HERMAN
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
HERMAN is a Norwegian film directed by Erik Gustavson, written by Lars Saabye Christensen from his own novel. It stars Anders Danielson Lie, Frank Robert, Elisabeth Sand. Unrated. In Norwegian, with English subtitles.
HERMAN is that unlikeliest of films, a fresh coming-of-age story. It is about an 11-year-old Oslo schoolboy, Herman (Anders Danielson Lie), who is a rather withdrawn, runty kid, bullied at school and misunderstood at home. He lives in a vivid fantasy world that includes a Norwegian-speaking Zorro and walking into traffic whilst pretending to be blind. His only friends are his ailing grandfather and a beer-soaked neighbor who was once a gardener to the king and who has pretty vivid fantasy life himself until it turns into a first-class case of the DTs. Herman's already fragile world really unravels when his barber discovers a bald patch on the child's head, the first symptoms of alopecia areata, an incurable cosmetic disorder that will cause him to lose all his hair in time.
It is Herman's progressive reactions to his malady and his growing baldness that mark his growth and maturity. His alopecia is, on one level, merely a symbol of the agonies and changes that we all go through moving from childhood to adulthood. But like all good symbols, this one is vividly specific, as Herman moves through anger (at his fate and at his parents who are at something of a loss to know how to handle things), onto various strategies, disguises, and other forms of denial and withdrawal, and ultimately landing on his feet in a charming act of acceptance.
Herman as played by Lie believably, ingratiatingly, and often comically. His performance is likable, light-hearted, and completely natural. He manages to make the unusual point that even a child in a stable, functional, loving family can still have a childhood marked by pain and insecurity, that growing up is hellish for all of us. Herman performs the more accustomed role, too, of deflating adult pretenses and evasions, of finding the truth amidst the lies.
This is a totally charming film and I recommend it highly. It's current run in Seattle (Metro Cinemas) is its U.S. premiere. It's being distributed by RKO Pictures. If it comes to your area, do yourself the favor of going.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews