When the devastating quake-rendered with convincing, if sparsely used, special effects-finally strikes, separating Kristian’s family just as he’s ushering them to safety, it creates a truly suspenseful scenario of vertiginous falls and last-minute saves. The quake foretold in the title of this film serves as the climax, but unlike an American super-production, where danger often sets in after the first act, The Quake’s titular cataclysm, which sees Kristian’s family trapped inside a collapsing high-rise Radisson hotel, comes in the final quarter of the film. It proceeds in a way familiar from many a Hollywood production-shades of Volcano, Dante’s Peak, and more recent fare like 2012 abound-but at a much slower pace.
Thus begins a Spielberg-esque disaster flick in which spectacular peril serves to reconstitute a fractured family.
Kristian will, of course, turn out to be right, and he will have to make his way back to the capital to rescue the very people-his family and former colleagues-who think he’s gone off the deep end with his earthquake paranoia. Suddenly, the film cuts forward three years, to Kristian living on his own in rural Norway, estranged from Idun and his children and obsessing over the possibility of a monster quake striking Geiranger, maybe even Oslo. A clearly shaken Kristian is nervous about appearing on a national talk show, but his wife, Idun (Ane Dahl Torp), tenderly encourages him to proceed on stage and accept the accolades he deserves. Kristian (Kristoffer Joner), a local geologist, managed to save not only his family, but legions more by recognizing the warning signs when other geologists did not. John Andreas Andersen’s The Quake opens in the wake of an earthquake and landslide in the Norwegian town of Geiranger, a few hundred kilometers outside of Oslo.
0 kommentar(er)
