SHAKE, RATTLE AND ROLL
Main Cast: Kristoffer Joner, Ane Dahl Torp
Director: John Andreas Andersen
I had a lovely dinner this evening with Dom Bellina, the gentleman with the connections to the Brazilian Afro-Caribbean community whom I have been assured can put me in touch with castable zombies for my new production Shuffle Along: The Walking Dead Musical. He has told me that I won’t have much luck here in the city finding the types I need. Apparently, the zombies of Rio have all taken jobs as Uber and Lyft drivers. He has suggested that I need to head into the interior where the opportunities for ambitious zombies are fewer and they might be more amenable to signing up for ensemble parts in an open-ended Broadway run. Fajer and Hellmann, my attorneys, have suggested that I keep the contracts to six months rather than the usual one year as continued decay might lead to parts falling off and what good is a member of the tap chorus if they’re missing a lower limb all of a sudden.
I have therefore booked a flight for Iguazu in the morning. It’s right where Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay all come together so there might be a chance of getting some international cooperation going. We’re going to start with an open call this weekend and see who turns up. I’ve asked a local firm to find an adequate well-ventilated space in which we can see dozens of candidates and quickly put them through a tap and jazz combo and have them sing sixteen bars in two contrasting styles. My usual artistic team weren’t able to make this journey with me so I’m also on the lookout for a rehearsal pianist and several assistant choreographers to help move things along. I have been assured everything will be in readiness when I arrive. I can but hope. In the meantime, I’m going to have a videographer shoot some promotional video of me doing a tap routine inside the gondolas ascending the Sugar Loaf which can be used for the inevitable ‘Making of…’ television special.
While waiting for late afternoon magic hour for lighting purposes, I had a few hours to kill and so I decided to put my feet up in my hotel suite and enjoy a film. I was flicking through various streaming services when I ran across an ad for a film The Quake (Skjelvet) with a vaguely familiar looking actor on the poster. A little research showed that this was a sequel to the Norwegian film The Wave (Bolgen) which I had stumbled across and rather enjoyed a few years back. As disaster films rarely have sequels (and those that do end up with dreck like Beyond the Poseidon Adventure), I was intrigued and called room service to send up a bottle of malbec while I settled in for a little death and destruction.
The Wave (2015) was a surprise hit for the Norwegian film industry doing exceedingly well in Europe but getting little play in the U.S. It was the story of a geologist who figures out that a piece of the mountain is going to come down into Geiranger fjord unleashing a tsunami that will wipe out the local town. He and his family are caught up in the titular wave, but his actions save many from disaster. The Quake (2018) takes place three years later. Our main cast of the Eikjord family are all back, a little older, a little wiser, and with a whole lot more PTSD.
Geologist dad Kristian (Kristoffer Joner) has become a bit of a basket case, separated from his wife and family, showing signs of trauma-related neurologic change and unable to come to terms with his experiences. Wife Idun (Ane Dahl Torp) has taken the kids, son Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro) and daughter Julia (Edith Haagenrude-Sande), off with her to Oslo where she’s working at the downtown Radisson and living in a dump of an apartment building. When an old colleague is killed in a rock collapse in the Oslofjord highway tunnel, Kristian is jolted out of his wallowing self-pity and teams up with the dead man’s daughter Marit (Kathrine Thorborg Johansen) to piece together what happened. He discovers that the geological conditions under Oslo are due to produce a massive earthquake and desperately sets out to warn an unbelieving establishment and rescue his family, most of which is in the rooftop bar of the steel and glass Radisson hotel due to various plot contrivances. Of course, the quake strikes, and everyone is trapped and injured in various ways. Who will survive?
If The Quake had been an American film such as San Andreas, the canvas of catastrophic earthquake on a major city would have been much broader with thousands of CGI buildings collapsing while tens of thousands of little CGI human figures were flung out of windows or crushed by masonry or swallowed by the earth. But it’s not and with a more limited budget, the action sequences are pulled in and given a much more human scale and it’s easier for the viewer to see themselves in a similar situation. Less distancing is possible as the stunts feel very real and not fantastical. Our main characters are all normal humans. They don’t have superhuman abilities or strength. They’re not movie star glamorous. They are all somewhat flawed human beings. We root for them even though we may not like them too much. And that gives an unexpected and tragic death more emotional impact than we usually get in this sort of film.
The special effects are quite good. It’s hard to tell where the practical effects of shattering glass and collapsing concrete meet up with the CGI effects which take it from the enclosed to the enlarged. The sequences surrounding the collapse of the Radisson hotel in various stages in particular are well done. Although, I was quite taken with an earlier sequence when the Oslo opera house is damaged in a preshock event. The cutting back and forth between the breaking apart of the concrete and glass of the lobby and atrium with the collapsing of set pieces from the flies on the stage is particularly affecting.
All of our main cast are very good in their roles. They give the impression of real people being caught documentary style rather than actors performing for benefit of the camera. Kristoffer Joner in particular is very good as the tortured Kristian. Young Edith Haagenrude-Sande as daughter Julia is also very good with her wide eyes and porcelain skin and haunted quality of someone forced to grow up too fast and in painful ways.
One need not have seen the earlier film to enjoy The Quake, although visiting it first might give this one a bit more depth. I recommend it highly if you are a fan of disaster films. If you’re not, you still might enjoy the family drama at the center.
Caged rats. Wild rats. Multiple news clippings. Gratuitous university lectures. Ballet dancing. Elevator malfunctions. Failed concrete pillars. Lost scarf. Sideways barstool climbing. Norwegian breakfast foods.
Originally from Seattle Washington, land of mist, coffee and flying salmon, Mrs. Norman Maine sprang to life, full grown like Athena, from Andy’s head during a difficult period of life shortly after his relocation to Alabama.
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