Rating summary
Movie | | 4.0 |
Video | | 4.5 |
Audio | | 5.0 |
Extras | | 2.0 |
Overall | | 4.5 |
The Wave Blu-ray Movie Review
After Me the Deluge
Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 21, 2016
The Wave (or Bølgen, as it's known at home) was the most successful Norwegian film of 2015 in
its native land, which only goes to show that Americans aren't the only moviegoers who enjoy
watching their country and its citizens devastated on screen. Like his fellow filmmaker Mikkel
Brænne Sandemose (Ragnarok), director
Roar Uthaug wanted to bring a distinctively Hollywood genre closer to home, and the result is an efficiently plotted disaster film in the tradition of
Earthquake, Dante's Peak and San Andreas. The film is distributed in the U.S. by Magnolia
Pictures, which has chosen The Wave as its first Blu-ray disc to include a Dolby Atmos soundtrack.
The Wave is classical in its setup. The film's central figure is a geologist, Kristian Eikjord
(Kristoffer Joner), who works at an early warning station monitoring seismic activity in a deep
crevice of Åkerneset, a mountain overlooking the picturesque Geiranger Fjord. The popular
tourist town of Geiranger sits on the nearby shore. Twice now, in 1905 and 1934, massive rock
slides from unstable peaks have triggered tsunamis in the fjords. Should the same thing happen to
Åkerneset, scientists have calculated that the occupants of Geiranger will have no more than ten
minutes to escape to higher ground.
Today, however, Kristian is bidding farewell to his colleagues as he and his family pack up their house for a move to the city of Stavanger, where the
geologist has secured a cushy job with an oil
company. His young daughter, Julia (Edith Haagenrud-Sande), is intrigued by the prospect of a
new home, but his teenage son, Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro), is dejected at being removed from
familiar environs. After his office party, Kristian is supposed to depart with the two kids, while
his wife, Idun (Ane Dahl Torp), winds up her job working the desk at Hotel Geiranger. But
Kristian, who is afflicted with the Cassandra-like insight that curses every hero of a disaster film,
can't escape the feeling that the latest readings from the mountain signal impending doom.
Instead of leaving on the ferry with Julia and Sondre, he races back to the monitoring station to
warn his colleagues.
In another familiar disaster film trope, Kristian's former boss, Arvid (Fridtjov Såheim), refuses to accept the geologist's intuition, although he
does agree to increase the town's alert status. Having
missed the last ferry, Kristian and the children must now spend one more night in the shadow of
Åkerneset—which, of course, is when the mountain abruptly collapses and a massive wall of
water begins coursing toward the town.
The Wave's script—which was co-written by John Kåre Raake, the author of
Ragnarok, another
Norwegian re-imagining of a familiar Hollywood genre—contrives to separate Kristian's family, so
that they are in different places when the tsunami hits. Kristian and his daughter are desperately
racing up a mountain road, where their progress is blocked by a panicked traffic jam. Idun and
her son are trapped in the hotel with two other guests when the wave levels the town. Splitting up
the family allows Urthaug both to depict multiple forms of devastation and to provide the
characters with a variety of challenges after the initial impact. It also gives him a bigger canvas to convey
the magnitude of the wave's destructive power.
It may seem odd to speak of "restraint" in the context of a disaster movie, but one of
The Wave's virtues is that it sticks to credible
phenomena rather than piling up improbable catastrophes one
after another in the name of spectacle. The multiple quakes in
San Andreas may have provided
lucrative work for effects houses, and they are undeniably eye-popping—but they're also
numbing. By the time the last temblor rocks San Francisco, destruction on a citywide scale has
become so routine that it's almost dull. Urthaug's film, by contrast, limits itself to one harrowing
deluge, followed by many smaller but equally deadly predicaments left in its wake for those
lucky enough to survive. The director also effectively individuates some of the victims so that
showing their bodies in the aftermath has genuine impact.
The Wave is all the more sobering for being not so much "the imagination of disaster" (in Susan
Sontag's famous phrase) as a simulation of the inevitable. The mountain Åkerneset really exists,
and it really does have a deep crevice that is continuously monitored and steadily expanding. As
a closing title card informs us: "All experts agree there will be a rockslide. They do not know
when."
The Wave Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality
The Wave was shot by Norwegian cinematographer John Christian Rosenlund, and although
IMDb lists the format as 35mm film, in fact the film was shot on Red (the cameras shown in the extras are clearly digital). Director
Urthaug opted for a documentary, you-are-there style that stresses realism, which is reflected in
the film's everyday palette and simple production design. Even without a colorist's enhancement,
the landscape vistas with their rocky peaks, blue fjords and lush vegetation look gorgeous. The
image is sharply detailed before the wave hits, especially in daylight, but it becomes less distinct
in the aftermath (deliberately so, through the use of smoke, haze and shadow). Blacks are solid
and well-rendered, and the image does not suffer from noise or interference. Magnolia has
mastered The Wave with an average bitrate of 31.01 Mbps, and the rate spikes up sharply in the
latter half of the film, when water is everywhere.
(Note that the film opens with archival footage of previous tsunamis, as well as news casts. The
image here is intentionally of lesser quality.)
The Wave Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality
The Wave was released to theaters in Dolby Atmos, and Magnolia's Blu-ray contains a home theater version of the same mix. Water is
the soundtrack's key element, and Atmos processing
places its roaring, cascading, dripping invasion everywhere, both all around and overhead. The
track is thunderous during the tsunami, but it is even more unnerving in the aftermath, when
water seems to be pursuing the survivors through flooded chambers, corridors and crawlspaces.
The initial rockslide is rendered with equal power, and the slow buildup to the disaster is filled
with sounds of crumbling earth and falling debris, especially in the scenes depicting the
geologists' descent into the unstable crevice. Even so simple an effect as a helicopter' motor is
enhanced by Atmos processing, which precisely positions the sound of the whirring blades
according to the camera's perspective, including above the viewer.
Magnus Beite (Ragnarok) wrote the tense and
energetic score. Although I cannot evaluate the clarity of the Norwegian dialogue, voices sounded natural and well-prioritized. For those who
don't want to read subtitles, the disc contains an English dub track, but you will have to forgo
Atmos processing in favor of TrueHD 5.1.
The Wave Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras
- Behind the Scenes of The Wave (1080p; 1.78:1; 4:29): This behind-the-scenes featurette
includes footage from both location shooting and the elaborately constructed sets on
soundstages in Bucharest. In Norwegian with English subtitles.
- The Wave Visual Effects Breakdown: Part 1 (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:14): VFX supervisor
Lars Erik Hansen describes the process of creating the initial rockslide, which was
preceded by extensive location scouting and photography. In Norwegian with English
subtitles.
- The Wave Visual Effects Breakdown: Part 2 (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:09): Here, Hansen
discusses the creation of the wave itself and also of the scene where it washes over a
mountain road filled with traffic.
- The Wave Visual Effects Breakdown: Part 3 (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:06): The third and final
segment focuses on the scenes of the wave hitting the town of Geiranger.
- Interview with Director Roar Uthuag (1080i; 1.78:1; 4:29): Interviewed in Los Angeles (and in English), the director
describes the inspiration for The Wave and the
challenges of making a disaster film.
- Trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 2:09): Efficient and effective.
- Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: The disc includes trailers for High Rise,
Gridlocked, Synchronicity and A War, as well as promos for the Charity Network and
AXS TV. These also play at startup, where they can be skipped with the chapter forward
button.
- BD-Live: As of this writing, attempting to access BD-Live produces the message "Check back for updates".
The Wave Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation
The Wave was Norway's official submission to the 2016 Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, but it failed to make the final cut, and it's
not hard to see why, given the Academy's well-known
preference for high-toned drama. Urthaug's film is classic popcorn fare, and it has no other
aspiration than to entertain, which it does well, reinventing and invigorating familiar elements for
a new environment. Highly recommended.