To an extent every biopic is a work of imaginative fiction. What the director and writer choose to include and exclude, the primary focus on the subject, the details that are exaggerated or in part fabricated to elicit a narrative that informs the audience. Although documentaries also have foci to illustrate a thesis they are more reliable sources of information about a person. The biopic, especially when the subject is an artist or creative, hopes to capture some of the essence of the artist through expressive means. Sometimes this works by using their creative output as the bedrock for the piece, a task which is made easier if the subject’s art/music/performance was informed by their life experiences. There is no tried-and-true formula to getting a biopic right but there is certainly a palpable reaction to when one doesn’t work. In the case of Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken’s freeform art-piece Munch a very loose biography of Norway’s most famous painter, throwing away the rule book makes for an intriguing concept that doesn’t quite work in its execution.
Four writers, Fredrik Høyer, Mattis Herman Nyquist, Gine Cornelia Pedersen, and Eivind Sæther take on Edvard Munch at four stages of his life. Four actors play him. At the age of twenty-one and staying in Vestfold we find Edvard (Alfred Ekker Strande) living with his aunt and father and falling in love with his on and off again paramour Milly Thaulow (Thea Lambrechts Vaulen). This section is shot in the most conventional manner and conforms to the more traditional elements of a biographical drama. As with much of the film details of Munch’s life and philosophy are sprinkled through the dialogue. There is a dreamy aspect to the time in Vestfold which is tinged with darkness as Edvard’s love turns sour and he begins his lifetime relationship with the bottle and disordered eating.
Deliberately eschewing a traditional timeline, the audience goes back and forth through Munch’s life. At the age of eighty and played by Anne Krigsvoll he is nearing the end of his life in occupied Norway in 1944. At the age of forty-five and played by Ola G. Furuseth Munch has a nervous breakdown and is hospitalised in the liberal Jacobson clinic (these sections are filmed in black and white). The most striking period of his life in film is in Berlin (1892 in historical reality, but contemporary in the film) where he finds his major exhibition shut down and deals with self-doubt that is not aided by his contemporaries including August Strindberg (gender swapped and played by Lisa Carlehed), Munch’s model and lover, Dagny Juel (Ida Elise Broch), and sculptor Gustav Vigeland (Nader Khademi) who pontificate on art and cultural purpose but end up at an EDM rave in a Berlin warehouse.
The question the audience might be asking is why is Dahlsbakken choosing to depict Munch in these scenarios and what do they say about the artist? It is a pertinent question and one the film struggles to answer. It makes sense to show the artist’s time in the hospital and his interactions with the kindly Dr Daniel Jacobson (Jesper Christensen) who is fascinated by the intersection of genius and madness. Munch explains the loss of his sister and mother and scars that have branded him. His father’s “anxiety” that he feels is in his blood, and the fact he was “born dying” which has caused him to have lung issues throughout his life. Jacobson compares Munch to Michelangelo in his compulsion to create (indeed the artist left over 30,000 works of art, the most famous of which is ‘The Scream’) and the interplay between doctor and patient sometimes is elucidating about who Munch was. Yet each section in the film is in deliberate discordance with the others and often the audience is still left guessing the enigmas of the artist despite being given a barrage of visual clues to his identity.
Todd Haynes in his work on Bob Dylan I’m Not There employed similar techniques including the four actors playing the musician at different stages in his life (including Cate Blanchett playing a gender swapped version) and it is clear that Dahlsbakken has taken notes from Haynes. Unfortunately, Dahlsbakken isn’t as an accomplished a director as Haynes and where I’m Not There worked to maintain the myth of Dylan as perhaps an artist who can never be simply categorised, Munch and Dahlsbakken’s direction cannot sustain the same techniques and manage to give the audience a feeling for who Munch was.
Another major flaw in Munch is the fractured narrative actually relies on the audience knowing who some of the people are in Munch’s life but never quite explains them. We have moments with Munch mistreating his lover and model Tulla Larsen (Gine Cornelia Pedersen), but we aren’t given enough information about her to make those scenes have gravitas. Unless the audience knows of Munch’s relationship with the great and also “maladjusted” Swedish playwright August Strindberg do the scenes in Berlin work? Munch says to Jacobson “I once told Strindberg I hated everyone and everything except myself, and he said I was lucky because he also hates himself.” There is some character insight but not enough to establish how important that relationship was to Munch.
Dahlsbakken does manage to provide some fascinating visuals, especially in a scene where Munch is riding through Berlin in the breaking dawn and the sky becomes a canvas that reflects his paintings. When the black and white section in the hospital moves into a dreamscape where Munch tries to decide if he is living or dead there is a haunting beauty.
The script at different times seems to exist so Munch can deliver lines such as “I am so sensitive I can paint beautiful things,” and “When I paint, I feel whole,” or “Art grows out of joy and sorrow, mostly sorrow.” Despite trying to avoid cliches the script falls into them. The juxtaposition of withholding essential information about the artist and expecting the audience to understand the symbolic language is jarring and eventually quite empty. However, Dahlsbakken has taken a risk with Munch and that is admirable in itself; the fact that the risk doesn’t pay off is disappointing but an interesting failure can often by more rewarding than a mediocre success.
Director: Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken
Cast: Alfred Ekker Strande, Mattis Herman Nyquist, Ola G. Furuseth
Writers: Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken, Eivind Sæther, Fredrik Høyer, Mattis Herman Nyquist, Gine Cornelia Pedersen
