BRIGHT NIGHTS/ HELLER NACHTS
Germany/ Norway, 2017, 86 minutes, Colour.
Georg Friedrich, Tristan Gobel.
Directed by Thomas Arslan.
Bright Nights was entered into the competition of the 2017 Burma now they. Which is rather a surprise because it is a perfectly ordinary (well perhaps not perfectly) story of a father-son relationship.
The setting is northern Norway. If it has been your dream to travel through the mountains in the north of Norway (not the fjords) than if you see this film you will have fulfilled your dream and not had to travel at all. There is beautiful location scenery, the mountains, the lakes, the flora and the fauna. While the director obviously enjoys filming the scenery, it is something of a dramatic mystery as to why there is a long (Rather, very long) sequence where the camera is set on the dashboard, looking out clearly through the frame of the windscreen camera getting the audience to share the view of the drive upwards on a gravel road gradually moving into fault. Well, it does give the audience an opportunity to ponder on what they have been looking at in terms of the Father and the son as well as this trip into the mountains.
George Friedrich is Michael, a builder and supervisor who is informed of the death of his father, whom he hasn’t seen for five years, a hard man, who has spent his retirement in a village in Norway. The father’s daughter is unforgiving and will not go to the funeral and Michael, having been somewhat upset by his partners news that she has been given a Washington job for a year as her papers corresponded, decides to take his alienate it son with him. The sun doesn’t really want to go but is interested to see the place where his grandfather lived.
The go to the funeral, the only mourners there, along with the priest and the gravedigger.
After this, the film becomes a road film, literally. Father and son who are still tense, the son exceedingly angry with his father and his absence from his life, surly and resentful, reluctantly agrees (what else can he do?) To go driving into the scenery of northern Norway. They camp, have arguments, risk driving without sufficient petrol and have to walk into a town on a lake where they hire a room, the boy encountering a rebellious young teenager so some moments of sharing, both anger and music.
Then the father reveals to his son that they are going on a three day hike in the mountains. Needless to say the sun is not happy. However, they drove along the gravel road, into the fog and emerge in beautiful terrain, trees and bright, even red, vegetation. The father wants to confess his past philandering and abandonment to his son and the sun is completely unwilling to hear this. When the father awakes in the tent and finds his son gone, he pursues him, searching through the mountains, the boy then running away, the father tackling him – and some release of anger from the boy.
Actually, nothing particularly new except the scenery – and that may be enough for audiences to follow through familiar father-son tensions and some beginnings of resolution.
1. A film about father-son relationships? In the context of a trip to northern Norway?
2. The importance of the locations, Berlin, building site, apartments? The contrast with Norway, the mountains and forests, the roads, the lakes…? The musical score?
3. Introduction to Michael, his hard hat, sitting, surveying, contemplating, ringing his sister, the death of their father, distance from his sister, explanations, her not being able to forgive, nor go to the funeral? His relationship with Leyla? His edginess, her taking offence, telling him about her journalist post to Washington for a year, his non-reaction? His going to the funeral, taking his son?
4. Introduction to Luis, age, separated from his father, his father’s bad behaviour, relying on his mother but arguing with her, liking her boyfriend? Surliness, anger with his father? His bad behaviour? Sullen responses? Feeling a victim?
5. The plane trip, the son unwilling, the father ordering him? At the graveside, the priest, her greeting and walking away?
6. The film becoming a road film, going north, the scenery of Norway? Camping out? Antagonisms between father and son? The risk of no petrol, stopping, walking to the town, hiring a cabin, getting the petrol, Luis and his meeting Cecilia, their talk, her resentment against her parents taking her away from friends for a holiday, sharing music? The family giving them a lift back to the car with their petrol?
7. Going on, scenes of the road, scenery? The three day hike and the plan? Luis’s negative reaction?
8. The very long sequence of the gravel road and the camera filming through the windscreen? Time for the audience to contemplate the themes and relationships?,
9. Through the fog, the beauty of the top of the mountains, the flora? Camping, Luis going for the walk, his father looking for him, falling, continuing, the boy running away from his father, the father catching him? Bearing down on him making him unable to move?
10. The talk about the past, Luis unwilling to hear? His father’s confession?
11. The return home, his mother meeting him, the embrace with his father – and looking back? The future?
