Other Doctor Lives: I Am Dina (2002)

This is quite the film. I’m not quite sure what I think of it. It has a lot of intense, depressing moments but also surprising flashes of humor, and the protagonist practically dares you to like her. For certain, I can say it’s a striking movie.

As a child, Dina’s mother is killed pretty horrifically in an accident, one her father blames her for. In his grief, he washes his hands of Dina, and she grows up half wild, with no one showing her affection but her kind tutor. When she reaches adulthood, Dina’s life becomes a series of adventures and misfires: travel, her music, lovers, and more. Wherever she goes, she’s headstrong and ferocious. Dina’s fascination with death follows her throughout her life.

It's a Norwegian film, based on a novel. I’ve never read the book, but to me, the film feels like it combines the misfortunes of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, the escapades of Tom Jones, and the gothic sensibilities of Jane Eyre, all filtered through a thoroughly Scandinavian bent. I don’t know whether it all works, but it’s compelling.

The film covers a lot of ground, such that it’s held together more by its characters and themes than by a clearly driven plot. It’s interesting to watch Dina alternately draw in, enrage, and unsettle those around her, with her indifferent manners, wildly stubborn independent streak, and offputtingly intense gaze. She causes trouble for some and solves problems for others, but her foremost interest is usually herself.

As I said, after young Dina witnesses the accident that kills her mother, she develops a lifelong fascination with death. Whether watching a public execution with rapt attention or considering killing an inattentive lover, death is never far from her. When she sees someone on the verge of death, she repeatedly murmurs, “Look at me,” wanting to see in their eyes the moment when they let go.

The cast draws from around Europe—mainly Scandinavia, but with a few French, British, and Scottish actors thrown in for good measure. Perhaps because of that, the film is performed in English rather than Norwegian. Marie Bonnevie, who I’ve seen before in Another Round, gives a full-throated performance as Dina, anchoring the film with her intensity. The movie also includes Pernilla August (Shmi Skywalker from the Star Wars prequels) as Dina’s doomed mother and Mads Mikkelsen as the shifty stepson of Dina’s husband. (That husband, by the way, is played by Gérard Depardieu, so ugh to that.)

Christopher Eccleston doesn’t have much of a presence until the second half of the film, but once he and Dina meet, he takes on a pretty prominent role. He plays Leo Zhukovsky, a Russian national whose travels take him to Norway. Other characters enjoy poking at his revolutionary ideals, demanding to know whether he’s an anarchist and belittling the servants to “demonstrate” that the working class is too ignorant to need liberating. He claims to be no one; he is only his mission.

Dina is taken with Leo from the first. He’s unlike the other men in her port village, as she notes, “Does not smell like a seaman, and he reads Russian poetry.” He’s the only person whose gaze is as piercing as hers, although his is warmer. As she watches him casually, confidently brush off the aspersions the villagers cast on his political views, you can feel her world shift on its axis.

I really like how Eccleston plays Leo. He’s a revolutionary with a talent for rubbing elbows in finer society, and while he certainly rubs some the wrong way, he does it in an offhand, almost cheerful manner. As others try to “gotcha” him with questions about his ideology, he snaps off nonchalant bon mots like, “You cannot steal property. Property is theft,” and, “I happen to be the first of my generation, just as you are the last of yours.” He often has an untouchable air about him, unruffled, but when he shows his feelings, it’s clear he feels deeply. There’s an excellent scene where he’s responding to something that Dina says in a desperate situation, and his smile cracks as his laughter shifts to the verge of tears.

Accent Watch

Russian.

Recommend?

In General – Maybe. Like I said, I haven’t quite made up my mind about the film, but it was definitely an experience.

Christopher Eccleston – I think so. Eccleston uses a deft hand here, deepening an already interesting character with his performance.

Warnings

Violence (including rape,) disturbing images, sexual content, language, drinking/smoking, and strong thematic elements (including suicide.)

Joel Fry-days: The End We Start From (2023, R)

*Premise spoilers, including one vague spoiler about Joel Fry’s presence in the film*

One morning near the start of Joel Fry-days, I watched the trailers for all his movies to get a feel for them. The End We Start From was definitely one of the ones that piqued my interest the most, even as the trailer left me speculating that there wouldn’t actually be much of Joel Fry in it. A beautiful, brutal, very human film.

An expectant mother gives birth on the day her world turns upside down. London is being hit with torrential flooding, and as soon as she’s discharged from the hospital, the woman, her husband, and their new baby have to get out of the city. They search for safety and shelter across a swiftly changing landscape where people are growing angry and afraid, clinging to what they have.

(Side note: the main character is credited on IMDb simply as the Woman, while all the other characters are credited with a single initial.)

It’s technically a disaster movie, maybe even an apocalypse movie, but it doesn’t exactly feel like that. Instead, it feels like a moving character drama in which one woman struggles to hold onto herself as she fights to keep herself and her baby alive. It’s a climate change film that focuses mainly on the human toll—not just lives lost in the disaster itself, but lives lost, altered, and upended in the aftermath. With people fleeing London in droves, the towns and villages on higher ground are closing their entry roads. There are too many people with too few resources, and there are so many with nowhere to go.

In this sense, one thing I really like about this movie is how it opens on these characters who don’t realize how much their world is about to change. There’s a lot of talk about people who left London too late, those who either couldn’t get out or had nowhere left to turn when they did leave. In the hospital, the Woman is confused to learn that they can’t go home, and her husband R simply tells her, “The whole street’s gone.” It’s a slow realization that this isn’t merely rain, then that it’s not a matter of simply driving north to R’s parents’ house, then that this isn’t just a question of finding somewhere to wait out the floodwaters for the short term. 

The film is directed by Mahalio Belo, who did Requiem (and who cast Joel Fry in the Persuasion adaptation that was taken from us too soon!!) She doesn’t shy away from the bleakness of the story while still capturing beauty and connection. This is a movie that is just so full of human moments, whether it’s the Woman sharing a laugh with another new mother she meets in a shelter, sharing a meal and a dance with a fellow traveler, or breaking down in tears while she’s playing peekaboo with baby Zeb. “Where am I, Zeb?” she asks, trying to maintain her singsongy mommy voice even as she cries. “I don’t know.” Amid all the devastation, we’re shown points of light, both in the Woman’s present and in the sunlit flashes of her memories.

Even though they’re very different films, I found myself reminded a little of Wander Darkly. Both are very grounded depictions of a woman’s extraordinary journey (physical and/or emotional,) both present the central relationship with such a soft intimacy, and both are very exquisitely shot. I can imagine that this one will stick with me for quite a while, much like Wander Darkly has.

Jodie Comer is just excellent as the Woman. Her performance is so real and human, by turns naive, heartbreaking, and hopeful, surprisingly funny in moments and quietly courageous in others. The movie features plenty of other fine British actors, including Nina Sosanya and Mark Strong as R’s parents, Katherine Waterston as the Woman’s new friend in the shelter, and Benedict Cumberbatch as a man whose path briefly crosses with hers.

Joel Fry plays R. In the trailer, the only shots of him seemed to be flashbacks, so while it was clear that he was playing Comer’s lover/spouse, I had my suspicions that he was either 1) dead, and the movie was about her having to move forward on her own or 2) separated from her, and the movie was about her attempt to find her way back to him. One of those is sort of right (for the sake of spoilers, I won’t say which one,) but he’s actually in more of the movie than I expected. While Fry’s role eventually switches over to mainly flashback appearances, the Woman and R are together for about the first 40 minutes of the film. I still would’ve liked more, obviously, but I 100% get why this becomes a story of the Woman trying to keep herself and Zeb safe on her own. And since I’d prepared myself for not much of Fry at all, I consider the amount of screentime we do get from him to be kind of a bonus!

This is such a lovely performance. Sticking with the theme of “characters who don’t realize they’re in the opening of a disaster/apocalypse movie,” R basks in the wonder of being a new father and tells the Woman how amazing she is. When the nurse advises her to try to pee and she’s able to, R beams down at the baby and cries, “She did it!” in a sweet, admiring tone. He’s reassuring as they flee the city and mildly bickers with his dad over whether or not they should have seen this coming. At night, he cuddles with the Woman in his childhood bedroom, and during the day, he makes cute faces while he plays with Zeb.

But as the characters start to realize the enormity of what they’re dealing with, R is hit hard. Although I won’t spoil the details, they’re forced to recalibrate their plan right on the heels of an incredibly traumatic experience for him. Fry does a beautiful job with these scenes: the Woman asking if he wants to talk about it and R admitting he can’t, R sitting in the tub hugging his knees to his chest, R choking back tears as he insists that he can be the one to undertake something risky that directly echoes with the source of his trauma. It’s deeply affecting to watch him go from a kind, gentle rock to a terrified, beaten-down man who thinks he’s failing his family—still kind and gentle, but so battered. Just fantastic work here.

Accent Watch

Southern British English.

Recommend?

In General – Yes. It can be a bit slow at times, in that indie-drama way, but I thought this film was wonderfully done.

Joel Fry – Yes! Even if I was left wanting a lot more of R, Fry turns in such a strong performance here.

Warnings

Strong thematic elements, violence, language, drinking/smoking, and brief sexual content.

 

Joel Fry-days: Diggers (2023)

This is an odd little short, more about mood/notion than tangible story. It’s also the shortest one I’ve watched so far, with the credits starting right around the six-and-a-half-minute mark. So yeah, this review may very well be longer than the short itself.

Two men walk into the woods to dig a hole. In between their work, they discuss their lives.

As I said, not much in the way of a story here. Certain questions are left ambiguous, and certain surprises pop up late in the game. For the most part, though, this is just a little piece between these two characters, with the question of the hole they’re digging widening amid their gentle banter. Joel Fry and Cary Crankson (the other actor in this short) both get a story credit alongside the writer/director. Not sure if that means they were actually writing it together or if it means a fair amount of the dialogue is improvised.

But for all that there’s not a lot here, I still found myself liking it. It put me in the mind of Shakespearian grave diggers, or maybe Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Watching them dig and talk, there’s some softly pleasant humor as they misunderstand each other, and they hint a little at the philosophical of the mundane. Not I think this approaches the feat of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, obviously, but that’s the vibe I got.

Joel Fry plays Griffin. From the banter, we know more facts about him than we do about the other digger, Michaels. Griffin’s been saying for years that he’s going to quit smoking, he’s a relatively new dad, and his wife makes him put piccalilli on his sandwiches. These small details give us a bit of a snapshot of this man, while the tone and tenor of Fry’s performance gives some texture to those details. 

Griffin is dwelling heavily on how being a dad changes things for him, but he balks when Michaels asks him about fatherhood. “Well, when you say ‘fatherhood,’ it makes it sound like I’ve been doing it for ages,” he counters. “It’s only been six months.” He’s not able to engage with the question until Michaels amends it to “dadness.”

Accent Watch

London.

Recommend?

In General – Maybe. I like the feel of it.

Joel Fry – Maybe. It’s not a must, but I enjoy what he does here.

Warnings

Thematic elements.