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KITCHEN
STORIES
7/10
Salmer
fra kjokkenet aka Psalms from the Kitchen : Norway
(Nor-Swe) 2003 : Bent HAMER : 95 mins
A few… observations…
on Norway’s entry for the foreign-language Oscar.
- This is
just the kind of whimsically humanistic, steadily deadpan comedy to
tickle the palates of the Oscar committee – who in 2002 selected Aki
Kaurismaki’s The Man
Without A Past for their five-film shortlist. But this isn’t
just an exercise in Scandinavian cosiness – one or two sharp edges are
occasionally discernible beneath the gentle surface, and the film’s
hidden depths repay closer inspection and analysis.
- The set-up
is strikingly original: in early 1950s Sweden, the ‘Home Research Institute’
(a fictional but all-too-plausible quango) carries out studies aimed
at rationalising domestic design. Part of their programme involves painstakingly
recording how single men use their kitchens – by means of installing
silent observers who sit on high tennis-umpire chairs in the corner
of the room, scrupulously noting down the movements of their ‘subjects’.
No communication is permitted between observer and observee, and at
the end of each day the watcher retires to his two-tone green mini-caravan
parked outside.The Institute selects the remote Norwegian village of
Landstand as the ideal venue for the observations. One of the participants
is crusty, aged, uncommunicative farmer Isak (Joachim Calmeyer), who
proves fiercely uncooperative when his ‘guest’ Folke (Tomas Norstrom)
– a fussy-budget fiftysomething – turns up. But, very gradually, Isak
starts to thaw…
- By means
of a delightfully tiny series of increments in gesture and nuance, writer-director
Hamer (in collaboration with co-scriptwriter Jorgen Bergmark) patiently
develops the Isak-Folke relationship from all-out hostility to touchingly
close friendship. This doesn’t go down at all well with Isak’s best
pal Grant (Bjorn Floberg), whose act of retaliation towards the newcomer
seems jarringly out of place in what is otherwise a model of well-observed
restraint. This is somewhat typical of a film whose second half – in
which Hamer has to tackle the tricky issue of developing a story – is
slightly less satisfying than the first, which is mainly concerned with
scene-setting. But the contributions from Calmeyer and Norstrom (who
occasionally resembles one of Alec Guinness’s mildly befuddled officials)
are strong throughout, in what develops into a two-hander even more
engaging than the not-dissimilar French entry The
Man on the Train. The climax is perhaps unexpectedly downbeat,
but there’s a neatly uplifting coda – and, as countryman Isak puts it,
“Death is predetermined.”
- As well
as charting the infinite gradations in the interaction between Isak
and Folke, Hamer and Bergmark simultaneously explore many levels of
‘observation’ (and not just in the excellent gag in which the Norwegian
Isak ticks off the Swedish Folke by reminding him that the latter’s
countrymen “were neutral observers during World War II!”). Folke observes
Isak from his chair. Irked and curious to know what’s being written
down about him, Isak surreptitiously drills a hole in the ceiling above
Folke’s chair, so he can spy upon the watcher. Meanwhile, far above
their heads, the Institute bigwig Ljungberg (Leif Andree) circles in
his state-funded jet – but instead of watching the watchers, Ljungberg
occupies his time partying with scantily-clad young women: the ‘boss’
is thus a quasi-divine ‘eye in the sky’ who has long since abdicated
responsibility and interest in his ant-sized ‘subjects’. Perhaps it’s
no accident that, occupying the far corner of the kitchen, Folke and
the other observers are located exactly where Russians placed their
domestic Ikons – reminding themselves of God’s ever-vigilant eye.
- On a wider
level, Ljungberg, Folke, Isak and company are of course all being observed
by Hamer, via his cinematographer Philip Ogaard: the results of this
celluloid ‘observation’ being presented for our inspection on the cinema
screen (Hamer, however, does miss a trick with his final shot – which
should really have been taken from the perspective of Folke’s lofty
indoor perch.) In the cinema, the audience may also ‘observe’ each other:
this is, despite its wry tone and slow pace, a genuine crowd-pleaser
which causes an observable (occasionally even hysterical) reaction on
many of its viewers. BulBul Film should perhaps install an observer
in the corner of each movie-house where Kitchen Stories is screened
– Cinema Stories being the logical consequence.
11th
November, 2003 (seen 29th October : ICA, London – London
Film Festival)
click
here for a full list of films covered at the 2003 London Film Festival
click here
for the full list of films entered for the 2003-4 Foreign-Language Oscar
by Neil
Young
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