Mystery too cold to grapple with humanist quandaries
Danish star Nikolaj CosterWaldau takes a hard left away from his swaggering Jaime Lannister character from “Game of Thrones” and his other testosterone-fueled actioners with the Danish drama “Exit Plan.” In this existential and nearly inscrutable mystery, Coster-Waldau steps into the shoes of a mildmannered, bespectacled insurance adjuster named Max, who chases down the disappearance of a client to an incredibly dark and unexpected place: an apparent suicide hotel.
The Hotel Aurora is a strange resort indeed, located in a remote, barren but starkly beautiful Scandinavian landscape. It is a place that offers a luxury experience in assisted suicide, or at least it seems to. For folks with terminal illnesses or who just can’t bear the world anymore, it seems the best way to go, with your own instructions, preferences and every corporeal and emotional need attended to. But is it what it seems, or is there something lurking below the surface? Max, who has been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and is considering suicide, checks in and considers the possibilities before him.
Written by Rasmus Birch and directed by Jonas Alexander Arnby, who previously collaborated on “When Animals Dream,” “Exit Plan” is not an easy film to discern. It is devastatingly bleak, both in content and in color palate. There is almost no color, the film awash in black, white, gray and neutrals (when a color does appear, pay attention), and the emotional palate is similarly reserved. The timeline slips back and forth between Max’s stay at the hotel and his previous life, in a devoted marriage to Laerke (Tuva Novotny). Or is that all a dream, a memory, a flashback?
Max wrestles mightily with his fate as he spends his days at the hotel with the other guests living out their last hours. Given his diagnosis, is the right thing to do to slip away quietly, disappearing with nothing left except a video message? “Exit Plan” is a film that wants to grapple with these essentially humanist quandaries, but it is too cold and too remote. It hardly offers a moment to hook into, to become drawn into Max’s struggle. The audience is kept at arm’s length, treated with the same robotic politesse Max receives at the Hotel Aurora.
At the 11th hour, Birch and Arnby throw in a sciencefiction twist, turning the film into a thriller of sorts. But the mystery is buried in layers of dream sequences and flashbacks and psychological torment. With so many misdirected cues and misleading perspectives, you can’t ever trust what’s happening, so you can’t invest in Max’s emotional journey between life and death. There is potential in this premise and a few flickers of genuine artfulness, but the storytelling is frustratingly abstruse, making for an “Exit Plan” that’s a real missed opportunity.