What 'The Worst Person in the World' Gets Right About a Late-Stage Cancer Diagnosis

On screen

"The Worst Person in the World" is Joachim Trier's 2021 Oscar-nominated film. It follows Julie (Renate Reinsve) through her thirties as she moves between jobs, identities, and relationships. For much of the film, Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie) is her partner. He's a comic artist fifteen years older than her, and the partner she's trying to outgrow. She leaves him for a younger man, Eivind.

Late in the film, Julie learns from Aksel's brother that he has inoperable pancreatic cancer. The diagnosis comes without warning, as it often does for real patients and families. Julie ended the relationship, but she starts spending time with Aksel again. She visits childhood places with him. She photographs him. She sits with him as his condition worsens. He tells her she'd have been a good mother. Julie learns she's pregnant, but miscarries the night he's expected to die. Illness becomes the moment when both of them face the life they didn't build together.

The reality

The film's broad strokes match how the National Cancer Institute (NCI) describes pancreatic cancer. Early-stage disease "typically produces no warning signs," NCI says. The pancreas sits deep in the belly, behind other organs. That makes it hard to spot a tumor through routine exams. By the time symptoms do show up — yellow skin, pale stools, dark urine, belly pain, weight loss with no clear reason, loss of appetite, fatigue — the disease has often grown. NCI notes that pancreatic cancer "can be controlled only if it is found before it has spread, when it can be completely removed by surgery." For many patients, that's no longer possible by the time they're diagnosed.

The film doesn't state Aksel's exact age, but he's shown as a man likely in his forties. Pancreatic cancer grows more common as people get older, though it does happen in younger and middle-aged adults too. NCI lists risk factors including smoking, extra body weight, diabetes, long-term pancreas inflammation, and inherited conditions like Lynch syndrome or hereditary breast/ovarian cancer syndrome. The film never says which, if any, applied to Aksel. That's realistic too, since many patients have no clear cause.

Treatment for pancreatic cancer has truly moved forward. Surgery (including the Whipple procedure), chemo, radiation, and combinations of these remain the backbone of care. Newer targeted therapies aim at the KRAS gene change, present in roughly nine of ten pancreatic cancers. These are now reaching patients with advanced disease through expanded-access programs. Still, NCI's tone is careful, not triumphant. Outcomes depend heavily on whether the tumor is found early enough to remove.

Where the story compresses

Films compress illness into a few scenes, and "The Worst Person in the World" is no different. Aksel's decline plays out over what feels like a short stretch of the film's runtime. Real pancreatic cancer, even advanced cases, usually unfolds over months. It involves many rounds of treatment decisions, scans, and stretches of relative stability that a two-hour film has no room to show.

The film also skips almost all of the real machinery of a diagnosis: staging scans, biopsy, meetings with the cancer team, talk of clinical trials. That's a fair choice for the story. It cares about what the diagnosis does to Aksel and Julie's relationship, not medical procedure. But it means viewers shouldn't treat the film as a guide to what a real diagnosis involves.

What to keep in perspective

• Pancreatic cancer is often found late because early symptoms are vague or absent — this is a real and well-documented pattern, not just a dramatic device.
• A diagnosis at any age can prompt intense reassessment of relationships and past choices, as the film portrays, but real timelines and treatment decisions are typically more drawn out than a film can show.
• Treatment options, including newer targeted therapies, continue to develop. A diagnosis today is not identical to what it was even a few years ago, though prognosis still depends heavily on how early the cancer is found.

Sources

• National Cancer Institute, "Pancreatic Cancer"
• National Cancer Institute, "Pancreatic Cancer Treatment (PDQ)"
• Wikipedia, "The Worst Person in the World"

How this article was prepared

An AI-assisted editorial system helped prepare this page. No named medical reviewer has reviewed it unless one is listed.

Cancer Explained is published by the National Cancer Information Foundation. It is not medical advice and does not suggest a test or treatment.

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