Latest news with #NikPayne
Times
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
A New Kind of Wilderness review — off-grid family grief in Norway
With a structure, characters and dramatic tension that echo the Oscar-nominated Viggo Mortensen movie Captain Fantastic, this tear-jerking documentary tells the story of an Englishman, Nik Payne, who in 2014 with his Norwegian wife, Maria, and their four children abandoned civilisation for the off-grid bliss of a remote farm in Norway's northern woods. Five years later, however, Maria died of cancer, and Nik honoured her legacy by continuing to pursue a wilderness-based subsistence lifestyle with all its (single) parenting challenges. The film, from the Norwegian director Silje Jacobsen, is a contradictory beast that picks up the story soon after Maria's death and depicts a family ensconced in glorious scenery and yet cauterised by grief. It hangs over the smallest activity — one of the
The Guardian
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
A New Kind of Wilderness review – beautiful film of off-grid family shattered by bereavement
This sad and beautiful documentary from Norwegian film-maker Silje Evensmo Jacobsen tells a painful, complicated story, more complicated than even the film itself explicitly reveals. It's a story that the director appeared to have chanced upon through following the blog of a brilliant photographer, Maria Vatne, who recorded her idyllic wilderness existence living on a farm in Norway with her British husband Nik Payne and their three home-schooled children, Ulv, Falk, and Freja, and an elder daughter Ronja, from Maria's previous partner. But one blogpost from October 2018, titled A New Kind of Wilderness revealed that she had cervical cancer, and she died in 2019. The film shows us the family coming to terms with their terrible loss and grief, particularly Nik. For a start, they can no longer live on their beloved farm because without Maria's photography income Nik cannot keep up the mortgage repayments; they must move to a much smaller place and the kids will go to regular school. (So their former existence was not, in fact, as 'off-grid' as all that; Maria's website reveals that she took photography assignments and the idyllic farm images perhaps functioned in a way as a shopwindow.) The film allows us to wonder if Nik's emotional wretchedness is subtly complicated by feelings of self-reproach as a breadwinner. Also, he ponders taking the children home to England where his relatives have a farm, but the children would find that insupportable and it might be the ultimate disloyalty to Maria. Then there is Ronja, whom the film reveals to have moved back in with their dad, and her absence is itself, incidentally, something to ponder. Ronja reveals she always felt a little estranged from her half-siblings, especially Freja, and there is a painful, emotional break between the two of them as Ronja decides to move away from them all to Bodø in the remote Nordland county to train as a midwife (perhaps in an unacknowledged, unprocessed spirit of anger). The film, with heartfelt sweetness, finally shows the children starting to grow up and move on, while for Nik it is not so easy. And then, over the closing credits, the director springs what is effectively a brilliant, subtle, extra-textual coup de cinema; she directs the audience to Maria's website, perhaps in the knowledge that they might well read Maria's blogpost from June 2016, called The Letting Go, which will send you back to watch the film all over again. A deeply humane and emotionally literate piece of work. A New Kind of Wilderness is in UK and Irish cinemas from 16 May.
The Guardian
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Five Great Reads: a KGB ‘illegal' tells all, a cold case half-solved, and ‘the Citizen Kane of rock movies'
Top of the (long) weekend to you all. I trust Australian readers marked Good Friday in the traditional fashion: by complaining that nothing was open. Before you head to the shops to restock, here are some amazing tales to pore over. A young woman's body was found hanging from a pine tree in Portbou one morning in 1990. The position she was found in suggested she could not have got there alone but her death was ruled a suicide and the mystery girl's body was buried in a mass grave at the local cemetery. A 2022 true crime program revived interest in the case. An Austrian TV network broadcast a short follow-up segment. An Italian holidaying there with relatives emailed in a tip. The next day the Austrian show's director made a call to someone who had given up looking for answers. Art imitates life: The police officer turned author Rafael Jiménez in 2017 wrote a novel, imagining the girl's story, called The Hanging Bride in the Land of Wind. How long will it take to read: Twelve minutes. From smoked salmon to award-winning cheddar, luxury foodstuffs have become hot property for UK criminals. And the thieves – sophisticated and clearly 'specialists' in artisan produce, according to the victims – are using all the methods in the online scammers' toolbox to pull off their heists. Main character energy: In the most meta moment in Five Great Reads history, the aggrieved fishmonger in this story is Chris Swales (no relation, I think). How long will it take to read: Six minutes. Making the decision to send your children to school wouldn't be an inflection point in most films but it marks the moment the hero of A New Kind of Wilderness admits he can no longer cope. The documentary follows Nik Payne, who with his wife, Maria, was raising and home schooling their children in remote Norway – until cancer claimed Maria's life. Now the remaining Payne family are touring the world's film festivals, holding Q&As after screenings. They made the mistake the first time of sitting through A New Kind of Wilderness in full. As Patrick Barkham, who caught up with Nik Payne and his three children, writes: 'Watching him grieve on film is agonising.' 'It's part of you for ever but it's not the defining part.' – Nik Payne on grief. How long will it take to read: Four minutes. Sign up to Five Great Reads Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning after newsletter promotion If your father sat you down for a chat and that was his opening line, where would you mind race to? Were your parents breaking up? Were you really adopted? Peter Herrmann, 16, was finally about to learn the reason his father detested US pop music. Turns out dad was a deep-cover KGB spy, and that conversation was the catalyst for Herrmann's recruitment by Moscow as a second-generation 'illegal'. The man codenamed 'the Inheritor' shares the story of his brief career in espionage. How long will it take to read: Fourteen minutes. Further viewing: The Americans is somehow still one of the more slept-on shows of the prestige TV era. When you read the phrase 'the Citizen Kane of rock movies', what springs to mind – The Wall? Purple Rain? The film critic Mark Kermode was in fact referring to Slade in Flame, released in 1975 as a vehicle for the band behind such misspelled glam anthems as Cum On Feel the Noize. Featuring canal-side conversations about the meaningless of life amid pintloads of grimness, it tanked upon release. On the eve of its 50th anniversary re-release, the band and film-makers reflect on its favourable reassessment. How long will it take to read: Four minutes. Sneak preview: The film's trailer suggests it may have more in common with Ken Russell's Tommy than Orson Welles. Enjoying the Five Great Reads email? Then you'll love our weekly culture and lifestyle newsletter, Saved for Later. Sign up here to catch up on the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture, trends and tips for the weekend. And check out the full list of our local and international newsletters.
