Fantastic Fest Review: A Somewhat Gentle Man
Chances are, you've never seen a Norwegian film. Unlike other Nordic countries, Norway isn't exactly known as a cinematic powerhouse. Thanks to a simmering little film starring a Swedish actor, that may start changing.
A Somewhat Gentle Man (En ganske snill mann) is a fair description of a small-time criminal released from prison after serving a 12-year sentence. Whatever he was in his pre-prison days, the now passive Ulrik (Stellan Skarsgård) has the opportunity to start his life over, only there isn't much of a life for him on the outside. He has no job, his wife left him, and his son is busy with a life of his own. Reliant on the charity of his old crime boss to find housing and gainful employment, Ulrik is not so much a broken man but a diminished one, a stranger in his own life. For all his passivity, Ulrik is the unlikely catalyst for change in the lives around him who use him for their own gain.
Ulrik's old boss Rune (Bjørn Floberg) gets to pretend he's still a crime boss, despite driving a cranky older car and working with an often-abused sidekick (Gard B. Eidsvold). He benevolently reminds Ulrik of the fact he financially supported the family that's disowned him and the importance of revenge as finds Ulrik a place to stay and a job. Ulrik ends up in Rune's sister Karen Margrethe's basement, with a job in Sven's (Bjørn Sundquist) garage, where the lovely and surly Merete (Jannike Kruse) lurks. Karen Margrethe (Jorunn Kjellsby) is a worn battleaxe of a woman, hard used by men, but finds an unlikely opportunity in Ulrik. Sven just wants Ulrik to keep fixing cars and to stay away from Merete. Ulrik obliges them all until his reticence to get even with the snitch who landed him in prison forces Ulrik to start taking somewhat gentle steps into regaining control of his life.
Skarsgård is better known as a charismatic actor by US audiences, more for roles like the professor in Good Will Hunting and Bootstrap Bill in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. But here, he gets to play a much more subtle role as a man shut out from his own life, hunched over and walking gingerly throughout his day as if he's afraid to leave a mark on the ground. In one heartbreakingly vicarious scene, he watches his son from a distance. In another, he's awkwardly obliging his attention-starved landlady, who in turn is comic genius with a heartbreaking fragility close to the surface that's underscored by the bizarre chemistry between the two characters.
Ulrik is no longer the man he was, but hasn't yet metamorphosized into his post-prison self. He's torn between two desires: to go back to his old criminal life, or to start a new one with his son Geir (Jan Gunnar Røise) and his pregnant wife (Kjersti Holmen). Only everyone else keeps making decisions for him, less and less to his liking. When things finally start giving, they do so in startling ways.
As the title implies, A Somewhat Gentle Man is a somewhat gentle film; there's very little violence in it, and what is included is brief and only exists to further drive the story with far more cleverness than gore can ever convey. The pace is disarmingly slow, but by the end of the film a transformation occurs that will leave audiences smiling and possibly shocked. A Somewhat Gentle Man is a subtle and subversive film that will make you question the acquiescence of those around you, and appreciate a master actor like Skarsgård.
It's no surprise Skarsgård won a Best Actor award at Fantastic Fest last week for his complex performance in A Somewhat Gentle Man, and a nomination for a Golden Bear award for director Hans Petter Moland at the Berlin International Film Festival (Moland did win a Reader Jury of the "Berliner Morgenpost" award at Berlin). A Somewhat Gentle Man has U.S. distribution but it's unclear how expansive a theatrical release it will get. In any case, cineastes will want to track it down, because it's just that good a performance piece.