by Finnlay Dall
Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Özlem Sağlanmak, Trine Dyrholm, Olaf Johannessen, Mathilde Arcel Fock, Iman Meskini, Anders Matthesen
Intro:
Intriguing, deftly crafted and brimming with Scandinavian talent, it’s a medical drama not to under-assess or overlook.
It’s no exaggeration to say that hospitals are high stress environments. Bombarded with a cacophony of alarms every waking hour; suffering the screams and groans of the people around you; while stenches – from the living and dead alike – waft through the halls and make you sicker than when you came in. And that’s just for the patients.
Some of us may be living on a knife’s edge when we’re rushed into the E.R, but it’s the doctors who are left to clean up our mess. They have the responsibility of pulling us back from the brink or taking on the blame of pushing us over the edge. With overworked, sleep-deprived and isolated medical staff, things are bound to turn sour. But when one mistake costs a human life, who’s to blame? Is it murder, willful ignorance or an act of God?
These are questions Alexandra (Özlem Sağlanmak) is now faced with after eighteen-year-old Oliver (Jacob Spang Olsen) is left comatose, suffering a brain aneurysm under her care in Danish film Second Victims (Det andet offer). As an experienced neurosurgeon, everything about Oliver – from his youth to the fact that he’d just started drinking – suggests to Alexandra that his “headache” could be nothing more than the result of a hangover. Having to perform the neck assessment herself due to the inexperience of their new intern Emillie (Mathilde Arcel Fock), she finds no reason to perform a CAT scan.
But Emillie did report Oliver’s neck stiffness, multiple times. To her, Alexandra was too distracted to notice.
Now faced with the possibility that Oliver’s worsening condition might be her fault, Alexandra will have to face the boy’s parents, whether Oliver pulls through or not.
Scandinavian filmmakers revel in the inherent drama of accusations; that’s no less true here. Like Armand (2024) or Another Round (2020), tragedies become a murder mystery with no clear culprit. Part of the fun then, is not figuring out who the killer is, but how a writer might build the puzzle in such a believable way that no one person is at fault.
Alexandra will blame her head surgeon (Olaf Johannessen) for not wanting to operate on Oliver, even if she knows the risks. The surgeon will blame her for not being honest about Oliver’s lack of pupil dilation and delaying the inevitable. Oliver’s own parents will even blame each other for not taking him to the hospital the day before. But in reality, it may just be that no-one was ready for 1 in 3186 chance that this healthy young man might have a malignant abnormality lurking in his brain.
This masterful level of uncertainty, doubt and distrust can only be seeded into our minds if the actors of Second Victims are willing to commit. And luckily, no performer falls short. Explosive without ever having to scream across hallways, everyone here conveys simultaneous guilt or innocence. Johannessen will stare at Sağlanmak incredulously, mixing in an almost imperceptible amount of disgust. The intern may switch up from a blubbering mess to a thorn in Sağlanmak’s side, yet, as the film progresses we begin to see her as less of an ingénue and Sağlanmak as the truly incompetent one.
Emotions shift and strain under the mask of professionalism. Part of the film’s tension comes from waiting for Sağlanmak’s stoic facade to crack wide open. And Trine Dyrholm, as Oliver’s mother Camilla, is the perfect woman to break her. Camilla fights to hold on to the hope that her son may make it yet. Every pleading look from her, is like a cold icicle through Alexandra’s skull. As events unfold, it’s more heartbreaking to watch Camilla continue to trust Alexandra than it is to see her turn on the doctor.
With all these wondrous performances, the cinematography is rather understated by comparison. Long-takes rightly disorientate the viewer, but never feel too important. But one take stands out above the rest: Oliver’s final examination – a wide angle take that is phenomenal as it is depressing, as we watch everyone in hope for a miracle in complete silence. The longer the quiet stretches, the longer we have to watch Camilla’s heart fracture. Eventually, shattered and broken, she bursts out of the room in tears, while Alexandra can barely look us in the eye as she faces away from the camera’s glare.
Second Victims never drags its feet, creating a scenario so horrific yet so undoubtedly real. It’s hard to look at head-on without feeling sick about the whole affair, but that’s precisely what makes it special. Intriguing, deftly crafted and brimming with Scandinavian talent, it’s a medical drama not to under-assess or overlook.
