Joachim Till 's blockbuster debut "Ensemble" represented Norway in the Oscar for best foreign language film. This debut novel unravels the recurring themes of most of his work: memory, identity, and time , and sets the tone for both sadness and joy . This is a story about youth, ambition, friendship and love. Two good friends who have known each other for many years have a very strong friendship. It is their common dream to become a writer, and they continue to work hard for this dream. The talented Philip became famous overnight, but Eric was unhappy. Soon under the impact of fame, fortune and love, Philip suffered an accident and went downhill. Eric tried to help him regain his reputation, but he secretly wanted to create his own achievements. be successful. Since it is a film about a writer , I have to mention the screenwriter Eskill Vogt , who has worked with Thiel for a long time. He and Thiel have co-authored the scripts of all the works so far, and they can be described as close comrades-in-arms. Initially, Vogt studied directing in Paris, while Thiel studied at the London Film School in the UK. The two Norwegian filmmakers had their own plans, but they created this work by chance, and then thought of the two male actors in the film. The authorship of the protagonist makes it inevitable to speculate on the autobiographical color of this work . Maybe both of them are superb screenwriters, and the content related to literature has been appearing repeatedly in Till's films, "The Worst Man in the World", the little son's whimsical essay written to the girl he has a crush on in "Fighter than the Fire" A feminist essay written by the heroine, and this work pays homage to the famous Norwegian writer Tor Ulven.
This debut novel captures the dreams and desires of smug young people for fame, who have to make painful choices on the road to success in order to succeed. The disparate attitudes of the two protagonists towards their lovers confirm this theory. Neither Philip nor Eric has a happy relationship in the end. On the surface, the film is filled with all kinds of vulgar jokes from teenage boys, cynical musical taste and naughty naive narrative style, but in fact there is a lingering melancholy atmosphere , whether it is Philip's illness and admission, or Eric's. The departure of their lover, etc., finally shows a helpless and bitter only way for teenagers to enter the adult world. As the first work of a young director, he often likes to show off all kinds of dazzling film skills, and this debut is also the same: uncontrolled flashbacks and montages, continuous interludes in the normal progress of the plot, interrupting the linear narrative; using the characters' memories to lead Other characters, jumping repeatedly in the past and present time and space, unconsciously created a sense of dizziness . The out-of-sync editing of the narration and the picture creates an illusion of time extension, roughly skipping the episodes that happened within 6 months, and then reappearing in the characters’ memory episodes, forming a sense of time revolving . These are the most distinctive labels of Thiel's work, showing his predilection for themes of memory and time.
Thiel also made no secret of his love for French New Wave films . In this story, the audience vaguely tasted the sadness and joy of Truffaut 's masterpiece "Ancestor and Zhan". Occasionally, in the black screen and the interrupted sound, there were flashes of love for Godard . Even in the plot, the hero and heroine are arranged to appear on vacation in Paris. Under the dreamy background, the beginning and end of the love between the two are quite movingly depicted. These all show the director's love for France and its culture, despite its naive and superficial side. Music is definitely the hallmark of Thiel's work, and since this debut, almost every work has a concert, bar, dance floor, or family party scene, and its musical taste is quite outstanding. Great music, from Joy Division to Le Tigre, all kinds of punk and alternative rock big names make people happy to listen to. As the first feature film shot in Oslo, Till did not deliberately focus the camera on the big city, but inadvertently captured its unique flavor. The opening scene of the festival parade swept across the carnival crowd on the street. Afterwards, everyone rested and played by the lake, the male protagonist rode a bicycle through the street scene of Oslo, and Tyre's best nightlife bar scene showed the modernity and natural environment of this big Nordic city with great comfort.
View more about Reprise reviews
