HOT DOCS 2022 | MOVIE REVIEW: "Images of a Nordic Drama" Paints a Melancholic Portrait of a Lost Artist
7/12 ForReel Score | 3/5 Stars
In 1922, at the young age of 42 years old, Norway lost - in more ways than one - a great artist. Aksel Waldemar Johannessen was a dressmaker, a father, and a painter of the proletariat. When he died, his work went on display in Oslo before being returned to his family. His children, unaware of how powerful and potentially important their father’s work truly was, kept the paintings for themselves. Johannessen’s work wasn’t rediscovered for 70 years, until it was stumbled upon in a rural barn. From then on, a war over the work and legacy of the artist waged.
Images of a Nordic Drama traces that very struggle between Haakon Mehren, an art collector who took on Johannssen’s work, and the elitists in control of Norway’s largest museums. It is a seemingly fraught endeavor, an endless parade of shrugs, jeers, and ridicule from museum curators. While Mehren’s passion for the art is contagious, “Oslo’s bourgeois” are more intent on upholding the canonization of Norwegian art than showcasing a destitute family man’s paintings from the early 20th century. It is a frustrating tale of two decades of campaigning by Mehren for an artist long forgotten. What becomes of it is essentially this film.
And while the art is beautiful and the campaign worthwhile, the documentary is far from it. With a swift 71 minute runtime, Images of a Nordic Drama doesn’t allow itself the breathing room to adequately flesh out Oslo’s art world before dropping us into the middle of a film’s central conflict. It whips from museum to museum, collector to collector, opinion to opinion before the previous segment has had a chance to fully resonate with the audience. Go to any art museum in the world and you’ll find hundreds of people soberly standing back, admiring a painting, figuring out its details and emotion. Images of a Nordic Drama offers no such opportunity; standing back and soaking in the feeling is not on the program.
The documentary doesn’t just suffer from its assumed understanding of the subject matter, but so too does the very work of Aksel Waldemar Johannessen. I left the film wishing I could go to a gallery and be with Johannessen’s paintings for a while, because the film didn’t offer enough time to simply be with the art and let me feel why it’s so special. Unfortunately, what the film makes abundantly clear is that no such gallery really exists.
At his most successful, Haakon Mehren is able to temporarily display Johannessen’s work in some of Europe and North America’s most prestigious galleries. But he is unable to find a permanent home for the work, either domestically or abroad. In a way, Images of a Nordic Drama was the perfect opportunity to solidify the legacy of Johannessen and his paintings. But by being so caught up in the drama surrounding Mehren versus the Norwegian art snobs, Aksel Waldemar Johannessen slips through the cracks of art history, yet again.
Acting/Casting - 1 | Visual Effects and Editing - 1 | Story and Message - 1 | Entertainment Value - 1 | Music Score and Soundtrack - 2 | Reviewer’s Preference - 1 | What does this mean?