in the first half at all. It views more like a reality show following the lead character. I admit, maybe that’s the point. Though, given the title, is the audience supposed to believe that a young woman who doesn’t want children and is happy for the time being working at a bookstore really is the worst person in the world? Aside from some moments of slight ethical/moral ambiguity, she doesn’t actually do anything I’d consider ‘bad’ in the entire film. Of course, I get that the title is perhaps ironic.
Renate Reinsve won the Best Actress Award at the 2021 Cannes FIlm Festival. And, the film was nominated for Best International Feature and Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards.
The acting is terrific, and aside from the cinemetography, it’s the highlight of the film.
About the cinemetography, the film is incredibly beautiful. So much so that I actually searched to see how it was shot because I was curious whether it was actually film or the best digital representation of film I had ever seen. Turns out it was shot on 35mm film with an Arricam. So that explains why it looks so good. Honestly, the visual quality is the only reason I made it through the first half. [not that I was really considering turning it off]
Now I want to be clear, the film isn’t bad. It’s actually quite good if you’re in to slow-moving character studies (which I am). It’s just that I had much higher expectations for a film being heralded as one of the best movies of the past 25 years. It is number 95 on the list so perhaps I’m being too critical. There are many movies higher on the list that I consider to be bad films. I suppose we’ll get to those eventually.
I give it 2.5/5 stars. It is worth watching but there are many films that are a better use of your time.