War Sailor review: Gunnar Vikene’s Norwegian Oscar entry

From Bergen to Malta, Liverpool, New York and Halifax, Norwegian merchant seamen Alfred (Kristoffer Joner) and Sigbjorn (Pal Sverre Hagen) sometimes seem to compete with Datelines for screen time in Gunnar Vikene’s epic war sailor, Norway’s Oscar entry. Spacious, full of anecdotes and soaring from one dramatic climax to the next, war sailor wants to tell the stories of the ordinary but unsung heroes who helped defeat Germany in 1945. It has the best of intentions.

If it had focused on less of those horror stories and cut that plot in half, it might not have felt so much like a whistle-blower tour de force. So, three decades later, director Gunnar Vikene takes us through death, injury and emotional trauma, the difficulties of post-war peace, and further into the furthest reaches of post-war PTSD. As a conscientious guide, he is determined that we don’t miss anything.

The starting point is Bergen in 1939, where the shipyard day laborer Alfred struggles to support his wife Cecilia (Ine Marie Wilmann) and their three children with his meager wages. He reluctantly joins the merchant ship with his lifelong friend Sigbjörn, whose parting promise to Cecilia is that he will bring Freddy home alive. After eight months at sea, it is learned that their country is now at war. Nobody goes home until it’s over. “Norwegian ships provide half of what Britain needs to win this war,” booms the captain (Nils Ove Sorvik) from the bridge. “They need us. They also have children.”

This sets the tone for a series of maritime disasters and human dramas in which Alfred repeatedly displays civic courage. Men fall overboard and are left behind because a coal-powered ship cannot stop safely; a tearful 14-year-old boy is pulled from the sea; her ship is hit by a German submarine; Alfred and Sigbjorn float on a raft in the middle of the sea and guard the boy’s body, certain that they will die.

Regular cuts and more interstitials keep bringing us back to the home front. Brave Cecilia began delivering firewood in occupied Mons, evading eviction and huddling in cellars with other families as Allied bombs rained down on them. She never sees her husband’s wages. Nor does she see the letters he writes when there is a quiet moment to save them for a future that may never come.

When it comes down to it, Alfred is not the same man. The family is not reunited until years after the war, after Alfred melts into the opium dens of the Far East after hearing that Bergen has been set on fire. He is rescued by Sigbjorn and not only left unpaid and not recognized by the Norwegian authorities, but also branded as a deserter. This is essentially a report; The treatment of civilian aid workers after the war remains a scandal. Torn by war, betrayal, debauchery and humiliation, weathered by suffering and rage, in 1972, the last stop of the story, Alfred is still a shell of his brave young self.

war sailor is Norway’s most expensive film, an extremely ambitious matter from the heart of the director. Alfred, whose sense of propriety and duty is at the heart of the unfolding story, was directly based on a real person that Vikene met years before and never forgot. It is clear that Vikene spent years collecting these untold stories of terror and bravery. Throwing one of them away must have been unthinkable.

It would probably be impossible to take so much knowledge lightly war sailor wobbles under the weight of so much detail and the whirlwind of so many events that some potentially important scenes must be compressed into a few lines and a meaningful response recorded before moving on. Brings so many emotional highs war sailor dangerously close to melodrama; it cuts corners at some such corners through the Nordic restraint of the shows, which are generous, sensitive and engaging throughout.

Cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grovlen – who also filmed the Oscar winner other round – shows a similar level of commitment and scope, especially in scenes filmed in the sea, with Vikene ruling out the use of a water tank to achieve the documentary verisimilitude he desires. A moaning string score by Volker Bertelmann testifies to further thought. In short, everyone gave their all just to scratch the surface of this saga. As the credits roll, there is a sad feeling that something less could have become so much more.