Paul Greengrass has always been a filmmaker whose work I admired more than I enjoyed. He has great skills in creating an effect that puts you in the moment, utilizing the shaky-cam technique to the best effect. However, they always left me a bit cold. Despite that, his style and approach has been rather effective in his run of films based on true events, with films such as Bloody Sunday, United 93, and Captain Phillips, since his writing tends to be more thoughtful and empathetic than other films that try to create the same effect, but end up feeling exploitative (I’m looking at you, Peter Berg).
With 22 July, Greengrass puts his focus on the 2011 attacks in Norway, using the book, One of Us by Åsne Seierstad, as the basis. The first half hour covers the events of the car bomb in Oslo, and shooting at the youth camp in Utøya island carried out by Anders Behring Breivik (Anders Danielsen Lie). The rest of the lengthy two hours follows the aftermath, in following the recovery for survivor, Viljar Hanssen (Jonas Strand Gravli), as well as the investigation and trial of Breivik.
In many ways, 22 July contains the best and worst of Greengrass’ style. The opening half hour is incredibly harrowing and tense as we cut between Breivik taking each step in his plan and the unassuming people at the camp having fun, completely unaware of what is going to happen. Once the shooting happens, it’s appropriately horrific, and brutal. Call it a glorified reenactment, but it works, and using an entirely Norwegian cast, crew, and even location adds a layer of authenticity to everything.
The aftermath stuff remains engaging. Viljar’s long road to recovery is grueling, and at times, hard to watch. It captures the multitude of feelings that someone like that would go through having gone through somethings as traumatic, especially when he gets a request to appear and talk about his experience on Breivik’s trial. I was also compelled the plot thread involving Breivik’s lawyer, Geir Lippestad (Jon Øigarden), and what he had to go through in making up some kind of defense. I wished the film spent more time on him since most of his scenes are in the second act. Øigarden does a lot of stellar work with his face, and bringing some complexities to a position that others are quick to be dismissive of.
However, as effective as the film can be at times, it fails to evoke anything deeper beyond the superficial shock and rage that the events can bring. Because of Greengrass’ style, rooted in his early documentary work, the camera is always at a distance, sometimes literally, but largely figuratively. The camera rarely expresses anything for the audience to grasp on, especially for the characters. We rarely get to experience what is going on in their heads, we don’t get much of their perspective beyond what is directly shown or told. It feels like we’re observing all these characters and events, and while that can work really well like the opening and the trial, it ends up taking away a lot of impact when it comes to the intimate character building beats in between those bigger moments.
I also have a big nitpick regarding accents, which usually don’t bother me all that much, but it drove me nuts here. Despite putting all the effort in putting together a Norwegian cast and crew, Greengrass still makes the choice of having English be the language spoken. So, every cast member speaks in an accent that varies in thickness. And then there’s Breivik, who Lie plays inexplicably with an American accent that occasionally dips its toes into something resembling a Norwegian accent. It’s so distracting, and it made me with the filmmakers allowed the cast to just speak in their native language.
As per usual, I admire what Paul Greengrass with 22 July, and while I wouldn’t say that it doesn’t work, it does leave me cold. I think he may have been a bit too ambitious here in terms of how he covers the events. Perhaps if he focused on either Viljar and his recovery/eventual testimony, the relationship between Lippestad and Breivik that explores his delusions of grandeur and extreme right wing philosophy, or the politics happening behind-the-scenes with Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (Ola G. Furuseth), then maybe the film could’ve been a stronger, cohesive, and affecting piece. It’s certainly watchable, and the near two-and-a-half hour runtime doesn’t drag at all. If you don’t know much about these events, this might be a compelling view, but it left me wanting more.