Reviews
An Enemy of the People (En Folkefiende) | Review
You are what you Drink
Norweigen drama explores depths of the lonely pathway not often taken.
With more catch 22 situations that you can shake a stick at, Norwegian director Erik Skjoldbjærg’s An Enemy of the People (En Folkefiende) asks the question of who you going to turn to when the whole world is against you? Based on Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s play which gets a contemporary treatment during our environmental fragile ecosystems – this is a smaller scale dark drama that treads through ethics and morality with no way out for the stories’ demolished protagonist.
The title character is a sort of ethical crusader who’s had a successful stint in television and has a reputation of being a thorn in people’s sides – including the big multi-nationals. Retirement looks fruitful as he heads back home for a small water-bottling venture – but while you can take away almost everything from the man, you can’t take away his convictions. What he finds in the water is more trouble than he bargained for as the rest of the narrative basically pits him against everyone in town – including his own wife.
With a surprising absence of style, Skjoldbjærg’s return to his roots after the failure, thanks to Miramax, to successfully release Prozac Nation. This reminds slightly of those Americana social dramas from the 70’s – that features the lone person fighting the system. This is a performance-based recipe with actor Jørgen Langhelle in the forefront in the type of character role which is refreshingly not larger than life. Perhaps the character of the wife is exaggerated slightly for the sake of the plot, but the story proves that not all outspoken individuals come out victorious in the end.
Exploring the physical Fjord landscapes as in Insomnia and perhaps a morsel of the emotional terrain laid out in Prozac Nation, this social problem drama demonstrates how an open ending has more of an effect on a film’s end. In a relatively young directing career, and unlike his first two films, An Enemy of the People will have a hard time making a dent into foreign markets because of its lack of gimmicks and its simple story arc.