There is no Hope; are we Liberated then?: (Wildly Digressive Post Vaguely Related to) Joachim Trier�s Oslo, August 31st

Translate this Article...

*This post contains lots and lots of spoilers, vis-�-vis Oslo, August 31^st.  It gives away the ending and everything!*

Now, I�ve never met a Congolese person before, so I don�t want to sound presumptuous, but I�m betting that most people in the Kivus don�t have neuroses.  When somebody named Bosco �Terminator� Ntaganda and his soldiers are trying to rape you and kill you, you have neither the time nor the energy nor the inclination to feel self-loathing.

Bosco "Terminator" Ntaganda, evidently very pleased about something.

But again, that�s presumptuous.  A Congolese person has just as much right to hate himself as his counterpart in the U.S., or Japan, or Norway.  Which brings me to Joachim Trier�s film, Oslo, August 31^st, which I have just watched on Netflix and about which I have a few comments to make.  The film follows a day in the life of a young (-ish, he�s 34) recovering drug-addict named Anders as he prepares to leave his halfway house and re-enter the world.  It�s a Norwegian halfway house, so they�re not living in squalor and misery like they might in, say, the United States (I say this based on Guillermo Rosales�s soul-crushing little novel, Halfway House, which describes a schizophrenic Cuban exile recently arrived in the United States and abandoned at a seedy halfway house by his relatives, who want nothing to do with him, and where he sees the other inmates (and that�s what they are) systematically robbed, neglected, and abused by the bastards who run the place).  But no, this Norwegian halfway house is not like that; it�s well-run and clean and situated in a pretty forest.  The film opens with Anders walking down to a lake, putting rocks in his pockets (like Virginia Woolf) and attempting to drown himself, but then changing his mind and emerging once more from the water.  This kind of sets the tone for what�s to follow.

Ok, so what�s to follow? In brief: he goes into Oslo, meet up with an old friend, now a married academic, discontent with his life.  They talk and Anders discusses his fears about his future, and his friend says, �Hey, it�ll get better, it�ll work out,� and Anders says, �Everyone says that to me, �It�ll get better,� �It�ll work out.�� And he pauses and then he says, �But it won�t.� And then a series of other depressing things happen to him�punctuated by moments of lightness and grace, I should say, in fairness, etc�and at the end of the movie he�s shooting up heroin again and he�s given up on life.

Anders (played by Anders Danielsen Lie).

I think it was when I was watching Woody Allen�s Stardust Memories for the first time�this would be in my early adolescence�that I first came to realize that happiness was not the natural state for a human, and unhappiness wasn�t just an aberration to be smoothed over.  There�s a scene in the movie where Woody is looking out the window and his girlfriend (I think it�s Charlotte Rampling) asks him what he�s thinking about and�I�m paraphrasing slightly here�he says, �Oh, I�m thinking about people, and how unhappy most of them are.� And this struck me as something of a revelation; I said to myself something like, �Oh, is that the case?�

Now, when a person reaches the point of despair they are either crushed or liberated.  Kierkegaard has plenty to say on the subject of despair, but I�m either too young or too old to have read him (I don�t remember which).  But those are my thoughts on despair, one is either crushed or liberated.  Why liberated? Well, because if you�re fucked, then why not do whatever you want to? If you�re fucked, then it doesn�t matter anyway, and so you have total freedom until you die (whereas if you�re crushed, you�re just crushed).  And in watching this movie�Oslo, August 31^st, that is�I get the feeling that Anders is at least somewhat liberated.  Early on, he essentially tells his friend that he�s going to commit suicide (he promises not to, but still), and so everything that follows may very well just be him running out the clock.

Countries like the United States are more peaceful than they logically should be.  I don�t understand why everybody who�s been fucked over�be it socially or politically or economically or psychologically or what have you�doesn�t revolt.  I don�t understand why the 47% of the population whom people like Mitt Romney hold in absolute contempt don�t rise up against a system that sees them as basically subhuman.  Either they haven�t reached the point of despair (the safety net is juststrong enough to save them from despair) or the despair has crushed rather than liberated them.  I am reminded of the Indian farmers, crushed by hopeless debt, who killed themselves with pesticides en masse rather than going after the system that brought them to such straits.  But all of this is easy to say for me in my middle-class, pasty-faced privilege.  It�s condescending even; it�s like Romney squinting through his monocle and asking, �And why don�t the little buggers revolt then?�

In his essay, The Soul of Man under Socialism, Oscar Wilde says that it is perfectly morally acceptable, and perhaps even preferable, for somebody in desperate circumstances to steal rather than to beg.  And why not steal food if you need it? That was probably the worst thing Romney said, in his list of things that these parasites feel �entitled� to: food.  Yes, God forbid your fellow human beings should think they have the right tonot starve to death?  Fucking communist swine.  Can we please dig up the putrescent old corpse of Ayn Rand (still remarkably well put together, because even the worms don�t want to touch her) and have her kick Jean Valjean in the balls and tell him why he deserves it? (They should advertise her �philosophy� like this: �Objectivism: Philosophy for Sociopaths.�)

Let�s talk about who I hate.  I hate people who want to beat up on other people when they�re already down.  And that means people who are thought to �deserve� it.  That means drug addicts, that means criminals, that means people rotting in the extensive American prison system.  If you want to gloat over the fate of someone like Anders, and pat yourself on the back for not ending up like him, fine, good for you, you�re a smug prick.  I would rather take the side of the marginalized.  Graham Greene has a famous line where he says, �The writer should always be on the side of the victims, and sometimes the victims change.� Now, to be fair, he also said, �A writer must have a splinter of ice in his heart,� but I like to think that you can balance these two things out and come up with an essentially compassionate world-view.

Graham Greene, being compassionate.

Forgive me, dear reader, if this has turned into more of a digressive rant than an analysis or whatever it was supposed to be.  But sometimes it becomes depressing, to live in a country where one of the two major contenders for the highest office in the land (and we only get two choices in the United States, and they�re both millionaires) thinks half the population are scum because they�re poor (a position Ayn Rand would at least have had the courage to make public; Romney only says that kind of shit when he thinks he�s alone with his fellow plutocrats).  So much of American society is predicated upon fear and hatred and resentment and contempt for all of those who have been ground down and destroyed in the pursuit of success in an inhuman system which is indifferent to the fate of the individual by design.

Hell, I�m surprised that Anders doesn�t seem to have a better shot at it.  In my mind, Norway is a social democratic paradise.  But even there, I suppose, people get destroyed.

Oh, and almost as an afterthought, let me say that this is a very �good� movie.  It approaches Anders� disintegration with compassion and understanding, and the style is spare and effective.  The director, Mr. Joachim Trier, about whom I know nothing, aside from the fact that he made this movie, evidently understands that the plight of someone like Anders, a �fuck-up� and a �failure,� is nonetheless important and can be rendered beautiful through the force of art (he�s like Pedro Costa in this respect).  That�s the only thing about this movie that I found somewhat uplifting.  I was watching it and thinking, �Well, we�re fucked, what are we to do?� And then I thought, �Well, Joachim Trier knew what to do; he made this movie.� So we still have art!