Film recommendations week 41

Where: Trondheim Kino

Sterben follows the unique members of the Lunies family, who have been estranged for a long time. Lissy feels a quiet joy as her demented husband Gerd slowly fades away in a nursing home. Their son Tom, a conductor in his early 40s, is working on a composition called Sterben while also becoming a surrogate father to his ex-girlfriend's child. Tom's sister Ellen starts an affair with the married Sebastian, who shares her fondness for alcohol. When death finally knocks on the door, the estranged family members reunite.

Sterben is an award-winning and critically acclaimed dark comedy about the chaotic roller coaster of life, quirky relationships, and how, in a way, death brings us closer together. Selected for the main competition at the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Screenplay, the film also received several accolades at this year’s German Film Awards, including Best Film.

Where: Cinemateket

In the wake of New Hollywood's golden age, after films like Easy Rider, MASH*, Mean Streets, and The Godfather (twice), and in the same year that yet another major generational shift was on the horizon with Steven Spielberg's Jaws, The Day of the Locust was released, directed by industry veteran John Schlesinger. The Englishman had made his breakthrough at home with Billy Liar (1963), Darling (1965), and Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), and he rode the wave of countercultural New Hollywood when he debuted in the U.S. with Midnight Cowboy in 1969. Rightfully, Midnight Cowboy remains Schlesinger’s greatest achievement, but The Day of the Locust also deserves attention, almost on par with Midnight Cowboy and the subsequent Marathon Man (1976).

The story in The Day of the Locust, based on Nathanael West's 1939 novel and set in the 1930s, centers on arriving in Hollywood in search of success. Tod Hackett is young and newly graduated, starting in the painting department of one of the major studios to get a foothold and with ambitions to rise through the ranks to become an art director. It’s in this environment, and especially among the neighbors at the San Bernardino Arms apartment building, that Tod (and we) meet a variety of characters who pull us into Hollywood’s shadows, where we truly see the darker side of the industry (which, incidentally, was the Norwegian title when the film was released in theaters). In short, Tod becomes acquainted with Faye Greene, with whom he becomes quite infatuated. He tries to help her realize her dream of becoming an actress, while Faye has to contend with suitors much rougher than Tod, as well as care for her alcoholic and unpredictable father, Harry. Faye likes Tod, but she makes it clear that wealth is necessary for her to consider marriage.

When Faye tries to find Harry after one of his outings, she meets the strange and shy recluse Homer Simpson(!) in one of Hollywood’s residential areas. From here, the moral boundaries gradually erode, and the world around Tod and Faye begins to quite literally collapse. It all culminates in a completely psychotic inferno in a dream factory incapable of producing anything but grotesque nightmares.

Where: Streaming

Wearing a cowboy hat and sporting a charming laugh, Joe Buck arrives in New York from Texas, convinced that he has a future as a well-paid companion for lonely women. Things don’t always go as planned, but he finds help in the handicapped petty crook Ratso Rizzo. This unlikely duo develops a friendship unlike anything either of them has experienced before. Oscar-winning and celebrated as one of the greatest American films of all time.