Reprise (2006)

During the first third of "Reprise," a new film from Norway, I thought I was watching a masterpiece. During the second half, I felt I was watching a film made by a pretentious bore. That's quite a long distance to travel. Director Joachim Trier, here making his film debut, is without doubt a supreme talent for the 21st century. He clearly has studied the films of Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard, among others, and created a work of art in that vein that is at times breathtaking. But if Trier doesn't learn to put story and characters first and cinematic style second, his immense talent will be for naught. Initially, "Reprise" has a laser-like focus on its characters, two men just out of college who aspire to be serious novelists. One mysteriously drifts into mental illness after becoming a literary sensation with his first novel. It is absolutely harrowing to watch his mind start to fray. But after about an hour the film runs out of things to say, and it becomes a celebration of itself. Look at me, I'm so innovative. Look at me, I'm so stylish. Look at me, I'm so artistically sophisticated. "Reprise" ends up becoming an advertisement for the director, as if the director were trying to prove that he's well-educated. This was very disappointing. There is something uniquely depressing about a super-talented artist getting full of him or herself. What a waste of talent self-congratulation is. No true artist would sink to self-aggrandizement. I hope Trier fell into this trap because of immaturity. I pray that he gets himself out of it as he matures. If he does, he could become the next Godard or Bergman. At its best, "Reprise" beautifully captures the vim and vigor, as well as the confusion, of intellectual youth. The protagonists have a tremendous amount of artistic inspiration, and the film itself seems to embody their inspiration. With all its jump-cutting and experimentation with sound and editing, it sumptuously brings to life the world of the young artists.It also takes exciting risks in presenting the immaturity of young artists, rather than completely lionizing them. The two protagonists are part of a larger group of young men, and the film gradually starts to widen its lens to explore these other characters. We hear the most ridiculously misogynist ideas get presented by some of them, and then we watch some of them make absurd decisions in an attempt to live up to these silly ideas.I like the idea of showing smart characters succumb to stupidity. But this is the point where the film began to come undone. It became kind of silly. We started laughing at the characters, but I wasn't sure what the deeper meaning of this laughter was. The film started losing its way, relying on shallow, predictable humor. The more the film started to make fun of its characters, the more I began to disengage. As the content thinned, the heavy style (jump-cutting, for example) began to feel more like a gimmick than a meaningful way to explore an idea.Despite its flaws, "Reprise" is worth seeing. If this director develops properly, we could end up looking back at 2008 as the year we first saw a Trier film. That's how much potential he has. He could represent the return of auteurist cinema to Europe in the 2010s.