Mark Reviews Movies: 22 JULY

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 10, 2018

The first 30 minutes of 22 July re-create the setup and execution of Anders Behring Breivik's two-pronged terrorist attack in Norway in 2011, in which he detonated a bomb outside the building housing the Prime Minister's office, killing 8 people, before traveling to a summer camp on an island and killing 69 more. Over 300 people were injured in the two attacks, as well. We don't want to see this, but writer/director Paul Greengrass shows it to us anyway. The question, then, is whether or not we need to see it.

There are arguments for both sides of that issue. The argument against it probably begins with another question: Is Greengrass' approach exploitative?

There's no use trying to deny that watching the opening act of this story is severely discomforting and upsetting, as well it should be. This makes it extremely difficult to judge the sequence from any sort of objective standpoint. Do we feel uncomfortable because of the way that Greengrass presents it, or is that feeling simply the result of watching so many defenseless people, most of them teenagers, gunned down by a man who has decided that they do not deserve to live? Can we even separate those two ideas, given the horror of the reality of the attack and the realism with which the filmmaker presents it?

Meanwhile, the argument for needing to see it, ironically, comes from the film's version of Breivik, played with terrifying authenticity by Anders Danielsen Lie. After his trial is complete, Breivik is renounced and rejected by his attorney, with a vow that his own children and their children will fight against the far-right ideology that inspired the bombing and the massacre.

"You can't even see us," Breivik responds. The lawyer may not say it, but by that point, after witnessing what he did and seeing how callous he is in the aftermath of his actions, we most likely have a rejoinder: We're looking right at you.

This raises an even more difficult dilemma—one that has become more prevalent in the years following Breivik's attacks. As far-right movements and organizations become more vocal and mainstream, do we face them directly or simply ignore them? It's becoming harder to argue for the second option, as right-wing populists—espousing nationalist and exclusionist rhetoric or trying to cover up those sentiments with hardline stances against immigration and multiculturalism—are gaining power and influence around the world.

Breivik was a warning that we mostly ignored at the time—an immediate antecessor of those extreme right-wing groups and figures who have become part of the international political debate. His actions, in a way, are the inevitable, logical end of such beliefs. Maybe it is necessary to see him, his beliefs, and his actions now, if only as a warning for what might and, sadly, probably will come again.

After the dramatization of the attacks, Greengrass' screenplay (based on Åsne Seierstad's book One of Us) shifts between three stories of the aftermath. The first, of course, is Breivik, as he prepares for trial with his attorney Geir Lippestad (Jon Øigarden), whom the defendant selects based on the attorney's previous defense of a neo-Nazi group. The lawyer is seen as a man simply doing his job, believing that any person, regardless of his own personal feelings toward that individual, is due a fair and proper defense in court. It's the sort of fundamental right that Breivik and his ilk would so readily abandon if given power, so to fight that way of thinking, the system of law must proceed.

The initial defense is insanity. Breivik argues that he knew what he was doing—and would do it again, given the chance. He wants to change his plea, so that he has the opportunity to vocalize his beliefs in court for the entire country to hear. The film and Danielsen Lie do not see Breivik as an inhuman monster. He is very real here, calmly speaking and grinning his way through interrogations and the lengthy courtroom testimony. To see him any other way than human would be to deny what he did and what caused it.

The second story follows Viljar (Jonas Strand Gravli), who survived the assault on the camp with five gunshot wounds—including a bullet that exploded in his skull, leaving fragments near his brainstem. His mother (played by Maria Bock) is a Labour Party politician, running for mayor in their town about 1,000 miles from Oslo, so the teenager and his family are exactly the people Breivik wants to destroy. Viljar's story serves as a stark counterpoint to Breivik's thinking. The teenager hates the man who ruined his life, killed his friends, and still smiles in the courtroom, but even while going through a difficult physical recovery and experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder after the attacks, Viljar is determined to have his day in court—to face the murderer, tell his own story, and put the truth of Breivik's future before him.

The third and least detailed story follows Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (Ola G. Furuseth), as he attempts to comfort the nation and determine what the government may have done wrong. The most that could be said of this storyline is that it is present, and the best is that it breaks up the unnerving portrayal of Breivik and the oftentimes despairing arc of Viljar's story.

In the end, we return to that question of the necessity 22 July. Wherever one may fall on that issue, the film, nonetheless, exists, and we have to confront what it shows us about the far right, its members' ideology, and the ease with which those beliefs can be transferred to violence. The film seems quite necessary now.

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