Norway's biggest national war hero Gunnar Sønsteby was a publicly well known person. He spent much of his life after the war being public and talking about the war and the resistance until the very end. There were many who got to know the man who during the war had many identities, and several double lives, where he a a young economics apprentice saw the occupation happen in 1940.
Nr.24 has become a different film than many expected, and those who have stated that Norwegian war films are only one-sided hero worship have with "Quisling: The Fainal Days" and now "Nr. 24" gotten films that can no longer be put in that category of hero war films.
One could suspect in advance that the director John Andreas Andersen, after successes with disaster films ("The wquake", The North sea"), was not teh man for this, but he was! The former cinematographer has a photographic CV in Norwegian film that shows that he has been involved in most genres, and also has one of Norwegian film's biggest foreign successes, Headhunters, in his CV belt.
Filmed on locations in Rjukan the historical locations have been found, while Kaunas and Vilnius give the illusion of the war-Oslo that no longer exists.
No. 24 is more a film about Gunnar "Kjakan" Sønsteby as a person than about the war, it's close and important history, At the same time the film is also more than war history, but more a warning about what war is and what things we have to fight for than a pure storytelling. It is done in such a way that it is - unfortunately - eternally relevant.
Therefore, the older Kjakan, brilliantly played by Erik Hivju, also begins by telling the youth who met at Vemork. Even then we understand this is going to different. Hivju (father of Kristofer) has studied Kjakan, and both he and the film team have been helped by Gunnar's long-time assistant Petter Ringen Johansen. Here, people have gone all the way behind closed doors.
When it is emphasized so early in the film, we realize that the older Gunnar is just as much the lead role as the younger one. Perhaps even the importance of the film's message is carried significantly more than through the younger Kjakan, where Sjur Vatne Brean is possibly as good a choice as Hivju in the role of the older one. But Brean does av wonderful job as well.
The film alternates seamlessly between the war and the recent past where the then probably around 90-year-old Sønsteby still spent time talking about why we must fight for freedom and democracy.
Dramaturgical measures have been taken. Film is never "completely true" Not No. 24 either. Kjakan did not live where it was filmed, Kjakan's mother was not the one who cried uncontrollably, and Solheim was not at home when they arrived from Oslo. Karl Martinsen and the driver were not shot in Villaveien in Rjukan. But the narrative tricks work.
So does the tiny comic reliefs, where the biggest one is none other than Terje Strømdahl as an elderly drunk man who scolds the guard boys in the Oslo gang for hanging and doing nothing to throw the Nazis out of the country. No one could do that scene better and it feels real and totally believable.
The opening scene with the 19-year-old Gunnar skiing up the top on Mount Gausta in 1937, the year he graduated from upper secondary school in Rjukan, with his friend through childhood and youth Erling Solheim, we do not at first understand how important it is.
It is a very effective narrative move, which not only shows Gunnar as an outdoor enthusiast and brings Gaustatoppen to the pleasure of travel, but it also puts Gunnar's political awareness into perspective. When, three years later, as an apprentice accountant in Oslo, he experiences the outbreak of war, it is so strong that he is unable to concentrate on his job. The story that follows is familiar.
Gunnar is slowly but surely becoming a spider in the resistance movement, in the "Oslo Gang" with the code name Nr. 24, where he does not sleep two nights in the same place, and gets up at half past four in the morning because he knows that the Germans tend to show up between four and six when they make their arrests. With his inescapable demeanor, the man on the bicycle becomes someone who constantly avoids the iron claws of the Germans, even though they know who they are after.
The film clocks in at 111 minutes, and is thus shorter than most films these days. At the same time, the film is just the right length. The film manages exactly what it sets out to do. Because the film makes moves that are emotional that press on the tear ducts, between the beats where tension drives the film forward. That the climax takes place at Vemork is, however, very unexpected, but an all the better move.
The film has a young cast, which largely consists of young up-and-coming Norwegian actors, such as Nicolai Cleve Broch's 18-year-old son Jørgen makes his Norwegian feature film debut as Knut Haugland. It almost feels like a sequel could be in the works.
The music works, also the songs that have been brought in, the effects are there, but the trailer should get a new version before it is launched abroad.
In a review like this, I can't write too much about the turning point without giving away too much of the plot, but the fact that it's a very successful move, which also gives this film much more than passive storytelling, is also the reason why this works so well . It is also the reason why a fairly well-known story after various books manages to surprise. Screenwriter Erlend Loe has - not unexpectedly - found the essence in good script work.
At the same time, it is completely in line with the war hero's own message, seen in the light of the increasingly tense situation we are experiencing around Europe today. Is it relevant? Certainly it is relevant. It is as the pensive older Gunnar says early in the film while we see the younger "we thought we were living in the post-war period, but it would soon turn out that we were living in the in-between-war period".
For some, Gunnar Sønsteby was a controversial figure, and some have questioned whether he was really a hero. And now all new films about the war are met with objections and objections that "we have enough about the war now". This film is proof that we haven't.
That the film both opens with Gunnar's five drawers in his head, and that in the film he also appears as someone who does not always tell the truth. But then he couldn't during the war. His daughters have also stated after the premiere that the film is fantastic and completely in line with how Gunnar was.
I thinks it is a really good and well-made film and a good portrait of a man whom many knew.
The man who has both become an honorary citizen of Tinn and Oslo has finally got his film, and it is a film that should stand as a monument in Norwegian film history itself in a film year where quality films are lined up. This rages among the best war movies ever. Gunnar would have been proud!
