Hunger

1966 Dutch feel-good movie

Rating: 17/20 (Mark: 17.5/20)

Plot: It's late-19th-century Norway, and everything is grayish brown. A hopeful writer wanders despairing streets. He looks for work, loses his sanity, dreams of love, and has a rumbly in his tummy. Gradually, his grip on reality slips more and more. He takes his frustrations out on a candle.

Ah, anonymous, this film's actually Danish and filmed in Oslo. I don't know what's in the gray waters in Scandanavia, but something's got to making the Dutch so bleak. Now that I know it's Danish, I'm instantly reminded of Carl Theodor Dreyer's work. This is a bleakness with a fervor, a provocative bleakness. I love this kinds of movies where almost nothing at all happens for almost two hours, yet it somehow remains captivating and moving. And I was moved by this haunting, dismal movie. At the center of things is the performance of Per Oscarsson who plays the starving protagonist. He's in nearly every single shot and luckily, was very easy to connect with. He effectively uses abnormal nonverbal communication and body movements to realistically portray this guy who is very obviously losing it. You can't quit put your finger on it, but from the very first scenes where he eats a piece of paper and promises a woman he'll buy bread from her at ten o'clock the next day, you know that something's not right with this guy. My brother had previously seen this and had read the Knut Hamsun novel and kept making the claim that we were dealing with an unreliable third-person narrator. That's a funny thing to say about a movie, but in a way it's accurate. There seems to be a point in this movie where the guy and reality officially part ways, but thinking back, I can't decide what that moment is. A lot of this seems to be happening and a lot of this seems to be an interpretation of a sick mind of what's happening and a lot of this might not be happening at all. The ambiguity is fascinating and adds a depth to the story. Hunger is shot starkly and beautifully, one of those movies where the setting, filthy and desolate, is as much a character in the movie as any of the people. The guy's rotten teeth are also almost a character on their own. And although there's this staggering, almost engulfing bleakness, there's also a bit of humor in this. This is a great movie, and I'm really glad my brother made me watch it. I still feel bad about eating sausage while watching this poor guy.