What have I just seen? It’s not that easy to describe.
Basically, Megaheartz, which world-premiered in CPH:DOX Next Wave Competition, is about four young women in Stockholm, who struggle with love and other issues, to varying degrees, and at different times. For some, possible release is found in their art – for Emily Norling, in the documentary we are watching.
But I couldn’t tell you the origins, severity or treatment of the drug addiction or the mental issues mentioned, for example (although there is talk of bulimia and we do see someone at rehab). I couldn’t tell you how long she was in rehab, however, or how she got to be there, whether it helped or not, or anything else about the time spent there. Suddenly, there’s a career in art, it appears. I couldn’t tell you how it started, where it came from, or what it means to them.
Many times, I wasn’t even sure who was who or who was speaking – and to be honest I wasn’t even completely sure it was about four women until I saw it confirmed in the press notes.
They talk about love and falling in love with the wrong people, or in the wrong way. About sometimes wanting to surrender control to someone else. It’s clearly important to them, and difficult, but it’s all cut up into pieces and the resulting texts, mostly spoken in voice-over, have been stripped of context to the point of becoming platitudes. The romantic partners involved are almost entirely absent from the film.
There is very little to hold on to in Megaheartz and that may be the point. I guess the film is roughly chronological, but I had no grasp of the timeline. There is a moment when one person says to another on the phone that it has been a while – but how much time has passed, or why? Again, I couldn’t tell you. Could’ve been a week, could’ve been a year. Scenes are short, often very short, and start in media res. We seldom get from A to B. Instead, we’re suddenly in rehab. Or there’s suddenly a pregnancy. Or there’s something burning in the distance. Most of the time, I also didn’t know where I was.
I suppose this is how Megaheartz reflects the lack of control, direction and connection these friends seem to experience in life.
The documentary not only reflects this in the fragmented editing and lack of a clear timeline. It also refuses to be stylistically consistent. There are many traditionally pleasing shots that are clear, steady, and well-lit. But more often, shots are all over the place and sometimes it even feels like someone forgot to turn the camera off. And then there are shots that feel more experimental, blurry, and abstracted.
Again, I believe this is intentional, reflecting the sense of chaos and lack of coherence they experience in their lives. For this, the electro score by Eartheater feels fitting and the closest the film comes to a tonal through line.
But it’s a mistake to represent chaos by chaos and a lack of coherence by a lack of coherence. As it is, the film left me with no way in. Yes, they felt lost, and I felt lost – but, crucially, not in the same way. It seemed like confetti. As if parts of their lives had been put through a shredder and I was being handed pieces of it, one by one.
It made me think of Lea Glob’s Apolonia, Apolonia (2022), which is also about an artistically talented woman struggling with social and personal issues. That film as well seems too private at first, too random, too fragmented. But slowly, it builds up to something. We get to know Apolonia’s personality, to follow her life’s choices, to understand why she ends up where she does. Scenes which at first seemed random, together start forming a picture. Apolonia, Apolonia didn’t hide the chaos, but found a way to let the viewer in. That has to do with stylistic coherence, but also with letting some moments simply play out. I would have liked Megaheartz to have taken more time, for example, to let us connect Jacquline’s interesting paintings to her state of mind. As it is, we get glimpses, but that’s all.
At the end of Megaheartz, Norling describes her intention for the film. I don’t think it’s a spoiler, but if you fear otherwise, do skip this paragraph. “It’s about me and my friends wanting something else,” Norling says, “When the screen turns black you’ll exit the room, roll your eyes and shake off all that you held on to.” It’s true the film feels as if the maker thought ‘I want something else – not this, not what you’re watching, which I want to rip to shreds!’ Like the scene where Jacquline takes a knife to a good painting of hers called ‘Stockholm Burning’ and just starts hacking away at it: not this. But contrary to Glob’s film, that ‘something else’ never crystallises within the film.
I only read the film’s description on the CPH:DOX website and the press notes (confirming the four protagonists) after writing this review. Interestingly, Megaheartz’s premiere at CPH:DOX was followed by a discussion on ‘Fragmented Storytelling’, describing the film as ‘An internal research trip without filter in a film that does not follow a traditional logic, so you have to let go of rationality and let yourself be led into the darkness, the pain and the desire’. To which I can only reply I am quite happy to be led, and I suppose I did get some of the darkness, but very little of the pain and desire. Because the fragmentation kept the protagonists at a distance, I believe.
The press notes state ‘Just let go and give in to the turmoil of your own mind (emphasis added).’ Not my everyday turmoil, I suppose, but the one stirred up by the film. But just as I couldn’t really get into the film, the film didn’t really get into me – I think these are the same things. ‘Megaheartz is an emotional experience, something underneath the rational,’ Emily Norling also says in the press notes. ‘I just want you to sit back and let it happen.’ I tried. It didn’t.
Sweden/Norway, 2023, 80 minutes
Director Emily Norling
Production Story AB
Producers Melissa Lindgren
International sales Split Screen
Cinematography Milja Rossi
Editing Neil Wigardt
Sound design Anna Nilsson
Music Eartheater
With Emily Norling, Emma Broomé, Bambi Jaquline Ronneklew, Sofie Bridgeman-Williams
