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    ‘Handling the Undead’ Review: When the Dead Don’t Die

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    A zombie movie is wrapped in a gentle tale of mourning and love.The yearning to reverse death is baked into human nature, a longing to defeat evil, to set things right, to conquer mortality. In “Handling the Undead,” that desire is the fruit of great love. Who hasn’t, upon losing someone, wished desperately for just one more chance to see them, hold them, tell them how much they mean?“Handling the Undead” has an earnest and simple premise that sounds like enough for a whole thriller: One day, out of nowhere, with little explanation, the dead are reanimated en masse. The film is unconcerned with the global ramifications of this phenomenon; instead, its focus is on three groups of Oslo residents whose lives are upended by the event.There is Mahler (Bjorn Sundquist) and his daughter, Anna (Renate Reinsve), a single mother whose young son died some time ago. The two of them, from the looks of it, have never recovered from the loss — Mahler weeps on his grandson’s grave, while Anna tries to bury her anguish in work. Meanwhile, Tora (Bente Borsum) grieves her partner, Elisabet (Olga Damani), who has died after their long life together. And David (an outstanding Anders Danielsen Lie), an aspiring comic, is shocked when his beloved wife, Eva (Bahar Pars), is killed in a car accident, barely knowing how to keep living with their two teenagers.This is merely the beginning of the story. But what follows is simple, and the director Thea Hvistendahl wisely takes her time getting to any real action. Instead, with a slow-moving camera and plenty of filtered sunlight, she conjures a dreamlike state, the sense of hanging between planes of existence that tends to accompany those who grieve. There are times when the film veers too near the maudlin for comfort, but it always finds its way back to something spare and meaningful. What would you do, the story gently asks, if your fondest and most impossible wish was granted, and you realized it wasn’t at all what you’d hoped it would be? How far does real love go to maintain a connection with those whose time has come?Hvistendahl wrote the screenplay with John Ajvide Lindqvist, the author of the novel on which the movie is based (as well as the quiet vampire story “Let The Right One In”). The drama borrows from zombie movies, but for something distinctly unzombielike. What’s under examination is the strange permeable barrier between life and death, and the way it appears to those who are left behind to deal with the fallout. In exploring it with a hint of mysticism, “Handling the Undead” joins a rich variety of entertainment, like “Fringe,” “The Leftovers,” “The Good Place” and “Six Feet Under.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      He’s a Doctor. He’s an Actor. He’s an Indie Heartthrob.

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      Actors have a long history of indulging in side projects: Some use their off time to write books, while others even front rock bands. But it’s fair to say that few thespians navigate a dual career quite like Anders Danielsen Lie, who currently stars as a lingering love interest in both “Bergman Island” and “The Worst Person in the World” — an indie-film doubleheader that prompted one critic to dub him “the art house’s next great ex-boyfriend” — while still working full-time as a doctor in Oslo.“It’s been overwhelming,” Lie, 43, told me over a recent video chat, and he wasn’t kidding: In early January, he was named best supporting actor by the National Society of Film Critics even as he worked three days a week at a vaccination center in Oslo and two days a week as a general practitioner. “It feels kind of abstract because as an actor, the most important part of making a movie is the shoot itself,” he said. “Then, when the film is coming out, it’s kind of a surreal experience.”Expect things to get even more surreal as the acclaimed “The Worst Person in the World” finally makes its way into American theaters on Feb. 4. In this romantic dramedy from the director Joachim Trier, Renate Reinsve — who won the best-actress prize for the role at the Cannes Film Festival — stars as Julie, a young 20-something trying to figure out her future. For some time, she takes up with Lie’s character, Aksel, an older, charismatic comic-book artist, and adopts his settled life as her own. But even when they break up and Julie discovers new pursuits, she finds her bond with the cocksure Aksel hard to shake.Lie with Renate Reinsve in “The Worst Person in the World”Kasper Tuxen, via Sundance InstituteLie previously collaborated with Trier on the well-reviewed films “Reprise” (2008) and “Oslo, August 31” (2012), but “The Worst Person in the World” has proved to be something of a breakthrough: Already, the internet has crafted video tributes to his character, and the film has struck a chord with audiences who prefer simple, human stakes to superhuman ones. “It felt like we made a very local thing from Oslo, and we were afraid if anybody else in the world would understand,” Lie said. “But people on the other side of the planet can identify with it. That’s what is so nice about feature films, they kind of bring people together.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.With Aksel and Julie, it feels like the qualities that drew them to each other eventually drive them apart. How would you sum up their relationship?He’s good at articulating her emotions and thoughts, and that’s something she probably wanted at an earlier stage in their relationship, but at this point, she’s just annoyed by it. He’s a pretty kind person, but he is also, in a subtle way, trying to dominate her by using language as his tool, because that’s what he’s good at.Is Aksel a “bad boyfriend,” as a recent Vanity Fair article asserted?I don’t see him as a bad boyfriend at all, actually. She’s not bad; he’s not bad; they’re just human. They are put in situations where they have to make hard choices and end up feeling like the worst people in the world, but it’s not really their fault. It’s life’s fault, in a way.In the film, we watch Julie swipe between different identities, trying on new jobs, new passions. Did you act the same way at that age?I personally thought that my 20s and 30s were hard, tough years, because I spent so much time trying to figure out who I was and what to do. I still haven’t made that choice, but that doesn’t bother me so much anymore. I’m happy enough to have two kids and a wife. Maybe it’s as simple as that.When you were younger, did you feel pressure to make an ultimate choice between acting and medicine?This has been my ongoing identity crisis.Lie is the son of an actress and a doctor who “ended up being both!” he said. “I probably should go into psychoanalysis or something.”David B. Torch for The New York TimesMaybe that’s just the bifurcated life you feel most suited to.It’s definitely a bifurcated life, and sometimes it feels like an identity crisis because it’s just a lot of hustle making the calendar work out. It’s hard to combine those two occupations, and sometimes I also wonder a little bit who I am. I’m trying to think that I’m something deeper than that: I’m not the doctor or the actor, I’m someone else, and these are just roles that I go into.Your mother is an actress. Did that affect the way you regard an actor’s life?My mother is not the typical actress — she’s not a diva or anything like that. She’s a very ordinary person, and I think it’s important to have a foot in reality if you want to portray people onscreen with confidence and credibility. But I’ve grown up seeing how it is to be an actress and how it is to be a doctor, and ended up being both! I probably should go into psychoanalysis or something.Your father was a doctor. That pretty much split you right down the middle, doesn’t it?Exactly. Maybe it’s an inheritable disease.Does one career inform the other?Working as an actor has improved my communication skills as a doctor because acting is so much about listening to the other actors and trying to establish good communication, often with people that you don’t know very well, and that reminds me a little bit of working as a doctor. I meet people, often for the first time, and they present a very private problem to me, and I have to get the right information to help them. It’s a very delicate, hard communication job, actually.“I have, many times, asked myself why I keep doing this, because I’m very neurotic as a person,” Lie said. David B. Torch for The New York TimesYou made your film debut when you were 11 in a film called “Herman.” How did that come about?My mother had worked with the director, so she knew he was searching for a boy my age, and she asked if I was interested in doing an audition. I didn’t really know what I had signed up for — I was 10 years old, and it felt like just a game that we were playing. I remember when the director wanted me to do the part, he came to our house with flowers and said, “Congratulations,” and I was frightened because I realized, “Now I really have to play that role and deliver.” For the first time, I felt this anxiety of not doing a good job, the exact same feeling I can get now in front of a shoot that really matters to me. I can be scared of not rising to the occasion.After that film, you didn’t work again as an actor for 16 years.“Herman” was an overwhelming experience. I felt like I was playing with explosives. I was dealing with emotions and manipulating my psyche in a way that was kind of frightening.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More