DE USYNLIGE (TROUBLED WATER) Review
Why, why, why does Erik Poppe not get the respect he deserves? Yes, the Norwegian director tends to take a long time between projects, which probably contributes a good deal to people not knowing who he is, but the simple fact is that he is now three feature films into his career and each of those three are near-flawless works - impeccably crafted, beautifully observed, and neatly balancing style with substance. A difficult, beautiful, tragic film, Poppe's third feature - De Unsylige, known in the international market as Troubled Water - is surely good enough to propel its creator into the top ranks on international film but will anybody notice?
A film told in two parts, the parts hinged on horrible tragedy, De Usynlige chronicles the after effects of grief. it is interested not so much in the traumatic event itself but in the consequences of that event on the key players on either side of it.
Jan Thomas is a young man about to be released from prison, a man who made - for reasons that are never disclosed or addressed on any level within the film - a horrible decision in his youth. Jan Thomas and a friend kidnapped a child. They took him from the front of a cafe and wheeled him in his stroller to a nearby forest. And when the child awoke and recognized Jan Thomas from his neighborhood the two froze in terror while the child ran away in panic, slipping down a hill and striking his head on a rock, lying unconscious in a pool of his own blood when the pair catch up to him. Now responsible for the death of a child they simply panic and Jan Thomas takes the body of the child and sets it adrift in a nearby stream. And then he loses his youth to a lengthy prison term.
Years later Jan Thomas makes his parole, drops his first name to avoid recognition and takes a job as a church organist, working in a church where he soons strikes up a more-than-friendly relationship with the church priest, a beautiful young single mother whose young son Jens adores Thomas, as he is now known. Though he has clearly never gotten over the events of his past Thomas has sealed them up in the deepest pit he can find and appears on the verge of overcoming them, of moving on to some semblance of a normal life.
But it is not to be. The mother of the kidnapped child is a teacher at a nearby school and when she brings her students to the church on a field trip she finds the organist strangely familiar, her grief propelling the two of them into a collision course.
The film takes a simple, unadorned approach to its material. Poppe has a stellar group of actors here and he is smart enough to rein his own influence back and simply give them free rein to explore the material with minimal interference. With occasional flash backs to the original events Poppe simply follows Thomas through his last days in prison and the early days following his release. He doesn't judge, he doesn't interpret, he simply observes and what he sees is a man broken by a horrible, foolish mistake. And once he gets us to a certain point with Thomas he simply turns the clock back and leads us through the exact same span of time with the camera now turned on Agnes, the dead boy's mother.
De Usynlige asks surprisingly few questions and offers even fewer answers and that is precisely where the film finds its power. Poppe's goal is simply to allow us to recognize ourselves in these people, to allow ourselves to feel as they feel without worrying so much about how they got there. Grief, to Poppe, is a universal and this film is his attempt to map its boundaries. It is a beautiful, powerful piece of work and very well worth seeking out.
Poppe's previous film, Hawaii, Oslo can be found on DVD in both Canada and the US with a little bit of looking and, again, comes highly recommended. Put in the effort.
