Anyway, nothing in Elling is anywhere near as harrowing and wrenching as Bill Pullman's performance in Igby Goes Down. This Norwegian film, nominated for the 2001 best foreign language Oscar, is a sweet, light-hearted story of two men moving from a mental institution to the outside world (though neither seems to be mentally ill so much as disconnected from the world and very, very shy). Despite its potentially heavy subject, it's even a bit fluffy. The tone is breezy and light, and everyone's happy at the end. And yet, I still enjoyed it.
Elling is a mousy little man who's lived his whole life with his mother in a newspaper-strewn apartment. When his mother dies, he literally has to be dragged from his home by policemen and is sent to an institution where he rooms with and befriends Kjell Bjarne, a good-natured hulk obsessed with food and sex (otherwise, with no apparent mental disability, which kind of makes you wonder about the Norwegian government's criteria for institutionalizing people and the Norwegian society in general – what, thinking about food and sex all the time is bad?). Thanks to Norway's generous welfare state, the men eventually are assigned to an apartment in Oslo, where they have to learn to function on their own and re-enter society, with the less-than-compassionate help of a brusque social worker, Frank.
The film is funny and understated, with some nice subtle touches – for instance, both men are initially afraid to answer the phone or the doorbell; when either rings, the camera rocks gently from side to side to illustrate their discomfort. Though it plays their idiosyncrasies for laughs, the movie never condescends to or mocks Elling and Kjell Bjarne; it's empathetic and affectionate, creating real characters with the help of good performances from Per Christian Ellefsen and Sven Nordin, respectively.
A geopolitical subtext occurs to you as you think about the movie – or, at least, it occurred to me when I was high on my hallucinogenic sleeping pills. From an American point of view, the GOP should adore this movie. As Baby Bush suggests in his customarily complex, insightful plan for world peace, all these shut-ins really need is for someone to say to them, "I love you." What the mentally ill really need isn't medication or treatment, they just need to get out there into the world and, for gods sake, learn to deal already. Although it's benefited them tremendously, the men rail against the "nanny" state, akin to many Republicans who, after having lived in military (i.e., federally subsidized) housing, gone through college on the GI Bill or on federally subsidized loans, and bought a house with federally subsidized mortgages (not to mention the perks they get as Members of Congress), now want to eliminate these programs on the grounds that it's not the government's role to look after its people (I may be paraphrasing; actually, I don't quite get what their argument is). And the government bureaucracy pairs these men with an overloaded social worker who appears not to give them much attention (though ultimately his "tough love" pays off) – gosh, just like a welfare-state bureaucrat who doesn't have to compete in a free market! Is this any way for a democracy to operate?
From a more global perspective, you can see (or sleeping pills can make you see) Kjell Bjarne as the US: hulking, physically intimidating, but clumsy and graceless, rushing to save people even when his help isn't asked for. By contrast, Elling is more like the European Union: reserved, shy around his larger, more boisterous and meddlesome companion, helping out mainly when asked. (Perhaps Frank is the United Nations: well intentioned but only intermittently effective.) Elling and Kjell Bjarne learn to co-exist by each adapting a bit, Elling standing up to Kjell Bjarne and Kjell Bjarne focusing less on his own needs, as the US and EU have done (or did, until a certain illegitimate election foisted upon us a president who believes the US doth bestride the narrow world like a colossus). Another hint is Elling's obsession, second only to his love for his mother, with Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former Prime Minister of Norway but better known globally for her leadership of international humanitarian organizations, like the World Commission on Environment and Development and the World Health Organization (Kjell Bjarne snaps at Elling to stop reading Brundtland's book over and over, perhaps symbolizing the US's impatience with and disregard for global cooperative institutions).
Okay, I'm
starting to feel a little bit like Lyndon LaRouche ten or
fifteen years ago, when he would buy those late-night blocks of network
time, and he would start his spiel and be at least comprehensible, if
not
exactly making sense, but halfway through there would come a point when
you could almost see the medication stop working (or maybe kick in, for
all I know), and suddenly he'd be talking about colonies on Mars, black
helicopters, the Queen of England running a worldwide drug ring,
etc.
Keep in mind I did write this under the influence, so to speak, but it
seemed to hold up okay (or at least entertainingly) in the light of
day.
Occasionally I try to live up to the example a friend of mine set many
years ago when he wrote a very clever, cogent, and funny review
interpreting
Mr.
Baseball as a socio-economic fable about US-Japan relations.
I never do succeed.
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