The Worst Person in the World is the third and latest instalment in Joachim Trier’s “Oslo Trilogy”. Nominated for Best International Film at the Oscars and BAFTAs, the film gathered its critical acclaim because as we widely know by now, award shows are always right. Always. Worst Person tells the story of an impulsive woman searching for love, whilst burdened with familial expectations of how her life should look in her late 20s.
It brutally and creatively grapples with the idea of turning 30; what time and love mean, independent of and in relation to one another
Trier structures the picture with a prologue, epilogue, and 12 chapters. Although each chapter functions as its own short film, the choice to explicitly state the start of these chapters aided the film’s pacing tremendously. During the viewing, the prologue seemed to be the start of a hellhole – a cheap Edgar Wright with little to no taste in music. But midway through the film, not only does Trier display great management of a vast tonal range but he justifies the erratic, seemingly clunky prologue as a microcosm of the twelve chapters to come. Trier seamlessly transitions into different styles and gives viewers new worlds to digest. You barely know it before the film becomes a surrealist adventure, thematically aligning itself with the impulsivity of the protagonist we are shown the perspective of.
The performances across the board are stellar, backed by a beautiful screenplay. Trier almost immediately declares an interest in psychoanalysis in Worst Person, which, although evident across the narrative, makes the less explicitly psychological leanings the film takes much richer and all-the-more magical. The explicitly psychoanalytic aspects of the film, however, come across as more comical than I feel they may have been intended. But nonetheless, these are welcome moments of humour. The film sees its strengths in its more implicit or conceptual and genre-bending elements, at least when understanding it as a psychological study. The screenplay is largely masterful, knowing exactly how to pinch viewers with such simple naturalistic conversations. Trier uses viewers’ hearts like punching bags.
The film’s flaws are few and far between. My only complaints are that the song choices in certain scenes are too plain and boringly on-the-nose, and that there are certain events towards the final chapter which feel underdeveloped and too tightly packed. After watching and thoroughly enjoying the two hours Joachim Trier has put together, it disappoints me that he may have lacked the self-belief to extend the runtime and test our patience if he were to flesh out the remainder of the narrative.
All in all, I must say I can’t recommend The Worst Person in the World enough. It brutally and creatively grapples with the idea of turning 30; what time and love mean, independent of and in relation to one another; and what constructs and influence the psychological cycles we repeat day in and day out. A remarkably collated, edited, stylised, and conceptualised masterpiece. This film will be shown in future psychology classes plentifully, and continually referenced for years to come.