THE WAVE (Bølgen)
Magnolia Pictures
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten for Shockya d-based on Rotten Tomatoes
Grade: C
Director: Roar Uthaug
Written by: John Kare Raake, Harald Rosenlow Eeg
Cast: Kristoffer Joner, Ane Dahl Torp, Jonas Oftebro
Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 2/3/16
Opens: March 4, 2016
In perhaps the best disaster movie of recent times, “Force Majeure,” the emphasis is on human conflict rather than simply on the dynamics of avalanche and tsunami. When residents of a French alpine hotel are threatened by the imminent disaster, the father, refusing to scoop up his child and grab his wife instead runs in the other direction to save his own skin. This cowardly act causes a rift in his marriage that appear at first sufficient to break the tourists apart. Much as dad denies his guilt to the accusing wife, she never lets him forget his race to safety. The Norwegian Oscar entry, “The Wave,” focuses on a family as well but the problem with the entire movie is that there is no conflict within the foursome. They are just four loving people who, because the man of the family decides to take a job with an oil rig in another location, agree to move with him and to give up their love of what is the most beautiful area of Norway and principal locus of its tourist industry. (A fjord, where the action takes place, is defined as a long, narrow arm of the sea surrounded by steep cliffs.)
With the interiors filmed in Bucharest and the outdoor scenes on location in Geiranger, Norway, director Roar Uthaug, whose previous work includes “Cold Prey” (about a quintet on a snowboarding vacation in Jotunheimen), devotes about half of the movie time to the crescendo of events culminating in the tsunami that everyone knew would eventually arrive and the remainder to an American-style disaster film complete with the clichés that come with the territory. Kristian (Kristoffer Joner), a geologist on duty with a warning center that keeps an eye on the mountain, loves his job but has been seduced by an oil company to move out, which he should have done hours sooner. His wife Kdun (Ane Dahl Torp) manages a hotel and is game to travel with her man, their small daughter Julia (Edith Haagenrud-Sande) looks forward to the change, but their teen son Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro) likes where he is and is resentful about the move. Sondre’s distaste does not however qualify as any sort of dramatic conflict. When Kristian, already toasted by his colleagues, senses that something is wrong, he postpones his car trip to look into the situation, which indicates dropping water levels and flashing monitors.
Kristian heroically lowers himself within the cliffs to discover that the mountains have literally cut the planted wires. Birds, who know better than people, leave town by the hundreds, rocks fly, and huge waves reminiscent of what affected a Spanish family vacationing in Thailand in the film “The Impossible” (starring Naomi Watts), splash across the seen. As Nature gets revenge against environmentally indifferent human beings, wiping out much of the tourist industry and the vacationers in the town, cinematographer John Cristian Rosenlund hones in on traffic jams that lead people to scurry on foot to a higher ground as thumping music puts audience heartbeats well over the normal sixty to one hundred. The film concludes with the hoariest of clichés as wife and teen son frantically deliver CPR to a drowned paterfamilias.
Rated R. 105 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Story – C
Acting – B-
Technical – B
Overall – C+
