Paul Greengrass doesn’t mess around. He’s incapable of crafting anything less than a fully absorbing piece of cinema, and his unflinching new Netflix film, 22 July, takes a sobering and disturbing look at one of the deadliest mass-shootings to ever take place, focusing on the 2011 Norway attacks at the hands of a unrepentant right-wing extremist who detonated a bomb at a government building before murdering 77 people at a youth camp.
Greengrass, in adapting Åsne Seierstad’s book One of Us: The Story of a Massacre in Norway, concentrates the bulk of the narrative on the aftermath of the tragedy, and how one survivor, played with fierce intensity by Jonas Strand Gravli, refused to allow his life to be fully destroyed by the grim reality of his situation.
Greengrass does his journalistic business when the picture focuses on the trial and political maneuverings that followed the incident.
I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I fully comprehend the moralistic underpinnings of the Norwegian penal system. The stark and frequently frightening images captured by Greengrass and his cinematographer Pål Ulvik Rokseth are customarily nervy and in line with the helmer’s preferred shooting style (hand-held and urgent), while William Goldenberg’s fluid editing keeps the two hour and twenty-minute film moving at a fast pace.
The film’s last act is quietly powerful and when contemplated within the full context of the larger piece, all the more emotionally devastating, especially the final sequences. This is a purposefully forceful piece of storytelling and filmmaking, highlighting something that’s become far too commonplace in our world.
Review by Nick Clement
