The Worst Person in the World · reception & legacy
2021 · Joachim Trier
How The Worst Person in the World has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
No reappraisal needed — it detonated at Cannes 2021 (Best Actress for Renate Reinsve), rode the wave to two Oscar nominations, and within a year had hardened into *the* millennial movie of the decade. If anything the arc runs the other way: so instantly beloved that the backlash cycle started early.
What's debated
The perennial fight is over Julie herself — is the film a tender portrait of drift or a flattering mirror for commitment-phobes, and does she even remotely earn that title?
Its footprint
The frozen-time sequence — Julie sprinting through a paused Oslo — became one of the most gif'd, screenshotted romantic images of the 2020s, and the title itself turned into self-deprecating shorthand for captioning your own worst behaviour.
Where it stands
The capstone of Trier's Oslo Trilogy (after Reprise and Oslo, August 31st) and a stone-cold Letterboxd favourite — arguably the defining 'sad millennial' canon entry of its era.
Named by the director
Influences Joachim Trier has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.
- Eden (2014) — Trier cited Mia Hansen-Løve's film as an inspiration for how to condense years of a life into a sophisticated structure.
- The Age of Innocence (1993) — Trier pointed to Scorsese's literary voiceover as the model for the film's omniscient narrator.
- Éric Rohmer — Trier named Rohmer as a touchstone for finding the big questions of love inside everyday moments.
- Paul Mazursky — Trier praised Mazursky's humanist comedies as a tonal model — a playful, humoristic edge on serious subject matter.
- George Cukor — Trier cited Cukor's screwball comedies as a reference point for playing with the romantic-comedy tradition.