At the age of 35, the doctor and abortion activist Gro Harlem Brundtland was appointed environment minister. Seven years later, in 1981, she became the first woman to serve as prime minister in Norway and the youngest head of government in the country's history. On two further occasions he repeated himself as head of the executive branch. Power Play, the series that premieres this Tuesday, travels to the 1970s when Gro arrives at the government. Although the first woman to head the Norwegian executive was the first subject of this series, this six-part, fast-paced political satire with biting humor is actually about the Norwegian Workers' Party as a whole. Because Gro will be surrounded there by inefficient and incompetent men who make decisions for which there is no explanation.
“The Workers' Party is an institution in Norway, especially after the Second World War and until the 1970s. They achieved 50% support in the votes, they always won, they built modern Norway,” says Johan Fasting, creator of the series, in an interview via video call. “Now, in 2023, the Labor Party is a shadow of its former self. They are going from worst election result to worst election result. “It was interesting to see what happened to this party that was responsible for everything that many people think made Norway great,” the screenwriter adds.
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Yngvild Sve Flikke, director of the series, explains in another window of the video call what significance Gro Harlem Brundtland had for women of several Norwegian generations. “When I was a teenager, in the eighties and nineties, it was very important for us to see a female prime minister doing her job and no one questioning the fact that she was a woman. Now, as an adult and with two teenage daughters, I see that she has done a lot to make it easier for Norwegian women to demand their space and be heard everywhere,” she remembers. Gro Harlem Brundtland would later lead the World Health Organization. Even today, at 86, he continues to give lectures.
Anders Baasmo, Kathrine Thorborg Johansen and Jan Gunnar Røise, in the series “Power Play”. Motlys (November film / NRK)
Power Play won the last Canneseries festival with its commitment to political satire, depicting Norwegian politics in the 1970s with a good dose of irony and cheek. “It was necessary for us to be critical about the way energy works and how the people who control our country do their work,” explains Fasting. “If we tell their story too respectfully, we'll probably end up making them look good, and that's not the job of storytellers or the next generation, ours. We should look at these people critically and say what went wrong. Satire allows us to punch above. “Moreover, it is clear that we are not telling their biographies,” he adds. For Yngvild Sve Flikke, the satirical tone made this story relevant to today's viewer. “Comedy is always a good way to look back. We can laugh at a lot of these things, but at some point the laughter stops and you start to wonder how it all happened. And at the same time we see that some of these things are still happening today, so we point in two or even more directions,” concludes the director.
Kathrine Thorborg Johansen, as Gro Harlem Brundtland in “Power Play”. Motlys (November film/NRK)
As they began to examine the events in Norwegian politics in the 1970s, those responsible for the series encountered several surprises. For example, how deeply involved the CIA was in the politics of the European country. “They monitored many political leaders. They met with the Norwegian intelligence services to discuss who should become prime minister. It’s absurd how this happened and everyone seemed comfortable with it,” says Johan Fasting. His series also shows how the leader of the Labor Party called a furniture salesman almost daily to tell him all sorts of internal details about the party and the government, and how that salesman recorded these conversations on tapes which he passed on to journalists. “It all appeared in the newspapers the next day. And this happened for years, it's something extremely absurd. If we made a fictional series, if we made “Borgen” about Danish politics, we wouldn’t have been able to write it because it would sound too absurd and no one would believe it. But it is true. Nobody knows why it happened, and when it was discovered, nobody did anything,” says Fasting, surprised. For Yngvild Sve Flikke, the political madness of the 1970s is surprisingly close to what we are experiencing today. “And I’m not just talking about Norway, but also what’s happening in the world, especially in Eastern Europe, Putin and all that.”
Kathrine Thorborg Johansen, Øyvind Brandtzæg and Jan Gunnar Røise, in “Power Play”. Motlys (November film / NRK)
One of the most striking aspects of Power Play is its visual proposal. Shot in 16 mm, one of those responsible's wishes was for it to appear like a production by amateurs. During the filming, improvisation and anarchy reigned under the dictates of those in charge. “The script was not an improvisation, everything was well developed. Everything that could happen during the day was improvised. We didn’t have much time to shoot, so we definitely had to keep going,” says Yngvild Sve Flikke. “We had told everyone, the musicians, the technicians, the directors, the actors, everyone, to embrace their inner anarchist and do things they had never done before and break as many rules as possible. Therefore, we wanted to ensure that the narrative perspective of the series conveys an anti-authoritarian atmosphere. “It's made by someone who doesn't play by the rules and who is tired of conventional society and the conventional way of making series,” continues Johan Fasting.
Jan Gunnar Røise and Trond Espen Seim, in the Norwegian series “Power Play”. Motlys (November film / NRK)
The idea was to test and test, and if something didn't work, it would be fixed in the editing phase. This resulted in visual resources such as graphics and characters that emphasize the ironic point of view of the narrative, breaks of the fourth wall with characters speaking to the camera or the split screen in certain moments. “I worked a lot with the music composer [también premiada en Canneseries]. It didn't have to sound good, it had to sound like they didn't know how to play. And it's very difficult to pretend you don't know when you do know. The same thing happened to the cameraman. The camera had to reach the characters late, even if they knew who was going to speak. When everyone embraced this idea, it was great and it was liberating to not be too busy trying to be so good,” explains the director. “They often asked us for our references, but we had no references because this had never been done before,” he concludes.
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