Omniscient Piece of Literature
The existential and dark tension in The Worst Person in the World has romance and comedy in its blood. It flows through its veins where time passes and the uncomfortable consciousness of death spills over the edge. Complete with an omniscient narrator, the structure of the film acts as a piece of literature. Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt (his writer) use allegory and novelism throughout the prologue and epilogue.
The chapter title switches to a metanarrative. The chapter structure allows Trier to jump into the future and incorporate ellipses into the narrative. Despite time stopping, the story develops accordingly in an arc of magical realism. However, one moment can take three chapters of description to produce the most extreme example. As a result, Trier always applies cinema to a linear journey, experience, and story.
Of course, laziness is the main theme of the film. Whatever Julie, the protagonist does is more important than any answer she has to live according to the container and according to her phase of life and age. She, and people in general, have plans, goals, and ambitions. However, what happens if Julie’s timeline doesn’t match up with expectations? What if she legitimately doesn’t know what she wants?
Julie
In short, Julie is a 30-year-old woman who jumps and stumbles into the film. However, she ran into all the questions simultaneously. In her mind, she is always in the dark, and we see her being indecisive and fickle. Her laziness, on the other hand, creates a clear surface for the immersion of eccentric truth when it rises. Simply put, The Worst Person in the World is a rare film where the characters are the constraints of the plot.
The characters also provide a wide playground for thinking, questioning, correcting directions, and even behaving badly. The prologue in the film is fast-paced, acting as odd montages and telling us what we need to know about Julie’s life. She started the film in medical school, switched to studying psychology, and decided on becoming a photographer. The subtext tells how she felt the growing anxiety she was trying to suppress.
However, she makes many great choices almost on impulse—not changing her life as much as she spares it, like a lizard severing its tail. Julie begins to meet Aksel, an older man who is successful in his career choice. The spark between Julie and Aksel becomes real; they move in together soon after they hit it off.
The Oslo Trilogy
However, they met at the wrong time. When Aksel was at a different stage of life, he wanted to have children. However, Julie was still not ready. Aksel understands the fear of having children but observes that she seems to be waiting for something she doesn’t know. Trier likes space between spaces. Ambivalence and ambiguity do not exist as fleeting thoughts in the mind. However, it is a way of being in the world.
The Worst Person in the World is the final installment in what Trier refers to as the Oslo trilogy. The first film in the trilogy, Reprise (the director’s first feature), details the close friendship between two young novelists. The acting in the film is self-aware and full of mischievous energy. It bounces from mood to mood, given that French New Wave works always exhibit a sensibility. However, Trier’s sensibility is right at the forefront, including the engaging way he uses the narrator.
The second film, Oslo, August 31st, depicts a bleak day in the life of a recovering heroin addict. In both Oslo, August 31st, and Reprise, the main character always comes out. In The Worst Person in the World, Trier broke a rating from which no one expressed a desire to leave.
Facade of Illusion
However, the character’s relationship with Oslo is still paramount. It acts as a facade or illusion behind which real-life lurks. In terms of overall mood, the trilogy evokes a sense of getting lost in each protagonist’s life. It feels behind and will never catch up. Regardless, Trier rejected the flashy binary from start to finish. Neither Eivind nor Aksel are good nor bad. Julie wasn’t stuck with Aksel, and she wasn’t happy with Eivind.
Despite being nearly identical, both paths are nearly identical, regardless of which is slightly more difficult. Taking the path that Julie took made all the difference, but she didn’t say whether the difference was negative or positive. One may or may not be right, and Trier likes the spaces between ambivalence and ambiguity that are present as momentary flashes of the brain. Julie never knew, and one night she was bored and didn’t belong at her place at a fancy party.
She crashes into another party, where she meets Eivind. They both admitted that they were dating other people. However, they do have a prolonged flirtation that lasts for the duration of the party. The magical sequence becomes the key to everything that comes after it.
Web of Fragility
However, there is an undeniable quality within. Their dynamic acts are play and a web of fragile, glistening laughter. Still, play can be more serious than actual serious conversation. When Julie is alert to potential tragedies in life, she finds things to be entertaining or funny. It becomes the same thing as finding it interesting or curious. Despite being curious about other people’s lives being part of Julie’s identity, the humor is always operational.
She and Eivind recognized each other as intoxicating playmates rather than soul mates. Julie’s situation was not unusual. When she saw her grandmother and mother, she scanned her great-grandmother’s photo on a nearby shelf. She thought about what they did at 30 years old. Julie, the thickest of the two paths, leads to one of the film’s most incredible sequences. She suddenly freezes the entire town so she can escape the clock-bound world and spend some time with Eivind.
She froze Aksel as he poured a cup of coffee, just standing, unable to move, and suspended in time and space. When she goes to meet Eivind at the coffee shop where he works, she runs past a car that has stopped in the middle of the road, along with people stuck on the spot.
Concept of Living
Julie and Eivind spend a lazy day together, with the other residents and visitors glued to the tableau around them. They only watched the sunset; space vibrated between them, creating a utopia in which Munir’s connections were submerged, giving them the breathing room to rise. However, the essence of The Worst Person in the World remains. While the concept of “living” is discovering an essential aspect of existence, it is constantly evolving and changing.
We become soft in spirit as we become flesh. Staying in one place or breaking free from another, on the other hand, is not an indication of a life we are living less. The Worst Person in the World is equally doubtful as its inquisitive protagonist. However, it becomes a very good yet refreshing portrait when conveying a journey. In the last shot, it becomes the most explicit reference to questioning freedom.
We can see it as people march through the streets holding banners and tents. However, we can see it as Julie sitting alone in her quiet apartment, working on her laptop, while the warm sunlight shines on her. She had a job she had to do and nowhere else to go as if the scenery had a message for Trier to convey through Julie.
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