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tariboventola
I am an 21-year-old Dane (as of 2005), studying economics at �rhus School of business. Very interested in films!
Reviews
Olsen-banden går amok (1973)
Balling making another classic
The Olsen-bang-movies, some 13-14 in total, are classics; Having a cartoonish, sometimes subtle sometimes overdone, humour than the wide audience, at least in Denmark, will laugh at.
It's about some pathetic small-time criminals - living a low-life bourgouise life - wanting to make it big. The story lines seldom deviate from this; Egon, the leader of the gang, is released from prison, where he has thought out a plan of genius; A meticulously crafted plan, where everything fits like in a swiss-made clockwork. The two sidekicks, The tall and talkative Benny and the shy and fat Kjeld, follow is every direction, but usually make some mistake that puts the whole plan to a downfall. During the film Egon usually bawl the sidekicks out, his favourite terms of abuse being Hængerøvs (wet rags), elendige amatører (miserable amateurs) and the like, and is given multiple chances of stealing the money from the, often, international gangster of the movie.
This particular one is no exception, but now, when Egon is released, the rest of the gang has actually found jobs! A little social realism is introduced explicitly, but not overshadowingly.
The humour is at the center. Characteristic roles of Axel Strøbye, as the Chief detective inspector, the drunken Preben Kaas, and Kjeld's wife Kirsten Walther lifts it up.
A great and fun movie, but of course not more than that
Allegro (2005)
Original, complex and compelling
Following the Cannes Camera D'or winner, "Reconstruction", Danish director Christopher Boe has made a new unusual film:
Allegro
Filmed primarily with hand-held camera, the picture is almost as gritty as some Dogme 95-movies. The camera is slightly shaky and keeps fast-zooming at faces all through the movie: Faces are important. Looks are important. Ulrich Thompsen (The Celebration) is the main character, the pianist Zetterstrøm, who is the person, around whom the film centers. Zetterstrøm is not really living life and playing piano, rather he is playing piano and living life through his piano. He is the archetypical introverted person, who lives in his own world, keeping distance to other people and of course love. A chance meeting with a beautiful woman, played by Danish supermodel Helena Christensen, alters his life, but his unbalanced self cannot truly recognize or accept his own feelings, so they part.
10 years later - the movies starts. A voice-over by Henning Moritzen (The Celebration, Cries and Whispers) tells us that Zetterstrøm has forgotten about his past, that he is even more secluded from the world of feelings and drawn into perfecting his piano playing. The Voice-over is also a character in the film - Tom, in all probability some fictitious person made by Zetterstrøms own mind.
Tom wants Zetterstrøm to retrieve his lost memory. This is the central quest of the film.
Materialized in the middle of Copenhagen is The Zone - the area, where Zetterstrøm and the woman parted has now turned into a deserted zone, where people can't enter. The "walls" of the zone can't be entered. The Zone is a picture - something you can see, but not touch. The Zone is Zetterstrøms memory, his past.
An abstract story now unfolds, as Tom and his assistant invites Zetterstrøm back to Copenhagen, where he gets the chance of entering The Zone. On a semi-realistic level, Zetterstrøm returns to Copenhagen to play a concert - and this mix of abstraction, materialized psychology and realism continues throughout. --
The voice-over is constantly guiding us, but as it is also analyzing the immediate situation for us, we as audience have to think ahead of it; There's more to the film, than the voice-over tells us. The mood is very dark, very abstract - the intro somehow reminds of Bergmans "Persona", although not as Freudian in it's symbols - and the film seems very focused. It has a nostalgic feeling to it - Zetterstrøm wandering alone in a secluded world, as walking in his own self. The symbols are everywhere - symbols of past, symbols of love, symbols of frame of mind. It's very scary, although funny at certain points - the script is done by Danish stand-up comedian and quite intelligent-wise gifted, Michael Wulff (who worked with Boe on an Art House comedy-series called "Kissmeyer Basic"). The humour may be thought of as getting the mood in imbalance one or two times, but otherwise it's quite nice.
The acting is superb. Ulrich is playing his favourite kind of role - introverted, mostly quiet and Bill Murray-like, sometimes shouting. His play opposite Helena, making her debut on the big screen, is fabulous - she really has the perfect eyes and voice for this dream-like character. Also Henning Moritzen is perfect as The all-knowing guy, who is teasing us.
Not flawless, but this movie is yet an interesting film from the new major upcoming danish film director, Christopher Boe.
Highly Recommended: 8/10
Drabet (2005)
Fly's third and final part of the Trilogy about the tragedy of the middle class
Although not a class society in the classical sense, Director Per Fly has depicted the struggles, troubles and worries of the underclass, the middle class and the upper-class of modern Denmark in a trilogy consisting of "Bænken (The Bench)", "Arven (The Inheritance)" and "Drabet (The killing / The murder / The homocide)". While the environments, the surroundings and the living standards of the different classes clearly differ, the true problems that the persons encounter are essentially somewhat the same.
"Drabet" has the middle class as it's point of departure. A grammar school (or senior high school) teacher lives in Copenhagen together with his Swedish wife. Their son, being as old as the students the father teaches, has moved out with a girlfriend. On the surface everything seems idyllic, but things aren't going well at all. The main character, Carsten, is having an affair with an old student, who is approximately of the same age as his son. Being an old left-wing activist, Carsten's life is given a new meaning with the entrance of this young, leftist girl in his life, but his dual role is pushed to an ultimatum when the girl and two other activists kill a police officer in a hit-and-run after a vandalism action. The three get arrested and Carsten chooses to abandon his "supposed" dull life with his wife in favour of supporting the girl in prison. He begs her not to confess to the police who drove the car in order for her not to be convicted for premeditated murder.
From this point on a number of plot twists throws the main character into many moral dilemmas. In pursuit of personal happiness and meaning of life, he realizes (too) late what his actions have had of consequences. When he realizes his mistakes, is it too late for him to turn things around? Can he be redeemed? Can he redeem himself? The style of filming has strong resemblance to the other two films: The mood and dialogue are realistic depicted; There is a focus on emotions through the characters' eyes. The down-to-earth filming is contrasted, but also paralleled, with some 4 dream-like sequences of the main character jumping of a cliff with a parachute, falling, falling with the green land on the one hand and the endless sea on the other - which way will he end? In one sequence his parachute catches fire, but it's only a dream! In the end he lands on the land. But he is all alone.
The actors do a great job. It is however, funny if not silly, why the main character has this Swedish speaking wife, as was the case in "Arven", which is probably a requirement from the sponsor, Svensk Filmindustri (SFI) in order to be able to hit wide on the Swedish market as well. Many scenes are so emotional intense that you feel like curling your toes, but the camera has no mercy, it just keeps filming: We have to sit through the long sequence where the wife finds out about the affair, the sequence where the dead police officer's wife screams at the top her voice in court, the sequence where the main character tells an old friend to keep out of his life. The best scenes in the film are the one without dialogue - the silence is so effectful. Kudo to Jesper Christensen for pulling an amazing performance, almost on par with the sublime one he made in "Bænken".
Fly's "Drabet" can both be seen as social realism, poking to a middle class in Denmark that Has It All, but forgets how to live life, be happy and protect the true values in life, but also a story of ordinary people put in extreme situations. The film has a nice ambiguous ending, although clearly the most optimistic of the three films. What I particularly like about the film is that it isn't moralizing, but it indeed tells a lot about society and hopefully make us re-evaluate our own lives.
The trilogy will be remembered for many years and will hopefully mark a fine start in a long and great film career from director Per Fly.
Strongly Recommended; Rating: 8/10