Beatles (Peter Flinth, 2014): Norway

Reviewed by Mimmi Karlsson. Viewed at Metro 4 during Santa Barbara Film Festival 2015.

Beatles, by Peter Flinth, is a Norwegian movie that takes place in Oslo in the sixties. It is based on a book by Lars Saabye Christensen and it’s about four best friends (Kim, Ola, Seb and Gunnar) who all love The Beatles and want to start up a band themselves. The movie shows young love, friendship, teenager and family problems and dreams of being something else than just regular kids.

Kim is the main character and he doesn’t just want to be like Paul McCartney, he also looks like him quite a lot. Kim is kind of shy and has girls problems through the entire movie. It is interesting to see how Kim is becoming more and more outgoing though. Ola is also a very shy boy but he is charming and funny. He is playing the drums in their band. Seb is the only one who can actually play instruments at first. His dad brings home new Beatles cd’s for the boys to listen to. Gunnar is using his big brother to help them play on a stage and he gets in to a lot of trouble, not only because the band breaks a speaker, also because he has love problems with the wrong person.

The four boys make a great team and the movie shows their daily life and how each of the boys has his own problems. I think the movie wants to tell the audience that friendship is very important and will always make you get through hard times in your life.

I don’t know if I liked the movie extra much because I am from Sweden and I understand the film’s jokes that are hard to translate. In one scene Kim is visiting his girlfriend’s house and her dad is Danish. Swedes and Norwegian people know how hard it can be to understand Danish and the whole situation was just hilarious. It might be hard to get the details if you don’t understand the language and that is why I think that Scandinavian people might like this movie more than other people. Although, the audience in the movie theater was cheering and laughing so I think the Americans liked it as well.

One thing that I found very interesting is how well the setting was made. It really looked like the sixties with old cars and that time’s modern clothes. I give a lot of credit to the production designer team.

This is a warm, feel-good movie and I could probably watch it over and over again, which is the best sign if I like a movie.