OSCARS 2022: The Worst Person in the World (2021)

When reviewing “Drive My Car,” I pointed out how non-English films are increasingly breaking out of the International Feature ghetto the Academy often puts them in. That film earning its place in the Best Picture and Best Director race is obviously one of the biggest surprises of 2022's Oscar season. Yet there have been some quieter victories too. “Flee” also broke unexpected ground. Finally, Norway's “The Worst Person in the World” would also score an unexpected nomination in the Best Original Screenplay category. Some have even suggested that, if Neon had campaigned a little harder for the movie, it might've done even better with Academy voters. As it stands, the quirky European film still managed to do way better than I would've expected.

“The Worst Person in the World” breaks its episodic, sometimes digressive story into twelve chapters, plus a prologue and an epilogue. Julie is a college student who indecisively changes her major. After sleeping with her professor, she begins a relationship with an underground cartoonist named Anksel. Julie pursues her own creative endeavors while falling in and out of love with Anksel. Eventually, the two break up and she begins a relationship with a man named Elvind. Yet Anksel continues to take up space in Julie's mind. As she struggles with deciding whether to have a child or not, she learns that Anksel has a terminal cancer diagnosis.

While the exact year and span of time “The Worst Person in the World” covers is never exactly detailed, the film is pretty clearly about the ever neurotic condition of the millennial. Julie is impulsive, switching her college degree every few weeks it seems. She has a similar attitude about relationships, longing for one man when she's with another and vice versa. All of this indecisiveness seems born out of a total insecurity about her future. Julie doesn't know what kind of person she wants to be and can't envision a clear future for herself because of it. This mixture of emotional, relationship, and psychological baggage seems to be cornerstones of the benighted generation I belong to. 

Julia is a stereotypical millennial in another way: She's a bit of an overgrown child. This is another reason why she leaps from job to job. Ultimately, this woman-child will be forced to grow up. When it seems like she might be pregnant, the pressure is on. When she discovers that Anksel is dying of cancer, she can no longer avoid it. Julia has to make some hard choices about her future, whether to give herself a legacy, while Anksel struggles with his sudden lack of one. This speaks to the millennial generation's collective anxiety over our own futures, as we are set adrift in a world with none of the safety nets that earlier generations were awarded. (Though Julia notably doesn't have much in the way of financial hardships.) It also makes “The Worst Person in the World” a delayed coming-of-age stories of a sort.

The film's depiction of an adrift twenty-something, with various romantic and neurotic entanglements, doesn't make “The Worst Person in the World” that different from the countless American mumblecore films made in the last decade. In form anyway. Functionally, however, Joachim Trier has a lot more fun with the subject here. The film includes a number of surreal flights of fancy. While having a conversation with Anksel, Julia imagines the world around her freezing. She goes running off to see Elvind before running back through the frozen city. Later, a magic mushroom episode produces a barrage of surreal images. Grotesque make-up and animation – Anksel's underground comic leaping to life – interact with the characters. This moments are really well assembled, keeping a story that might've gotten tedious fresh. 

“The Worst Person in the World's” novel-like structure has it leaping around in time and place frequently. One chapter isn't even about Julia, instead focusing on the relationship Elvind was in just before he met her. Yet Renate Reinsve's performance as Julia is what holds the entire movie together. Despite the title, Reinsve makes sure Julia is not a bad person. She's a good listener, insightful, and creative. She's also acts without thinking sometimes, being a fundamentally messy human being. Reinsve's performance pays homage to all of these characteristics without ever having one overtake the other, creating a complex and compelling performance.

Ultimately, “The Worst Person in the World” surprised. Its title suggests a more bitter or sarcastic film. Instead, it's actually a very sincere movie, that cares deeply about the thoughts and feelings of its characters. It has many funny or oddball moments but stand alongside a sweet and observant story about growing up in your twenties. It is, if nothing else, a lot better than many of those mumblecore flicks that I compared it to above. If more slightly weird shit like this is going to get Oscar recognition, that sure would be neat. [7/10]