So I attempted to remedy this via exercise. The film: Trollhunter.
The clip:
The text:
When we’re first introduced to our hero – the character Hans and the troll hunter of the film’s title – he is unloading hunting supplies from the back of his SUV. As played by Otto Jespersen, he appears world-weary, serious. He brushes off the three film students’ attempt to interview him and, blandly picking up a hand-axe that seems vaguely medieval, closes the door to his dilapidated trailer. It isn’t until the students follow him to a remote forest – in the middle of a hunt, no less – that Hans opens up to them.
By all accounts, the 2010 Norwegian film Troll Hunter should not work. Centering on the trio and their attempted documentary on bear hunting, they end up on the trail of a mysterious poacher (Hans), only to discover it’s not bears he’s hunting. Shot in the vérité style of found footage from the students’ hard drives, the production stinks of the low budget trappings of The Blair Witch Project. What’s more, it is more interested in the crags and rocks of Norway’s fjords and mountains than the shocks and horrors of its mythical, titular beast. Even when the trolls are on the screen, the action tends to the procedural rather than the dark fantasy one would associate with killing them.
But thinking about it this way is to miss the point. First off, with its emphasis on the character at its center and its focus on the ins-and-outs of day-to-day troll extermination, the film is more akin to another example of the mockumentary/found-footage genre: Man Bites Dog. And like that film, it is a remarkable character study and dark comedy, with bureaucracy and the murky world of beast population control replacing the ennui and debilitating hubris of the 1992 Belgian cult classic.
This is in no small part thanks to Jespersen. With his gut puffed out and scraggly, unkempt beard framing his graven face, he carries himself through the film with a plodding deliberateness. His trailer is draped with pelts of trolls, and he keeps a UV light because he “can’t sleep in the dark.” Behind vacant, cobalt eyes, he evinces a moral and mental anguish. He is a man defeated, who is attempting to retain some shred of his humanity. If there is one thing that holds the general absurdity of this film together – and make no mistake, grand swaths of this film can seem the stuff of pulp juvenilia – it is the gravity of the naturalistic performance he puts forth.
As for the rest of the film, several trolls appear, animals and people die. Which is to say this film could have collapsed into far-fetched inanity. But the direction of André Øvredal never allows it, instead managing a tone that is at times naturalistic, at times frenetic, at times deadpan comedic, but never out of step with the action happening on screen.
Is Troll Hunter a better film than either of those mentioned? I’ve always felt the initial shock and immediacy of the Blair Witch presentation saved it being completely superficial. Troll Hunter has at its core something much more genuine and far-reaching. However, it doesn’t hit the levels of subversion of Man Bites Dog, although it does make a stab at it. But even if not as successful, it’s strong performance and assured direction make Troll Hunter a delight to watch and a worthy consideration for cult movie aficionados.
The verdict: This would need an extra set of eyes and an editor. If this weren't something of an experiment, I'd have included more examples from the other two respective films, maybe some more specific discussion of especially why Man Bites Dog is both so subversive, and, at least in my sophomoric recalling of it, effective. But I also don't own either film. So forgive me for not expanding.
