How “The Worst Person in the World” Nails Gen-X Ennui

Everything vanishes. It has already vanished.

At the end of Joachim Trier’s incredible film The Worst Person in the World, the character Aksel, played by Anders Danielsen Lie, reflects back on his life. Aksel, even though he is only in his 40s, is dying, of cancer. He tells his Julie, his much-younger ex-girlfriend, about how much of his life, all the things he cared about, has already faded — how pointless so much of it was.

I’d given up long before I got sick. Really. I just watch my favorite old movies over and over. Lynch, “The Godfather Part II”… How many times can you watch “Dog Day Afternoon”? Sometimes I listen to music I haven’t heard before. But it’s old as well. Music I didn’t know about, but from when I grew up. It felt as though I’d already given up. I grew up in an age without Internet and mobile phones. I sound like an old fart. But I think about it a lot.

The world that I knew has disappeared. For me it was all about going to stores. Record stores. I’d take the tram to Voices in Grünerløkka. Leaf through used comics at Pretty Price. I can close my eyes and see the aisles at Video Nova in Majorstua. I grew up in a time when culture was passed along through objects. They were interesting, because we could live among them. We could pick them up. Hold them in…