Directed by:
Erik PoppeCinematography:
Martin OtterbeckComposer:
Wolfgang PlaggeCast:
Andrea Berntzen, Aleksander Holmen, Brede Fristad, Elli Rhiannon Müller Osbourne, Sorosh Sadat, Hang Tran, Solveig Koløen Birkeland, Jenny Svennevig (more)Plots(1)
On 22 July 2011 five hundred young people attending a summer camp on the island of Utøya were attacked by a heavily armed right-wing extremist. The murderous attack claimed the lives of 69 victims. It was a trauma that rocked Norway to the core, and still does to this day. Director Erik Poppe has dared to attempt to turn the events of that summer into a film. His drama opens with documentary footage of Oslo where, shortly beforehand, the same attacker had exploded a car bomb killing eight people; the scene then shifts to the island. The camera follows 19-year-old Kaja who is spending a few days of the holiday here with her young sister Emilie. The two are quarrelling because Emilie is in no mood for the camp and has absolutely no desire to go to the barbecue. And so Kaja ends up going alone. Suddenly, the first gunshot is heard. (Berlinale)
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Reviews (8)
I believe that a thoughtfully enriching and formally courageous film can be made about the events in Norway seven years ago that not only leaves viewers shaken, but also forces them to think. Utøya: July 22 is really not such a film. Though I appreciate that its makers wagered predominantly on the realistic motivation of the scenes (which, however, is somewhat superfluous in a film with fictional characters), that in itself is not a guarantee of a good film. On the contrary, it leads to the fact that most of the film’s runtime consists of long, suspensefully simple shots of several characters hiding and sitting tight somewhere in the forest or under a rocky cliff. Furthermore, any authenticity is demolished by tasteless melodramatic crutches (a mother calling her dead daughter, a micro-plot with a boy in a yellow jacket) suggesting that the main and perhaps only (cynical) ambition of the film’s creators was to wring some emotions out of the viewers, to claw at their souls a bit by exploiting real terror (after all, this intention is indicated with a certain guilelessness by the sentence that Kaja delivers at the beginning while looking at the camera when she calls her mother: “You will never understand, just listen to me”). But the narrative is too straightforward (for proof that this can be done more inventively, see Van Sant's complex Elephant) and there are too few variables at play that would draw us into the story, so Utøya does not work even as an “adventure” survival horror movie. We may ask ourselves whether Kaja will survive or not, whether she will find her sister or not, but that’s all. Poppe relies on our connection to the protagonist, but forgets that the film is not a video game in which fear for the character’s life enhances the player’s control over her actions. As Son of Saul recently showed, it is possible to hold our attention without letting us catch our breath in the present moment while also making a complex statement on a particular tragedy. By contrast, Utøya is a paradoxical reconstruction of an event about which we learn almost nothing, with the exception of the opening and closing explanatory titles. For me, this is a prototype of a useless film without value added, which was made mainly to provoke a media response. It is a film in which it is possible to admire the athletic performance of the leading actress and the cameraman (even though the personalised camera work, which sometimes reacts to the surrounding stimuli independently of the characters, creates the misleading impression that we are watching scenes composed of found footage). 50%
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A thorough lesson in cheap narrative manipulation. I believe that an audience of a highly sensitive nature might be impressed, and I can’t deny at least the strong depiction of those seemingly endless 72 minutes (though that’s probably because the concept of the film is utterly boring and several passages are endless, especially for the viewer). A strong and heavy topic transformed into flat narration that lacks arguments, which only aims to exhaust the viewer without stimulating any interpretation or curiosity. To a great extent, this is thanks to the properly authentic and chilling format, but it’s mostly tedious, shallow and uninteresting, which for a premise like this it’s very bad. Paul Greengrass’s 22 July is far more intense because it doesn’t rely only on effect and it’s not afraid to place the whole event, including the suffering of the innocent victims (for which I can't find enough words of sympathy) in a much more urgent and provocative argumentative context (and no, the film cannot be defended with the argument that it should only be a raw depiction of the events on the island, because such depiction should communicate with the viewer instead of having them yawn). 50%
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I think the filmmakers chose an ideal approach to depict the Utøya massacre. I appreciate films that use long takes, and I admire the effort of shooting a movie in a single take. It's hard to find fault with this film. It's likely for the best that it was made and filmed the way it was. I'm glad the creators opted for an unconventional portrayal of the real event rather than a traditional biopic about Breivik or something similar. We've had plenty of films about mass murderers, and it's refreshing to focus on the victims for a change. For all these reasons, I’d give the creators a thumbs up. So why am I rating the film only 2 stars? It just didn't resonate with me. I didn't immerse myself in the 72 minutes of chaos and despair, which I find to be a significant issue. I'm not a viewer who needs constant action, but some scenes dragged so much that I found myself mentally checked out, rather than being engrossed with the students fighting for survival. The film started strong, and the initial gunshots on the island gave me chills. The first few minutes are very powerful and impactful. However, it lost me during a scene where a group of kids, including the protagonist, hid by a tree and speculated on what was happening. That scene seemed to drag on forever and from that point on, I was extremely bored and couldn't connect with their emotions. Normally, I'm quite empathetic, but for some reason, this film didn't reach me. Even the prolonged scene with the dying girl didn’t hit me as hard as it should have. The most interesting part was the last few minutes, focusing on the protagonist's story resolution. But even then, thinking back, it didn't leave a lasting impression; it was just unexpected in the moment. Utøya - July 22 is a respectable effort, but I can’t fully appreciate it. I need to mull it over more — I’d like to give it at least 3 stars, but something holds me back. I’m a bit conflicted about it. By the way, the best reconstruction of a mass shooting attack is still Denis Villeneuve's Polytechnique, with its surgical precision and chilling coldness.
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At first, the style of camerawork was really annoying, but then I realized it added to the bleak atmosphere the creators managed to achieve. It was obvious what the story would be about and how it would end, but I really liked the execution. The teenagers running around the woods in panic, looking for a place to hide with the sound of shooting in the background created decent suspense and I enjoyed the film a lot.
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Overrated to the point of woe and a completely unrewarding and unnecessary film that only feeds Brevik's infamy in the media. The event that took place on 22 July 2011 on the island of Utøya in Norway was horrific, resulting in the death of 77 young students, but unfortunately the film falls far short of representing the horror that took place in reality. I had a big problem with the fact that we see absolutely nothing in the film only hear it, so my experience would be quite similar if I was blind. The film only focuses on one girl who runs, screams, hides in among the threes or under a rock looking for her sister for the entire film, while Breivik is somewhere in sight shooting at the students, but all you hear is gunshots, screaming and running. There is only one dead body, one wound and absolutely no blood in the film, not even Breivik himself is shown, and I take that as a huge screw-up since they mention the word 'massacre' everywhere. It's filmed quite authentically and in one take, but so what if nothing happens for the whole film. I hope Paul Greengrass makes a real massacre in the American remake next year, with steamy psychological terror and a maniacal Breivik to showcase the real horror that took place back then on screen. If only they had at least shown pictures of the deceased at the end so I could take it as a memorial, but I didn't get to see that either. This has no balls, no juice, no drive, no emotion. Bleh. 30%
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