How did Edvard Munch, Norway’s most famous painter, become a pioneer of Expressionism? After Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken’s film biography, you’re hardly any wiser than before.
The fashion of turning every biographical Wikipedia entry into a feature film sooner or later is never ending. While Angelina Jolie is currently in front of the camera in Paris as Maria Callas with oversized glasses and a tragic expression, and Bradley Cooper is trying to impersonate the unattainable Leonard Bernstein in the cinema with the tip of his nose on, now comes a new episode of what is probably the most daring of all films – Undertaking: the artist biography. This time poor Edvard Munch was taken care of, even though he did everything humanly possible in 30,000 surviving works to bear witness to what he experienced, saw and, above all, felt.