Oberst (the Norwegian equivalent of Colonel) Birger Eriksen famously predicted “Either
I will be decorated, or I will be court-martialed.” Both sort of came to pass, expressly
because of his command to open fire on the Blucher, a German heavy cruiser that
was part of the first wave of the National Socialist invasion of Norway. Of
course, nobody in the Oscarsborg Fortress knew of the extent of the German operation.
It was Eriksen’s call to make and he made it, as director Daniel Fahre shows in
the historical drama Battle of Oslo (a.k.a. Blucher), which
screens again during the 2026 Palm Springs International Film Festival.
In 1946,
Eriksen is called before a formal military Investigative Commission to account
for the decision he made—mostly his surrender of the fortress. Ironically, the
commission’s star witnesses were the two junior officers who questioned Eriksen’s
decision to open fire on the Blucher.
Admittedly,
it was a tough decision. Nobody could confirm the nationality of the heavy
cruiser sailing down the fjord towards Oslo. Magnus Sodem and August Bonsak
argued against torpedoing the Blucher, fretting it could be construed as an act
of war. However, Eriksen insisted they had a duty to protect Norway’s neutrality.
Obviously,
Battle of Oslo is all about war, but Fahre and screenwriters Axel Hellstenius
and Melike Leblebicioglu Kava emphasize the burdens of command rather than the
shock-and-awe of warfighting. This is an unusually moody, but thoughtful war film.
Frankly, it unambiguously suggests there are two sorts of officers: those who
make decisions and accept responsibility, like Eriksen, who is contrasted with
those who keep their heads down and CYA, as represented by Sodem and Bonsak.
Consequently, Battle of Oslo will likely resonate with many vets, even
if they are not experts in Norwegian military history.
Bjorn
Sundquist portrays Eriksen with appropriate quiet dignity. The audience can
feel the weight of every command he must deliver. He also conveys the officers’
deep sense of responsibility to his country, men, and family. In fact, the most
notable supporting character is that of his daughter Borghild, a polio
survivor, who worked as a civilian staffer at the Fortress. Andrea Berntzen delivers
a smart, grounded performance that conveys the complexity of Eriksen’s
relationship with her military father. We clearly get the sense that there are
things only she can say to the Oberst that nobody else could—and vice versa.
Ali ought to be respected by Turkish society, because he is a literature
professor, who was educated in the United States. Unfortunately, neither literature
nor Western educations are much valued under the Islamist Erdogan regime. Yet,
instead of creating a sheltering social structures, his contemporary Turkey
fostered a cutthroat environment that seems to have it in for him. Returning
from America might have been a mistake, but he worried about his soon-to-be
late mother, Sakine. The circumstances of her passing ignites Ali’s rage in Alireza
Khatami’s multi-national co-production, The Things You Kill, Canada’s international
Oscar submission, which screens as part of the 2026 Palm Springs International Film Festival.
Ali has
been concerned about Sakine. Her living conditions have so deteriorated, she
must use an outhouse, rather than the indoor plumbing, despite her bad knee and
rickety walker. Yet, whenever he visits, his father Hamit turns up to quarrel and
belittle him. Then one night, the father informs the family of her death,
whisking away Sakine’s body before anyone else arrives.
At this
point, Ali’s resentment boils over. His university discontinued his English
translation class and his fertility specialist determined his potency was
virtually nil. Tired of smiling through humiliations, Ali hatches a plan to
punish his father, with the help of Reza, a drifter he hires, ostensibly to
work on his “garden,” which is more like a small hardscrabble tree farm located
in the desert foothills outside of town.
Khatami
co-directed the brilliant Terrestrial Verses in his native Iran, but The
Things You Kill isn’t quite as viscerally intense. Admittedly, the contemporary
Iranian experience translates regrettably easily to the increasingly Islamist
Turkey. Consequently, Khatami persuasively and bracingly indicts the misogynistic
exploitation Sakine suffered. However, Ali’s payback scheme is rather predictable,
despite the filmmaker’s surreal flourishes.
Perhaps
Things You Kill also suffers from unfortunate timing, since it arrives while
memories of Jafar Panahi’s somewhat thematically similar but vastly superior It was Just an Accident are still fresh. Ekin Koc and Ercan Kesal are both explosively
forceful as Ali and Hamit and there is a palpable sense of tragedy compounding.
