Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Narvik’ on Netflix, a World War II Historical-Fiction Saga About the Nazi Invasion of Neutral Norway

File Norwegian action-drama Narvik (now on Netflix) under Earnest Not Widely Told Stories of World War II, now Significantly More Widely Told thanks to director Erik Skjoldbjaerg (who notably helmed the original version of Insomnia, famously remade by Christopher Nolan, as well as Prozac Nation). It’s set in 1940 in the title town, a seaside community that, as a series of opening subtitles outline, was a strategic linchpin in the conflict between Allied forces and Nazi dickheads, the latter of whom invaded Norway, betraying the country’s status as a neutral state. And as these movies so often go, a smaller story finds itself ensconced in the larger one, in this case, that of a Norwegian soldier who heads off to fight the bad guys while his wife half-works for the occupying German jerks as a translator. The premise sets up some potentially fraught drama; now let’s see what Skjoldbjaerg delivers.

NARVIK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Yes, even neutral countries need armies, or “neutrality guards.” Norway had them during the WWII era, but they weren’t neutral for very long – a railway cut through the country transporting iron ore from Sweden to the waters of the Ofotfjorden, and both the British and the Nazis wanted to control this resource. In the long run, it might’ve been easier for Norway to just drop the neutrality thing and join the morally upright forces against fascism, but they didn’t, and Narvik paid the price. But we’re not here to talk about foreign policy. No, this story is about the Tofte family: Gunnar (Carl Martin Eggesbo) is a corporal in the neutrality guard. Ingrid (Kristine Hartgen) works for a Narvik hotel where negotiations between British and German diplomats go poorly. They have a little boy, Ole (Christoph Gelfert Mathiesen), and Gunnar’s father Aslak (Stig Henrik Hoff) helps take care of the child.

We meet the Toftes as Gunnar begs for a few hours’ leave in order to give Ole a toy train for his birthday. Gunnar and Ingrid are pretty much still in the refractory period when they hear explosions near the water. German forces have occupied Narvik. Gunnar catches up with his squadron, tasked with blowing up a key railway bridge. Ingrid is “compelled” – read: not given much choice, really – by German Konsul Fritz Wussow (Christoph Bach) to stay behind at the hotel; she speaks German, English and Norwegian, and has value as a translator. The Norwegian soldiers successfully knock out the bridge, but Gunnar is captured, and Ingrid watches, terrified that he’ll be executed.

And so Ingrid is trapped between a rock and a hard place, and another rock, and another, and probably yet another: She doesn’t know if her husband is dead. Konsul Fritz seems to be sweet on her. She does her damnedest to keep Ole safe. She helps the British diplomats escape the hotel to a cabin in the forest, and then they pretty much threaten her into helping feed them intel so they can strategically order their forces to retake Narvik. And so she does, and British shells hit the town, never discriminating German forces from civilians, tragically. Is Narvik her story? Sure seems to be, until we get another series of title cards outlining what happens in the following weeks, and then the movie reunites us with Gunnar, whose bone-deep weariness and filthy, chapped face reveal that being a POW under German control is wretched, just wretched.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Defiance tells a similarly small-scale story about civilians on the ground (in this case, in Belarus), trying to survive a Nazi invasion.

Performance Worth Watching: Hartgen is terrific here, and proves to be fully capable of holding Narvik together, and maintaining our emotional involvement.

Memorable Dialogue: Ole sings a little improvised ditty about Der Fuhrer: “Hitler, he cheated, he peed in his pants.”

Sex and Skin: Just a bit of horny smooching.

Our Take: It’s a wretched experience for Gunnar, but it’s always roughly PG-13, so don’t expect the gruesome realistic violence we see in many other war films. Narvik does reasonable service to its not-quite-parallel storylines, which run about 60 percent for Ingrid, 40 percent for Gunnar. The former is considerably richer thematically, being the story of a woman fighting a quiet war to keep her family alive, and carrying the omnipresent cognitive dissonance of clashing ideologies inside her at all times, knowing that her life-or-death decisions make her the target of disapproval from one group of people and the potential target of gunfire from the fascist group of people.

Ingrid’s situation is fascinating, but the film only grazes the full potential of her moral quandary because it insists on dropping into the more rote war-movie-isms of Gunnar’s predicament. He shoots and scampers and takes fire and retreats and finds his resolve and takes out a machine gun nest and all that, accompanied by fellow soldier friends who are gray, undeveloped faces instead of characters with, you know, any character. Meanwhile, Skjoldbjaerg directs action and dialogue sequences with the reliable, steady eyes and hands of a veteran filmmaker, although one senses him wrestling with the choppy narrative.

So Gunnar represents the physical dilemma of the German occupation, and Ingrid, the psychological conflict. Guess which one is more dramatically compelling, and feels like it should’ve been the film’s primary focus? Right – not the same old masculine display of violence and patriotism. His dilemma is complicated in a last-second contrivance that would be unnecessary if the screenplay allowed its characters to clearly communicate their emotional and logical conundrums, and didn’t feel the need to pause to explicate context via title cards so often down the stretch, which derails the story’s dramatic momentum. Yet Ingrid’s predicament lends the movie just enough depth to make us feel invested in the outcome.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Narvik is a perfectly serviceable wartime drama, nothing more, nothing less.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.