Being Ola

Writer and Director: Ragnhild Nøst Bergem

Ragnhild Nøst Bergem’s short documentary, Being Ola, is a work of gentle charm. Ola is a friendly thirty-year old man who for four years has lived in rural Norway in Vidaråsen, a community of some 150 people, some of whom, like Ola, have developmental difficulties. But everyone lives on equal terms, sharing meals, work and leisure. The opportunities for meaningful work are many: outdoors you can help on the farm or work in the vegetable garden. Indoors there’s a dairy, a large kitchen and a bakery – indeed we sometimes see Ola busy preparing dough. There are well-equipped workshops for various arts and crafts. Ola likes doing woodwork and contentedly sits for his portrait in the art room.

“There’s no difference between those needing help and those giving it,” Ola says proudly. And indeed Vidaråsen comes over as a utopian project. The seasons pass peacefully. There’s a gorgeous shot of a couple of cows in a barn, their breath steaming in shafts of winter sunshine.

Under Bergem’s sympathetic direction, Ola is allowed to reflect on his life here. He wonders aloud about his condition –  “Why was I always the slowest one?” he asks. He is keenly aware of his difference – “Something happened in my brain,” he explains. But the film shows him at home in this warm community where he is accepted just as he is, his face often smilingly alight.

Bergem captures the growth of an important friendship. A young man from Denmark, Lasse, has been living with the community for some six months and he and Ola have hit it off. We often see them talking and laughing together. We don’t, however, know anything of Lasse’s background, or why he, without disabilities, has chosen to spend time here. Tension mounts. We can’t help but worry how Ola will manage when Lasse leaves. Indeed, there is moving footage of Ola trying to process the inevitable news when it comes. He is extraordinarily dignified, articulating his grief but never once putting emotional pressure on Lasse.

More poignant still is what Ola reveals about his childhood. He is the youngest of three children. His parents, when they come to visit, seem supportive and loving. But they had clearly struggled with their son: he confesses he was a difficult teenager, given to uncontrolled screaming fits. He doesn’t criticise his parents for encouraging him to move to Vidaråsen. But it is from them he learnt a bitter lesson – “it has been burnt into the back of my mind,” he admits – that above all he must not be a burden on anyone. He returns to this painful thought on several occasions, although in his calm, considered manner, he is clearly in a different emotional place now.

There are melancholy images of Ola, now without his friend, working alone in a field, or sitting silent at the end of the breakfast table. He talks of his dream to live independently in his own flat, but quickly reflects on how lonely he’ll be. Perhaps, Bergem gently suggests, he already has a form of independence, living within this community? And indeed we see the community supporting him in his loss. He learns with aching slowness to play chopsticks so that he can perform at the birthday party of elderly Elisabeth. But when he sits at the grand piano, his mind goes blank. He plays a few hestitant notes, then closes the lid and goes back to his seat. “It was a fiasco,” he says. But his piano teacher encourages him to have another go and he performs successfully.

He’s encouraged to invite friends to a reading of a detective story he’s written to celebrate advent. Then he’s invited to be master of ceremonies for a discussion in front of an audience on the theme of freedom of speech. “I realise that there are more sides to Ola,” he says of himself, “many more sides.”

But he still misses Lasse. Could he somehow manage to make the journey to Copenhagen and visit him there? The final part of the film sees him brave the long ferry journey and he clearly enjoys the company of Lasse once more.

Ola – Ola Henningsen to give him his full name – is an extraordinary young man and Ragnhild Nøst Bergem has created a genuinely thoughtful film. She herself not only wrote and directed, but shot and edited the footage. The appealing music throughout is the work of Eivind Hannisdal.

Being Ola is released in UK and Irish Cinemas on 3 April.