#Ane Dahl Torp

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[filministic]

Skjelvet (2018) dir. John Andreas Andersen

[adamwatchesmovies]

The Quake (2018)

I never thought I’d see a sequel to The Wave - one of the best disaster movies I've ever seen. When I heard about The Quake, I shook my head. “How often can one man find himself in the middle of a disaster?” Nevertheless, I gave the film a chance and now, I’ve got to hand it to writers John Kåre Raake and Harald Rosenløw-Eeg. This is a good sequel. It follows the characters’ stories in a believable way. While it isn’t on the same level as the first, fans of the 2015 film should check out this second story.

Following the events of The Wave, Kristian Eikjord (Kristoffer Joner) is hailed a hero by newspapers but remains paralyzed by guilt - he failed to save so many. His marriage to Idun (Ane Dahl Torp) has fallen apart, he and his son Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro) have become estranged. While trying to make amends with his daughter, Julia (Edith Haagenrud-Sande), he looks into some notes an old colleague sent him. They warn of an impending quake that’s sure to hit Oslo.

I should clarify Kristian's now-deceased former colleague sent him the notes knowing - based on his previous exploits - that he would take them seriously and investigate whether the numbers made sense. They do, meaning there is a quake coming… eventually. One of the reasons this film isn’t as good as the first is the pacing. On its own, it’s fine. All of the time spent with the characters allows you to know them and care about their safety when they are in peril. The pressure builds as the numbers are tallied and the scale of the catastrophe is measured. It’ll be beyond anything the country’s ever seen. Problem is, we’ve already kinda seen these scenes in The Wave. Not quite, but kinda. You know the characters, you “get” them. When’s the titular quake going to start?!

The drama featured throughout is genuine and often, heartbreaking. As someone who's seen Kristian at his most heroic, it's hard seeing him broken. Julia isn't so little any more. Story-wise this means she can be a more active character, which ups the stakes. For Kristian, she's the one member of his family he might be able to hold onto. Oslo is much bigger than Geiranger and there’s personal drama among the Eikjord family. We want them to be a family again - maybe this disaster will be just the thing to do it?

Everything you want from an earthquake disaster film is here. The scale may not be as big as something like San Andreas but that’s what makes it better. You believe this scenario. The characters make logical decisions and you can see that they stand a chance. At the same time, the realistic scale makes the danger genuine. Most of the post-quake peril is found in a partially collapsed building - a great setting for one nail-biting sequence after another. It’s so big and nerve-wracking it winds up throwing you off. When the film cuts to Sondre off on his own at the University, I was certain it was to set up a big second calamity… but it really doesn’t. It's more realistic but I might’ve liked a bit of fantasy to get three big scenes, instead of just two.

In this pair of disaster films, The Wave is the main course. The Quake is a nice follow-up; the desert. It’s got all the pieces required to make a great disaster movie. The destruction, the drama, the writing, the tension, the special effects and the performances needed to make it both convincing and engaging. If you see one, check out the other, with the caveat that the first is the better movie. (Original Norwegian with English Subtitles, July 5, 2019)

[motionpicturelover]

"Kodenavn Hunter" season 1 (2007) - Jarl Emsell Larsen

Films and series I've watched in 2023 (44/119)

In my opinion one of the best pieces of Norwegian television ever made.

[wontaemins]

Heimebane (2018–),  season 2 episode 8

[et-cetera-now-what]

[russell-crowe]

kristoffer joner and ane dahl torp [src]

[m00d-indig0]

Ane Dahl Torp (Bente Norum) & Alexej Manvelov (Nikolai), "Occupied" ("Okkupert).

[cilicodr-art]

Movie-log 

117. Charter

Amanda Kernell -- 2020 | Sweden | 6.5

[kwebtv]

Okkupert / Occupied  -  TV2 (Norway) - October 4, 2015 - Present

Political Thriller (18 episodes to date)

Running Time:  60 minutes

Stars:

Current cast

Protagonists

Henrik Mestad as Jesper Berg

Eldar Skar as Hans Martin Djupvik

Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė as Irina Sidorova

Ane Dahl Torp as Bente Norum

Janne Heltberg as Anita Rygh

Supporting characters

Selome Emnetu as Hilde Djupvik

Veslemøy Mørkrid as Ingrid Bø

Stig Amdam as Lieutenant-Colonel Harald Vold

Lisa Loven Kongsli as Astrid Berg

Alexej Manvelov as Nikolai

Morten Svartveit as Anders Knudsen

Kristin Skogheim as Ingvild Friis

Vytautas Kaniusonis as Konstantin Minnikov

Minor characters

Hippolyte Girardot as Pierre Anselme

Krzysztof Pieczyński as Vladimir Gosev

Øystein Røger as Dag Ottesen

Morten Traavik as General Jacob Istad

Ville Virtanen as Antti Korhonen

Filip Peeters as Rudolf Teichmann

Former cast

Ragnhild Gudbrandsen as Wenche Arnesen

Vegar Hoel as Thomas Eriksen

Sondre Larsen as Stefan Christensen

[themovieaffection]

The Quake (2018) – Movie #39

[everymovie2020]

The Quake (2018)

Date watched:  1 June 2019

Okay.  I did not have subtitles for this, so I went in knowing zero Norwegian, knowing that it's about the same people from the first movie and knowing their character names and their back story, so feeling confident.

Things I have learned:

Turns out you don't need subtitles to enjoy a disaster movie when it follows the exact same formula as the first movie in the series, only this time it's an earthquake and not a tsunami;

Turns out you do need subtitles if you want to have any sense of why the characters from the first movie are all messed up in the second.

Plot: (as I understood it)

It's been some years since the wave (I want to say three years but I'm honestly not sure).  Idun and the kids are living in Oslo (I'm pretty confident it was Oslo; I could be wrong about that, I did not have subtitles).  Kristian has full on PTSD/depression and he is living alone in the wave-town (Gehringer?  I think?). He and Idun seem to have separated but I don't know why.

Idun, however, is working as some kind of hotel manager in the Radisson and doing very well for herself.  She's capable; she don't need no man.

There's some government agency monitoring things and there's weird stuff going on with a fault line, I guess?  Then there's this other geologist dude who dies, and he knows Kristian somehow, and so Kristian comes to Oslo to investigate the thing he was investigating, and yes, this is vague because I DIDN'T HAVE SUBTITLES SO I'M MAKING ASSUMPTIONS.

So there's a series of minor earthquakes and power outages, and once again Kristian is the only damn one who realises that something serious is going to happen.  He's working with this other chick – I don't know her name, but she appears to be some relation to the dude who died – and they're trying to convince the government department that shit is about to get real, but of course, once again, no one is listening to him.

Then something happens that makes him realise the earthquake is going to happen imminently – I do not know what that thing was.  The water keeps rising and falling which I guess is… a thing?  I don't know the significance of it.  

So he and the other chick and his daughter drive to the Radisson, which is a gigantic glass building (you know it's about to get fucked the hell up) to pick up Idun, who is FURIOUS because she STILL DOESN’T BELIEVE HIM.

And then, despite knowing the earthquake is imminent, he chooses to ride up in an elevator – because she's on the top goddamn floor, of course – and then, when he finally drags her into the elevator to escape, they realise their stupid goddamn fucking moron of a daughter has followed him up to the top floor and is searching for them.

Then they're in the elevator and the goddamn quake hits.

Like.

I mean.

They have emergency stairs for a reason, guys.

So now Kristian and Idun are trapped in an elevator, there's a massive fucking earthquake tearing Oslo apart (once again, the CGI is excellent), the kid is up on the top floor, the friend-of-Kristian has realised the kid is up there so she is up there as well, shit is getting smashed up, etc etc.

Idun manages to open the hatch at the top of the elevator so they can climb out, and they start climbing up the ladders on the side of the elevator shaft trying to get out – question:  why didn't they pry open the elevator doors on one of the floors and try to escape that way?  Is that not a thing you can do?  Has Speed lied to me all these years?

Then shit really gets real – a tall building across from the street from the Radisson starts to crumble, and collapsed partially onto the Radisson (so many people would have died just from this alone, because literally nobody had evacuated.  Even people on the street would've been completely fucked in the earthquake).  So now half of the Radisson collapses, but the top floors – which are seemingly reinforced somehow? – manage to stay on the building, but sag quite dramatically, which means bad things for the daughter and the friend-of-Kristian who are stuck there.  You can view that scene here:

https://youtu.be/GSPNFQEdFtE

It also means that Kristian and Idun get fucked over in the elevator shaft, and a piece of building falls down and messes up her leg. It was at this point that I started to worry about my favourite character, Idun, because… they're in an elevator shaft and she has a messed up leg.  And they're still trying to climb up to rescue their stupid goddamn fucking moron of a daughter.

At this point I think we know where this is going, because in the process of swinging from one side of the shaft to the other, Idun gets flattened the fuck by a falling elevator and cue me all:

I was so mad.  So, so mad.

Kristian sucks, okay.  He sucks so hard.  He's terrible at getting his message across – yeah he might be the smartest and know what's going on but that's useless if everyone thinks you're exaggerating and nobody listens to you.  AND he gets Idun killed.  I will never forgive him.

Then, in a truly preposterous final sequence, he makes it up to the top floor, and despite it being at almost a 90-degree angle, manages to rescue both his stupid idiot moron of a daughter and friend-of-Kristian, and the movie ends with them just chilling up there on the top floor, waiting for rescue I guess?  Or for the floor to collapse and finish them off?  Who fucking knows.

I didn't enjoy this as much as The Wave because I felt that it was basically the same movie all over again.  The disaster sequences are great; the destruction feels real; the CGI is excellent, but like… they killed Idun.  So it's a no from me.

[filministic]

Skjelvet (2018) dir. John Andreas Andersen

[adamwatchesmovies]

The Wave (2015)

Roar Uthaug’s The Wave is a disaster film done right. If you think it’s a tad slow at first, stick with it. That time spent on the characters means you care about them when their world starts falling apart. The whole planet may never be on the precipice of collapse but you’ll be so invested it might as well be.

In the real-life tourist destination town of Geiranger, the cliffs surrounding the nearby lake are constantly monitored. Kristian Eikjord (Kristoffer Joner), an experienced geologist is about to leave Geiranger with his family, but unusual sensor readings compel him to stay and keep watch. An avalanche would trigger a tsunami and quickly wipe out everyone in the vicinity.

Make no mistake. This is a disaster movie. For better or worse, you’re going to see some of the clichés we’re used to, particularly towards the end when Kristian, his wife Idun (Ane Dahl Torp) and their two children, Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro) and Julia (Edith Haagenrud-Sande) are hanging on the edge of life by their fingertips. These are forgivable because of the way the tropes are used. It doesn’t feel cheap that Kristian’s last day is the day the titular disaster finally takes place. You get to know him. You understand his dedication to his post and why he takes it so seriously. In a way, it adds a layer to the film. In a place like Geiranger (a real place by the way), everyone knows that someday, it’ll all be over. The people who look at the sensors know that once they press that alarm, people will panic and begin running. This makes them hesitant to set off false alarms, lest they become Peter crying wolf. Only someone with nothing to lose - perhaps someone who is leaving tomorrow for another job - would be able to make the split-second decision to ring the alarm and be unbiased about it.

The buildup is only slightly hampered by you knowing that this is a disaster movie. Following Kristian and his family, learning how they all fit together as a unit and in this town is so lovely it’s almost a shame it all has to be turned upside down once that wave hits. At least when it does, it's a spectacular disaster. The special effects are so good you’d never guess this was a Norwegian production with a budget of $6 million. What I’m trying to say is that the best way to see The Wave - and this is an impossible fantasy but if you could somehow pull it off it’d be great - would be to go in not knowing what it’s about.

In the second half of the film, everyone is either running for their lives in that 10-minute window before the tsunami hits (what a tense ten minutes it is) or surveying the wreckage and trying to find missing people or get their cries for help heard. It’s terrifying and suspenseful. Each scene puts you right in the moment thanks to that first half you spent getting to know the people. You’ve probably seen the likes of The Day After Tomorrow, Geostorm or 2012 and yeah, it’s cool to see that extravaganza of special effects as the entire world is torn to pieces… but deep down inside you kinda know things are going to be all right. No Hollywood production would REALLY wipe out the entire world. What about a Norwegian film though? Could it erase a town of small people that are not important to anyone but the audience? I dunno. Maybe. That uncertainty is what makes this film so good.

Even if you don’t speak Norwegian, you'll recognize that each performance in The Wave is top-notch. Combined with the well-written, likeable characters set in a world that effortlessly transforms from an ideal tourist destination to a nightmare scenario and you have one of the best disaster films out there. The Wave uses the tools at its disposal so effortlessly and so well that you'll embrace them with open arms. It's more than a great disaster movie. It's just a great movie. (March 24, 2018)

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"Svarte penger, hvite løgner" (2004) - Jarl Emsell Larsen

(Transl.: "Dirty money, white lies")

Films and series I've watched in 2023 (43/119)

One of the best pieces of television I've seen.

[wontaemins]

Heimebane (2018–),  season 2 episode 8