Being Ola

Documentaries don’t get any more moving than Being Ola, Ragnhild Nøst Bergem’s recent film about a man named Ola Henningsen who enjoys gardening and writing. The film focuses most prominently on how Ola navigates living with an intellectual disability. In this 70-minute feature, we see him reflect on a challenging, confusing childhood and adolescence; and the painful but, ultimately, socially beneficial and emotionally constructive decision to find a home amongst a close-knit rural community, consisting of many also living with learning disabilities – a safe space of growth, cohabitation and surrogate family. His journey is one of grappling with self-doubt, learning to love one’s imperfections and becoming more independent. But it’s also about looking towards the future, as Ola questions whether he may one day wish to live outside of the village wherein he’s forged such a valuable home. This is a beautiful piece, and a story that will touch many.

The first thing you fall in love with while watching Being Ola is the cosiness of the physical location itself. One of the best decisions the filmmakers make on a level of immersion, is allowing the audience to slowly acquaint themselves with each and every place and landscape inhabited by those in the village of Vidaråsen. By letting the viewer grow to have a sense of visual familiarity, the narrative being crafted before you becomes all the more inviting. This is a movie you truly enjoy spending time in. You love the people it paints a portrait of. You love the various activities it documents. And, perhaps most of all, you love the always optimistic spirit of Ola – an endlessly charismatic, amusing and kind screen presence.

This is also a wonderfully put-together work of art, both in terms of camera and audio. There’s so much to love about the quaint beauty of the cinematography. Defined by a subtlety and simplicity, both in its composition and in-the-moment capturing, so many shots feel like a colourful, affectionate meditation on the environments and people of Norway. And then, in turn, the very carefully crafted sound and calming choice of music go a long way to build a mood and provide the technical side of the filmmaking a finished quality. Like all great documentaries, all of this then comes together in the editing, which manages not to rush any moment whilst also maintaining a steady, purposeful direction of pace.

There’s one clear highlight of movie, for this critic at least. On the celebration of another occupant’s seventieth birthday, many of village’s residents perform for her as a form of gift. For Ola, he’s been rehearsing Chopsticks on the piano. When he begins performing, things go a little wrong, and you can see his heartbreak at being unable to follow through with the performance. Later that day, though, he returns to the piano with his teacher, and together they perform a duet. After this performance, Ola receives a rapturous round of applause. In testimony captured later in the day, he turns the event into a most moving and optimistic philosophy about not giving up. It’s such a perfectly imperfect, almost overwhelmingly – yet effortlessly – emotional instance of captured reality, and the sequence which takes Being Ola into five-star territory.

Being Ola gets its UK premiere at the opening night of Oska Bright film festival, on March 28th.