Alternate Best Supporting Actor 2021: Anders Danielsen Lie in The Worst Person in the World

Anders Danielsen Lie did not receive an Oscar nomination, despite winning NSFC, for portraying Aksel in The Worst Person in the World. 

The Worst Person in the World follows the relationships and choices of a young woman Julie (Renate Reinsve) who struggles with the direction of her life. 

Anders Danielsen Lie plays Aksel one of the several relationships we see Julie go through throughout the film, though their relationship is the most substantial one within the film. Aksel is a successful underground comics artist which includes edge humor and has what is considered sexist tone. Danielsen Lie portraying a Robert Crumb type, in artwork only, Danielsen Lie actually plays Aksel as a pretty normal guy more or less. Danielsen Lie and Reinsve have fantastic chemistry with one another, and the nature of the chemistry is so much of the film. This is because while we certainly see the moments of ease in their relationship in terms of mutual attraction to one another and their intensity sexual chemistry, it is very much just a given within their performances. What the film ends up really being about though is the challenges for Julie to really stick to a decision in her life and not change her mind. This creating a challenge in the relationship with Danielsen Lie's Aksel, as a man who is trying to find some consistency in his life as he approaches middle age. Their initial breakup of many breakup Danielsen Lie delivers as this in a way overly logical though with the undercurrent of emotion, decision to trying to move on from Julie to find a greater maturity himself, while in turn this only leads Julie right back to him and their relationship becomes only more aggressive. 

Lie, though not being the central focused character, portraying basically a similar experience as Julie is going through but just in a slightly different way. Danielsen Lie too portrays that Aksel's defined too by uncertainty of his choices, even as he speaks towards his desire to settle down exactly, there is that same inconsistency of the needs and desires in the way he articulates them. What Danielsen Lie does in his work is effectively present the sort of more potent emotional need about this uncertainty in a way compared to Julie where Reinsve portrays many of her more questionable choices as these sorts of flights of fancy. Danielsen Lie's performance accentuates a man who believes he wants this consistency yet in a way he is just as inconsistent as the woman he accuses of doing the same thing that he says is because of her youth. This as Danielsen Lie shows the natural push and pull in his performance of a greater emotional desperation and need that will randomly develop in the man as suddenly he seeks for a certain thing in his relationship even if a moment later he'll drop the very same thing as being essential the next. Together with Reinsve they show why their relationship is in a way doomed because both of them portray people who have no idea what they want, but they certainly are sure they want something. In turn their chemistry creates the natural sense of the cycle of the two of people who are consistent in their uncertainty, yet the troubles are in a way created that their points of changing what they want are never consistent with one another. 

The key really with both Danielsen Lie and Reinsve's work is making this state so tangible and really emotional in their interactions with one another despite the natural consistency of it. They do have that potent connection but at the same time just as potent is their moments of random distress because it is basically impossible for them to be on the same page for long. Their second breakup scene being an excellent example of really both the pains and the joys of their relationship. This as Julie wants to move on, yet still gives herself up to him sexually as he pleads for her to stay. Danielsen Lie throughout the scene portraying the desperation of the need in the mode but also the lack of articulation in him, that matches Julie's own lack of articulation, that leads them to both in a way display their ever still need for another even in the middle of a breakup. What is so remarkable about both performances is every step in this unfortunate, and theoretically illogical display, is wholly logical in terms of the emotional place both Julie and Aksel are. Throughout the scene each change where one is in terms of who is more invested, and in this instance Danielsen Lie portrays the intensity so well in terms of the desperate need he has for Julie in this moment, even though earlier moments he seemed to take her presence for granted while his delivery stays filled with an inconsistency of someone who truly has no idea what to say. Danielsen Lie's performance succeeds in creating the sense that there is no hypocrisy because it is all emotionally honest in his work, even if there is hypocrisy in terms of the character's actual actions. 

After this breakup we see the downward spiral of Aksel which we first see him trying to defend the edgy humor of his comic book. Danielsen Lie's terrific in the scene in portraying of someone completely failing at trying to articulate their point they're trying to make. Danielsen Lie presenting the fall into emotional ad hoc attacks as he tries to deliver his message initially with a strict attempt at logic before falling into this deep emotional turmoil. His delivery being this cascade from passionate artist, to defensive artist to just angry man so naturally as this breakdown. We find that likely part of that breakdown might've come as we learn that Aksel is suffering from a terminal illness. And it is in this last act where it basically forces both of our lovers to confront their relationship without compromise in a way, since now Aksel has no time to change his mind or turn his mind around. Danielsen Lie is very powerful for his particularly somber if not wholly morbid delivery of his life as he tells about his ways of passing his time and realizes what he sees as the waste of it. Danielsen Lie's work is truly stunning in the way his voice shakes and there is such a palatable sense of a man who believes he's waste so much time now dealing with that fact with the little time he has left. His speaking of his fate Danielsen Lie is heartbreaking as portraying the man without pretense as his eyes are that of someone looking towards an unpleasant void he is so desperately fearful of. 

 

There's something especially poignant though that even in this monologue of a fatalistic depression there is these moments of glints of his love towards Julie even as he is fixated naturally on his desperate woes. When the two finally speak abut their relationship Lie continues to be so moving by in a way delivering the words of what he saw in Julie more cogently than he ever did in their relationship. Danielsen Lie portraying the man no longer fixated on that uncertainty but rather now just speaking with the authority of the certainty that he will die soon. As quick as this shift is in terms of the narrative, which I'd say is wholly intentional and wholly works as the film is from Julie's perspective, we don't see the change in Aksel, however what we do see is the result of the man who never quite made his decisions and now it is too late. This is realized with a tragic potency through once again the chemistry between the two actors, who are as convincing in their final desperate scene together as they were of the two lovers just blithely having their fun with one another. While we see in Reinsve the regret and struggle of suddenly dealing with such a situation, Danielsen Lie is incredible in his final moment in the film. This as he delivers now this certain clarity in his words, the sadness still so potent, but also the thoughts of happiness as he speaks to Julie one more time. Danielsen Lie finding such power in the man in a way finally knowing what to say in this most important relationship of his life, clearly articulating his needs as Danielsen Lie accentuates in his delivery filled with sorrow but also conviction, yet doing so in what are the final moments of the relationship because they are the final moments of his life.