Odjuret

Some friends and I saw Odjuret (English title: Savage) at the 2011 Gothenburg International Film Festival in Gothenburg, Sweden. We're not really the "art film" kind of people but we went to see it mainly because a mutual friend of ours is in it. Also, it has been nominated for the Best Nordic Film of the Year award.

The atmosphere of the film is one of a stifling, nearly suffocating frustration caused by the suppression of the dreams and desires of the characters, all of whom have various needs that are not being fulfilled. This is something to which everyone can relate. There are the things we want and need in life, and then there are the countless circumstances beyond our control that prevent us from acquiring those wants and needs.

The film takes the audience down this path of frustrated dreams and suppressed desires. Along the way we find out what happens when one's dreams are denied until one reaches a breaking point.

I give the film a 10 out of 10 and hope it wins the award.

If you are patient, this movie will knock you out. It is like a good brandy or a glass of wine: it will affect you slowly. This film will possess you with its atmosphere and mood. If you let it.

I think Odjuret catches the problem of our time and of the late 20th / early 21st century. The chaotic world which you cannot control. The country which is beautiful on the one hand, but consumes you and keep you from human relationships and possibilities on the other hand. These youths are without goals or imaginations about the future. For them there is no future, it is certain from the beginning to the very end.

And this movies is great because it catches not a particular problem of a country (by the way: who would think that Sweden is so unbearable?), but a universal one which concerns every young people nowadays from Sweden through my homeland to Japan.