One of the smartest places Netflix has put its international production money is Scandivanian World War II films. A collection of true or “inspired by” true stories have shown us forgotten heroics, sacrifice, treachery and air raids that went wrong. And these movies travel well, playing to WWII buffs the world over, especially in North America.
The soberest of the lot might be “Nr. 24,” titled “Number 24” for the U.S./Canadian market. It’s an account of the exploits of Norway’s most decorated resistance fighter, Gunnar Sønsteby. And it focuses on the terrible choices one has to make in a war when fascism has not just invaded your country and taken over the power structure, it has rooted itself in the culture so that real patriots can’t know who their countrymen they can trust.
Director John Andreas Andersen’s film is framed within a blunt, unglamorous lecture Sønsteby (Eric Hijvu) gives very late in his life. With fascism bubbling up all over Europe, even in Norway, Sønsteby gives school kidsin his hometown of Rjukan a history lesson.
The Germans didn’t need many troops to sieze Oslo. There were Nazi-sympathizing traitors in the government and all over the country, led by fascist military officer Vidkun Quisling. Choosing to join the resistance in 1940 — when the war’s outcome was very much in doubt — may have been noble but might not be popular, and could very well be suicidal.
The old Hero of Telemark tells a rapt audience of teens in his hometown, “Let’s talk about values” (in Norwegian with subtitles, or dubbed), and launches into his life story — carefree days years before the war when the warning signs about fascism’s rise were popping up, even in Norway, shifting into his “futile” joining with partisan fighters resisting the initial invasion and his recruitment to the an anti-Nazi espionage organization, supplied by the Brits, which he’d eventually come to lead.
Sjur Vatne Brean plays the young Gunnar, a mild-mannered accountant with skiing and camping skills, who journeys from naivete to seasoned fighter determined to make the hard decisions resistance leaders must make.
The older Sønsteby emphasizes how “careful” he was as he built his “network” of comrades in arms and sympathetic helpers. He eschewed any idea of “family” — his own would be imperiled — and romance for the duration of the war. He avoided alcohol, and planned out each day in advance. “Five pockets” he nicknamed himself, one on his jacket for each fake identity and “papers” to be shown to Germans and Norwegian Nazi police, depending on the situation and setting.
The film details some suspenseful exploits and grapples with the moral choices involved in taking action against murderous Norwegian traitors who rounded up the country’s Jews to be shipped to concentration camps, summarily executed resistance fighters or anyone who helped them and the like.
The narrative takes Sønsteby to and from Norway, trekking to neutral but Nazi-sympathizing Sweden, flying to Britain for “training” (not seen) and even a meeting with Norway’s king-in-exile (Kristian Halken). We see records offices bombed when the Germans and their Norwegian puppets prep to draft Norwegians for combat duty on the Eastern Front. An arms factory is attacked, and Germans are killed in ambushes.
But there’s also the grimmer work of accepting that a childhood friend is trying to rat you out and having him killed. Old Sønsteby hears out fresh-faced student questions about “Did you try non-violence?” and gives them a wake-up call.
“Gandhi never had to resist (dehumanizing) Nazis.”
He bluntly speaks of sacrifice as flashbacks show comrades killed, family members, comrades in arms and confidantes arrested and tortured.
Under fascism, he warns, “don’t trust the” media and the rich men who own newspapers and the like. The police? They’re working for those who have seized power and taken away your freedoms. They’ll torture you and shrug “just following orders.”
“Number 24,” scripted by Erlend Loe and Espen Lauritzen von Ibenfeldt, skims over details like Sønsteby’s training and how all this dynamite and these pistols and Bren guns were acquired. The logistics of resistance is limited to arranging apartments and the like.
The focus here is on “values,” the moral choices that underline the actions of the people who took those actions. There’s a famous French documentary about just how insidious fascism was in France. But “The Sorrow and the Pity” could have been made about any country in Occupied Europe. Violent nationalist bigots were often in a majority in a populace, no matter how much France, Belgium, Denmark or Norway celebrate their resistors.
Fighting that, risking your life to simply approach a countryman or countrywoman to see if they’ll help or turn you in when you ask their assistance in stealing printing plates to counterfeit Norwegian money or let you sit in their apartment to stake-out a target, is a more fraught experience than anybody — young or old — mouthing off on Twitter or Bluesky has ever experienced.
Director Andersen (he did the disaster movie “The Quake”) keeps this slick, polished production moving even as he and the screenwriters avoid many of the tried-and-true devices — training-for-the-mission montages, etc. — of the genre.
Most characters don’t explain their actions, and the risks of approaching strangers scenes require at least some lip service to that.
Sjur Vatne Brean and Erik Hijvu play Sønsteby as unemotional and poker-faced. That may be how the real hero survived his heroics, but it’s dramatically flat on film.
Everybody’s neat and well-dressed in this occupied, rationing-enforced country. And the vintage cars shine even under the grey, snowy skies and muddy roads of winter. “Realism” has its limits.
But “Number 24” is a tough-minded reminder that, as the late historian David McCullough emphasized, “These (historic heroic) people don’t know how this is going to turn out.” Living circumscribed, secretive lives for years, committing deadly acts without months or years of military training and indoctrination, these are extraordinary acts committed by the brave outliers among us, who will always be few in number.
We may admire or judge them today, but if we weren’t there, how can we?
Rating: TV-MA, violence
Cast: Sjur Vatne Brean, Erik Hijvu, Ines Høysæter Asserson, Mark Noble and Per Kjerstad
Credits: Directed by John Andreas Andersen, scripted by Erlend Loe and Espen Lauritzen von Ibenfeldt. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:52
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