22 July review: Confronts the darkest episode in recent Norwegian history

Dir: Paul Greengrass; Starring: Anders Danielsen Lie, Jonas Strand Gravli, Jon Øigarden, cert TBC, 143 mins

“You will die today. Marxists, liberals, members of the elite,” gun-toting, right-wing terrorist Anders Breivik (Anders Danielsen Lie) tells the terrified youngsters assembled on the Norwegian island of Utøya in Paul Greengrass’s new feature. It’s a chilling moment in a chilling film.

Somehow, though, Greengrass finds humanity amid the carnage. The film turns out to be as much about the battle for democratic ideals as it is about the blood that Breivik spills.

In the early scenes, the British director doesn’t skimp on the brutality. The first section of 22 July shows Breivik preparing and committing his twin attacks, first letting off a bomb outside the parliament building in Oslo and then driving to Utøya, posing as a policeman and massacring 69 people. (He killed 77 in all in the 2011 attacks, once the eight who died in the Oslo blast are factored in.)

These early scenes are riveting and gruesome, shot in that hyperrealistic documentary style that Greengrass honed on World In Action and uses so well. Then comes the aftermath, where Norwegian society tries to make sense of what has just happened. Breivik is in captivity. Badly wounded survivors are fighting for their lives.

Made for Netflix but also being given a cinema release, this is one of several recent films on the Utoya massacre, following on from Dutch director John Appel’s 2012 documentary Wrong Time, Wrong Place, and Norwegian filmmaker’s Erik Poppe’s U – July 22, which is also released in the UK this month.

One’s first instinct is to ask why Greengrass has made it; what entitles him as a British director to tell such a quintessentially Norwegian story. Nor is it immediately clear why he is shooting 22 July with Norwegian actors all speaking in English. These doubts are quickly dispelled by the craftsmanship of the filmmaking and by Greengrass’s respectful but very probing approach to the material.

The writer-director based the film on One Of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway (2015), the book about the Breivik case written by Norwegian war correspondent, Åsne Seierstad. She had reported on many foreign wars but was startled to discover that Breivik was her near neighbour and that the most troubling and violent story she had ever covered was on her own doorstep.

Throughout the film, Greengrass combines the human drama with the politics in very deft fashion. He focuses on a handful of characters caught up in the massacre: Breivik himself, one youngster, Viljar Hanssen (Jonas Strand Gravli), who miraculously survives being shot five times by the terrorist, and Breivik’s diligent defence lawyer, Geir Lippestad (Jon Øigarden), who does the best job he can for a man he clearly loathes.

The film is remarkably even-handed. Rather than simply treat Breivik as a monster, Greengrass tries hard to work out what motivated him. Breivik sees himself as in the vanguard of the revolution: he wants a complete ban on immigration and an end to multiculturalism.

Anders Danielsen Lie plays him brilliantly, capturing his arrogance, his cunning and his complete lack of empathy with any of his victims. At one stage, just after he has been arrested, we see him casually eating pizza and drinking cola as he thinks of ways he can manipulate the Norwegian political and judicial system.

His mother, who cuts a pathetic and lonely figure who doesn’t want to be linked with him, tells the authorities that Brevik grew up as “a normal boy”; that he was kind and intelligent and loved affection.

Breivik openly admits that murdering the young people on the island was his way of hitting the liberal elite. These youngsters were the children of politicians and expected to become future leaders themselves. However, mob justice isn’t allowed to apply.

The Norwegians go out of their way to give their most notorious mass murderer a fair trial. He knows just how to goad and upset them. The chance to justify his actions in open court is the third part of his attack, following on from the bombing and the shooting.

Greengrass’s decision to concentrate on a single survivor, Viljar Hanssen, initially seems trite and even melodramatic. Viljar is just one of countless other stories that the film could have foregrounded. There is a sense we are being manipulated and presented with a conventional tale of survival against the odds.

We see surgeons operating on him as he hovers near death. Even after he regains consciousness, he is horribly injured and has bullet fragments still inside his skull, close to the stem of his brain, that could kill him at any time.

Viljar has very dark moments during his rehabilitation; he is angry and traumatised but the point that Greengrass drives home about him again and again is that he is still the polar opposite of Breivik. He epitomises the values that the gunman tried to destroy. He is part of a community. Breivik, for all his talk of followers who share his values, is all on his own.

22 July never feels exploitative. It is a subtle, multi-layered and very affecting drama that confronts the darkest episode in recent Norwegian history but still manages to strike a redemptive note.

22 July will be released in select cinemas and on Netflix on 10 October