A good disaster movie

The films the Norwegian film industry produced until roughly ten years ago were almost exclusively pretentious garbage. Variations on turkeys like "Dis" for the most part. The actual quality movies were few and far between, giving rise to the negative image of Norwegian film in the general populace to begin with.

The cinematography, sound, scripts, acting and screenplay were completely amateurish. All the actors would whisper to each other or otherwise interact in ways that would never take place in real life. The subject matter of Norwegian movies was usually that of "high drama" or other themes that were of interest only to those select few who had that as a field of interest. The filmmakers would in other words only communicate with other filmmakers with their art, not the larger audience.

Now we have natural disaster movies, nazi zombie movies, slasher horror movies, dark comedy, thrillers, action movies centered on cars and all kinds of other works which are centered on the story. There is a focus on production values and realistic acting, and most importantly on creating some sort of suspense. And people are again going to the cinemas to watch Norwegian-made films, after years of avoiding them like the plague.

We still have a lot to learn, but I see it as a very positive development that the focus on creating so-called "high art" is being replaced by a focus on good entertainment. If Norwegian film keeps taking those steps and grows in size and popularity, it will also "rub off" on those who want to create something very special - access to more experienced film actors and crew benefits everybody... but the taxpayer money should not finance such narrow artistic expressions. It should benefit the masses, not the few. The near-empty cinemas when the more ambitious films are being shown proves only that the subject-matter is uninteresting to most people, not that they do not understand or appreciate fine art.