Quisling: The Final Days - 2025 HURTIGRUTEN SCANDINAVIAN FILM FESTIVAL
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https://www.palacefilms.com.au/quisling-the-final-days
Date Reviewed: 02/07/2025
“Rewriting the story to fit your twisted world view”
Quisling: The Final Days (Norwegian – Quislings siste dager) is a Norwegian-language film directed by Erik Poppe, focusing on Vidkun Quisling’s life in the final days before his trial and execution in October 1945. Much like Poppe’s earlier work The King’s Choice, which portrays Norway’s unpreparedness in the face of German invasion, Quisling delivers a chilling look at a pivotal moment in WWII Norwegian history.
Vidkun Quisling (played by Gard B. Eidsvold) is the film’s narrative focus, with Pastor Peder Olsen (Anders Danielsen Lie) orbiting around him. Eidsvold gives a masterful, controlled performance that resists caricature. His portrayal, especially opposite Lisa Carlehed as Maria Quisling, is restrained yet deeply affecting. This Vidkun Quisling is not the mad-eyed dictator stereotype of other WWII films, but a broken, delusional man stumbling through historical events rather than shaping them. Even his recollections of meeting Hitler are unsettlingly mundane, a striking contrast to the mythos surrounding the Führer.
Crucially, the film never seeks to justify Quisling’s actions. It offers no sanitizing of his collaboration. We are shown none of the "work for Norway" he claims to have done. Instead, the film exposes the twisted roots of his betrayal, his misguided idealism, the influence of his wife, and most importantly, his irrational fear of “bolshevism.”
However, where Quisling falters is in presenting a credible ideological alternative. Though Peder Olsen is a compelling figure, he lacks the moral conviction to serve as a true counterweight to Quisling’s fascism. His most powerful moment, questioning Quisling with the line, “How could you even think you knew what Norway needed?” hangs unanswered. There is no real response to this question, and Poppe spends too much of the film shaming Vidkun rather than trying to actually provide a viable alternative to his radical far-right values.
Yet despite this shortcoming, Quisling: The Final Days excels in portraying Quisling as a symbol of national betrayal. Poppe reminds us that while far-right ideologies may threaten nations, they cannot ultimately override an individual’s morals and ethics. In the end, Vidkun Quisling breaks down and begs mercy from God. In his own way, the dictator admits defeat.