San Sebastian Film Festival 2022 | A Human Position

A Human Position by Anders Emblem is a slow narrative that looks at apathy as a sickness. Asta (played by Amalie Ibsen Jensen) is depressed. It’s clear from the start of the movie, the way she eats, the sad sweater (I love a good “sad sweater” in cinema as an aesthetic thing) she wears, but especially in her eyes. She’s in pain and going through the motions, even as she has very cute themed date nights with Live (played by Maria Agwumaro) in their apartment. The first themed date night while super visual is one that you could be forgiven for missing, but the second one gets a lot of focus. It isn’t until Live turns Asta onto a story of an asylum seeker (an unseen Aslan) who got deported after the factory he worked at got into trouble, that she starts to come alive again.

Early in the film, the couple talks about another story Asta worked on, about a building and a protest. Asta expressed the typical feeling of impotence people have. She didn’t believe that protesting was going to do anything, because there was money to be made. Giving up before you even try is typical of depression, but it’s also common for people considering activism. Because the hills seem insurmountable. However, perhaps what this film is getting out, although it doesn’t voice it, is that although the battles look unwinnable, it doesn’t mean they aren’t worth attempting.

Even though the film had a short running time for a feature by current standards (the end credits already started to roll just after an hour and 15 minutes), there were still scenes that seemed unnecessary. The one that stood out came about 2/3rds of the way through the film. Asta spends a scene speaking with a receptionist who is on the phone with the person Asta wants to see. The receptionist relays information from the person to Asta for a while and then tells Asta the person can see her in 20 minutes, to which Asta agrees. In the next scene, Asta sees this man, and all he does is say he won’t be any help and gives her someone else’s card to call. Why was this a scene? Why couldn’t the receptionist give her the card? While the scene did continue to help illustrate the red tape, the frustrating bureaucracy people face when seeking refuge, and how people are often quick to shift things to other people’s departments/responsibilities. The scene also felt like filler. It felt like one of those scenes low budget films sometimes have to shoehorn in someone who helped fund the film in a small acting role. I would’ve much preferred to have this screen time spent with Astra looking over the sights in Alsan’s life or in her own life with Live.

The composition of much of the film, particularly within the apartment, felt like it would’ve been at home on a Pinterest or Instagram page with a focus on design. Even the cat seemed perfectly placed at all times. It was also interesting that music was kept diegetic within the film, letting other sounds form the soundtrack.

A Human Position (Norway) just screened at the 70th San Sebastián Film Festival in the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section.