The Bothersome Man Den brysomme mannen |
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Directed by | Jens Lien |
Produced by | Jørgen Storm Rosenberg |
Written by | Per H. V. Schreiner |
Starring |
Trond Fausa Aurvåg Petronella Barker Per Schaaning Birgitte Larsen Johannes Joner |
Music by | Ginge Anvik |
Edited by | Vidar Flataukan |
Distributed by | Sandrew Metronome Norge A/S |
Release date
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Running time
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95 minutes |
Country | Norway |
Language | Norwegian |
Budget | NOK 14,000,000 (estimated) |
The Bothersome Man (Norwegian: Den brysomme mannen) is a Norwegian film from 2006. It was directed by Jens Lien after a script by Per H. V. Schreiner. In the main roles were Trond Fausa Aurvåg, Petronella Barker and Per Schaaning. The story is about a man suddenly finding himself in an outwardly perfect, yet essentially soulless dystopia, and his attempt to escape. The film was well received by critics, and was awarded three Amanda Awards in 2006.
As the movie begins, Andreas Ramsfjell (Trond Fausa Aurvåg) is underground in a train station watching a couple kiss; however, the kiss lacks any sign of aesthetics - on the contrary, it looks hideous and abominable. Andreas seems to be increasingly unsettled until eventually he steps forward and jumps off the track in front of a subway train and the scene abruptly ends. In the following scene, he is on a bus which lets him off at a deserted gas station in the middle of nowhere. An older man greets Andreas with a welcome sign and escorts him into a car. From here he makes his way into an ideal city, where he soon finds himself with a corporate job, a furnished apartment and a beautiful girlfriend (Petronella Barker). The seemingly perfect life soon proves to be vacuous. Andreas seems to be the only person in the city capable of experiencing sensation and emotion. The only respite from the emptiness is a meaningless materialism. As the slightly uncomfortable turns into the absurd, Andreas tries to escape, but finds there is no way out of the city. The beginning scene is revealed again in the midst of his misery after he gets his heart broken and he steps out onto the train tracks, only to find that not even suicide is a way out of the perfect city. Eventually he meets Hugo (Per Schaaning), a cleaner who has found a crack in the walls of his basement from which lovely music streams out. The two dig frantically, in secret, through the wall and discover it leads into a house, presumably back in the real world. Andreas manages to get his arm into the house and grabs a handful of cake from the table, but both of them are caught and dragged out of the basement. Andreas gets thrown out of the city on the same bus that brought him there. The film ends with a violent ride into a frozen wasteland where the bus leaves Andreas, alone in a snowstorm.