Alternate Best Actor 2015: Ulrik Munther in The Here After

Ulrik Munther did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying as John in The Here After.

 

The Here After follows a teenager as he tries to return to his life after jail time, however he faces difficulty with his community being less than forgiving for his crime.

The film takes a detached observational approach. This is emphasized all the more by the depiction of Munther's character of John who for much of the film has no speaking lines whatsoever. This basically being a silent performance, and the character even being set to a particular tone. This as Munther carries a similar expression for most early scenes no matter what is going on around him. This with his family trying to move on with the elephant in the room being his crime, which Munther in a way realizes by just showing the character with a kind of sense of trying to be part of life, while also in no way enjoying it exactly. This as Munther manages to show someone who isn't seething with regret, but also is in a state of having committed a crime, though with time away from it. It is a very specific tone but he does realize it in a way that makes sense of the way he initially seems to take an attack from the mother of his victim with an almost passive reaction. Munther consistently shows someone trying to exist in a way while not enjoying what his victim will never again. He creates this kind of purgatory of manner of an emotional detachment of someone who can only move on in a way by not really interacting with life beyond a cursory point. 

Of course the film is a little repetitious because of this, though Munther's limited note of his performance does make sense, it doesn't always make the most compelling film that just trudges along as we see him trudge along in this state. This even with everyone treating him as an elephant in a room that is either treated as something to ignore, to try to understand, or just to violently accost. This is the state for the majority of the film, though as the reactions to him become more violent Munther's performance does portray the wear on John though he does not break still. He leads though towards basically a tipping point which comes in the climax of the film where John confronts the mother of his ex-girlfriend he killed in a fit of rage. This scene essentially makes sense of his entire performance, while also basically gives us the blanks we needed to fill in the rest of the film. This as the unleashing of emotion, where he basically prompts the woman to kill him if she feels the need to, Munther effectively shows all the grief, regret, heartbreak and pain all in a singular moment. He powerfully does not hold back in showing the severity of all that John's been holding in up until this point. This leaving just a festering pool of painful emotion that shows the logic of why he was such a specific repressed state the rest of the time. Munther's work effectively being everything the rest of his performance wasn't in this scene. Showing John completely without repression after showing such a severely repressed sort the rest of the time. I ponder if there was perhaps more could've been done in the other scenes, as he seems set, and there isn't the minimalist nuance in his early scenes that creates a truly great performance of the ilk. This as there is more one can do within limits that Munther does in the early scenes, and still maintain that idea, while still making a moment of outburst remarkable still. Of course this is me comparing Munther's work to all time great turns as repressed men, where I can't put that performance on such a pedestal, but that doesn't make this a bad performance. It is a good performance, though a greater one actually likely would've helped the film a bit, which is perhaps a little too clinical overall.