Not a tremendously well-made movie, but its pacing is often kinetic, electric.
It's 2 hours and 24 minutes long and I couldn't turn away even for a second, if that tells you something. And I loved the Norwegian cast. I can't imagine it any other way.
What a harrowing day and season and turning point for Norway and so many lives, young and old alike. 77 political camp goers massacred within a span of 60 terrifying minutes on Norway's remote Utøya Island, and more than 200 additional injuries. All told, nearly 650 lives upended there, plus their families.
Seven years later, 50% of the surviving parents and grown teens are underemployed or unemployed, as PTSD's tendrils have a nasty habit of growing wide and deep and evermore.
Through the remaining eye of surviving teen Viljar Hanssen, we get a sense in the particulate of how many in Norway felt in the aggregate, which is, in a word, determined. "Nevertheless, she persisted," one might say.
Or as our dear, albeit fictional friend, Andy Dufresne taught us, "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."
#LoveWins
