3 Short Paragraphs: The Tunnel (Tunnelen)

 2019, Pål Øie (Hidden) -- download

Apparently Norwegian disaster movies are a thing now, well if three movies make a thing, and a coming fourth in The North Sea about a disaster on an oil drilling rig. I have seen The Wave and it's sequel, The Quake and I was kind of hoping this would be the third in a trilogy with poor Kristian Eikjord having yet another really bad day. Alas, its all new and not connected. This is also a more personal "disaster", the scale being localized to a single tunnel through a mountain, one of many that provide easier road travel in mountainous Norway. 

Also of note, this is not the 2016 Norwegian short film of the same name.

While everyone is hurrying to get home for the Xmas holidays, before a road closing snow storm moves in, a tanker truck full of petrol explodes in the tunnel. Primary rescue resources are cut off by an avalanche and the remaining crew , at the other end of the tunnel, has to make do with who and what they have. Stein (Thorbjørn Harr, The Last King) is a snowplow operator who used to be one of them, before losing his wife to cancer. His daughter's having trouble coping with Stein moving forward in his life (a new relationship) and was taking a bus to spend Xmas with her Grandmother in Oslo. The bus gets caught in the tunnel. 

Like many of these small scale disaster movies, it focuses on the smaller details that make up the event. Like the control room that monitors the kilometer long tunnel and has to make sense of the conditions as their equipment fails in the fire. Like the small rescue team that wants to do more, but knows the conditions are far too dangerous. Like the small groups of survivors desperate to get out of the tunnel before all air is lost to the billowing black smoke, many assuming rescue is coming as long as they wait patiently -- tragically, it is not. This movie is not about big explosions and massive body counts, but the small (relatively) tragedies and big challenges to individuals. Stein is our proxy, a stoic dedicated man who will do what he needs to in order to save his daughter, in this solid but not entirely enthralling movie.