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Great Film overall

best movie i've ever seen.

A Major Disappointment

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

A postman is like a taxi-driver, a medium of connecting people and places. Like the taxi driver, the postman lives a vicarious life: he sees others living theirs, but has no part in it himself. Any inherent bias towards solitude thus becomes intensified. Unlike other people, who generally stay in their allotted social position - in work, home and play - the postman and taxi driver are mobile and fluid: they are urban creatures who can unite people, classes, places that normally would remain apart.If there is one genre that depends on connection, cross-class and -space mobility, it is the detective genre. A detective needs to be able to connect disparate clues and suspects into the single narrative of a crime. 'Junk mail' begins with a crime, filmed with some urgency, as a couple mug a security guard and steal a large amount of money. This is, to the audience, a random, inexplicable act - we don't know who any of these characters are, and why they are in this situation.The next sequence introduces the film's protagonist, the postman. Not only does he have the advantages outlined above, but he has that third, most vital prerequisite for a detective: he is a voyeur. He spies on people in shops. He opens their mail. He breaks into their houses and examines their things. By mixing his job and his personal perversions, he is able to explain that opening sequence, find the clues and piece them together.Normally, the detective is a moral force - he restores social order after the violation of a crime. But Roy is himself a criminal, and it is Line's shoplifting that attracts him to her. One way a detective solves a crime is by imagining himself as the criminal, e.g. Sherlock Holmes in disguise. Roy is the least appealing 'hero' of modern cinema, filthy in personal habits, anti-social, the kind of cynical, cowardly brute who violates those who, through their own sins, have no legal redress.But he is also a non-entity: a comic scene of humiliation at work reveals him to have no talent whatsoever. Not even his nominal, despised girlfriend can think of one positive attribute. When we first see him, he is being bullied by a superior. His illegalities are all about invading others' lives, or entering identities because he has none of his own. When he breaks into Line's apartment, he tries to imagine what it is like to be her, to the point where he unwittingly falls asleep on her bed. He even steals her tastes for his own when they first (consciously) meet. He is Chesterton's invisible man (also a postman) - unnoticed because he's always there.Like many recent alienated urban heroes ('Chopper', 'Bleeder', etc.), Roy is a child of Travis Bickle, and the look of the film has the lurid, sickly colour of 'Taxi Driver', the city as vomit, with Roy hurtling towards his own warped redemptive rescue. But there is a vision of Oslo as a dank, run-down bureaucracy similar to the Czech comedies of the 1960s, or, more obviously, Orwell (or 'Brazil'), that bespeaks a more social purpose - this is not the film the Norwegian tourist board will be distributing. The glum scene where Roy is awarded a watch for bravery having been attacked by thugs (his strap got caught in his panicked hurry to oblige) is comically reminiscent of Kaurismaki.

Junk Mail doesn't have much of a story and it's major message seems to be 'mind your own business'. However it does keep one's attention simply because it's totally unpredictable. Robert Skjaestad plays a lazy postman who can't be bothered delivering all the catalogues and other junk, so he deposits it all in a railway siding hidden by a tunnel. He's also a bit of a Peeping Tom, and without giving too much away he gets himself into an awkward situation involving some stolen money. Complications ensue. A bit of a nineties Billy Liar, Junk Mail ends on an unsatisying note that tries to tie up some loose ends but doesn't. Perhaps this is the beginning of a Brave New Norwegian Cinema. Baby steps, baby steps...

A twisty-turny narrative that ultimately leads nowhere, avoiding both exposition and explanation at the end of the day. Like a Nordic Coen Brothers film, this is more concerned with portraying quirky characters and odd scenarios, but despite some nifty camerawork, it is a rather ugly film, revelling in its depressingly squalid milieu without making any real point at the end of the day. The anti-hero remains a complete enigma throughout, but funnily enough, despite my reservations at the beginning, it was rather hard not to be won over at the end of the day. There were some marvellously taut action and suspense sequences, and some hilariously humourous scenes. Rather similar to most Scandinavian films I've seen actually. Dark grey and depressing, but blackly comic.

The Norwegian movie, Budbringeren/Junk Mail, nearly got an Oscar. The movie has changed the Norwegian film culture totally. It's sarcasms and black humor are actually working well on most people. The thing with Junk Mail is that people either like it, or not. It's difficult to explain. Many people from other contries, would think of Oslo as a horrible city... well, It's not. Oslo is actually beautiful, well, most of it. The only problem with this movie is that they are showing the worst parts of Oslo (The film was made in a small part of Oslo east). It can make people from other contries think of Norway as a 'dirty' country... Please don't think that about Norway just because of a 'black' film. I do think that for an international movie, like this one, that they should have shot a few scenes in better parts of the city. If you already have been to Norway, Junk Mail probably would be funnier to watch...