Oslo (2021)

Available on HBO

Directed by Bartlett Sher

Starring Andrew Scott, Ruth Wilson, and Jeff Wilbusch

Oslo is the story of negotiations that took place in Norway in 1993 between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The negotiations were conducted in secret because Israeli policy forbade interacting with or otherwise acknowledging the authority of the PLO. They were facilitated by a Norwegian couple that had no authority to run them. But they did. And after nearly 6 months, they succeeded with a historical agreement between Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat, presented in Washington, DC, with US President Bill Clinton (who had nothing to do with it) standing beside them.

What I Liked 

* It’s an amazing story. Worth watching only to understand what an insanely ambitious idea it was, how difficult it was to pull it off, and how resourceful and persistent the Norwegian couple had to be to make it happen.

* Very good acting by everyone, with a standout performance by Salim Daw as the finance minister of the PLO.

What I Didn’t Like 

* The interaction between the two lead characters – the couple that actually made the negotiations happen. There was no real chemistry between them. The movie didn’t work when they were in the scene.

* It looked like it was based on a play – meaning there are lots of speeches and the movement of the actors is generally confined. I looked it up and, yes, Oslo was adapted from the Tony award-winning play of the same name by J.T. Rogers. There are many moments when you can imagine how much better the scene might have been on stage.

Critical Reception 

* “Rogers’ stage play is a smart, mature piece of writing, but one that transfers rather clumsily to the small screen, in part because its makers don’t show quite the same confidence in their audience’s intelligence.” (Peter Debruge, Variety)

* “Oslo serves as a haunting portrayal of what was, and a sobering reflection on conditions as they currently exist.” (Brian Lowry, CNN)

* “The film is at its strongest when it uses their individual journeys during the negotiations to serve as metaphors for the complicated emotions and human suffering intertwined in the larger Israeli-Palestinian mess.” (Lorraine Ali, Los Angeles Times)

You can watch the trailer here.