Gritt

Gritt is a Norwegian woman with big ideas. She wants to make a socially critical theatre production entitled ‘The White Inflammation’, but can never put into words exactly what it’s supposed to be about. Norway and maybe the West in general, she says, are overcome by apathy. “An inability to act.” The tragedy is that no one wants to hear what she has to say.

Stylistically, this feature debut reflects Gritt’s ever more erratic course through the world. Everywhere she goes, doors slam in her face; she sees her dream of creating a play of her own going up in smoke. Initially, her agitation seems to be a kind of curiosity about the unknown, but with each new disappointment the restless camerawork becomes more oppressive.

Along the way, the burlesque undertone of Gritt becomes a painful metaphor for desperately clinging to life. Gritt expresses how she experiences life in terms of difficulty making contact with what we perceive as reality. But it could all have been so different, the film subtly suggests. She could have been Lars, the successful artistic director of The Theater of Cruelty, a theatre company she asks to produce her play. But she isn’t Lars. Somewhere along the road, she missed a turning.