At first glance, this movie is full of mad characters. A brain-damaged guy overcaring for animals so much that he kills almost all of his family in a car incident on a trip to a zoo just to save a life of a deer. Afterwards his brother starts to hunt animals and collect their skeletons at his home until he's forced to become a butcher to tame his insane hobby. Then a priest who ate his own wife. And a few other personages with similar deviations...
Nice people aren't they? After a friend of the ex-hunter starts to kill people in order to spice up meat products at their butcher shop, the plot seems to go way far from sanity and common sense. You may begin wondering what the point of the film actually is?
Don't be mistaken here. A popular today (esp. in modern Asian cinema) genre of trash-horror doesn't apply to this movie at all. Neither do bare 'drama' or 'comedy' as specified at IMDb, in my opinion. I'd call it a black Scandinavian comedy. Maybe even a black ironic Scandinavian comedy.
So what's the irony, anyway? As I see it, the message is simple: there's not a single sane person in this world. Everyone is crazy in one way or another. To a smaller or larger degree. And this movie, being an act of art, simply utilizes hyperbole to present the idea.
How could one live in such a crazy society? Watch the movie to see how it resolves. In a nutshell, we just have to put up with the fact and accept people as they are. We should remember that we ourselves can look insane in other people's eyes. And that's OK.
To my surprise, both brothers mentioned above have been played by the same actor - Nikolaj Lie Kaas. I didn't even realize that until I watched the movie and took a look at the film credits. Wonderful performance, in my opinion.
This is an ode to imagination. Kid's imagination, to be precise. Have you ever noticed that children are much more imaginative than adults? Duh! And yet, the way this movie depicts this subject is just brilliant.
The most exciting scene is when Will, the principal character, accidentally watches First Blood (1982) at friend's place, and on a way back home he imagines himself being Rambo running through the fields and "shooting" imaginary creatures all around him! :) Next time he's taken home by a priest, and, while watching at the window from a back seat of the car, he sees imaginary laser beams and cartoon explosions happening by the road. Also, his notebook (a paper one, the movie is set in the beginning of 1980's) is full of drawings which, when turning the pages quickly enough, transform to a moving picture.
Such an extreme level of imagination is possible because kids aren't limited by social norms, moral dogmas, or, after all, by the science itself. The more we educate ourselves, the more often the knowledge we've acquired evidences that there are boundaries in what can be done in reality and what cannot. Growing up, we tend to avoid even thinking of that infeasible stuff.
For instance, take a flying dog, huh? First it appears in Will's drawings. Then Lee, his friend, steals a clay dog, attaches deltaplane's wing to it, and voilà, they've got a dog that can fly for real! What mess that experiment brings in real life is another story, though. :)
While education helps us understand what technically can or can not be done, norms and dogmas, on the other hand, teach us what may not be done [1]. Where do the norms and dogmas come from? You could have guessed already - the religion, where else? Like in my previous review of a short Timothy and the World of Tomorrow (2010), this feature film deals with parents who, being religious, project their rules onto their children. Watching TV is banned, friendship with faithless schoolmates is prohibited. Just constraints, and no way to develop one's creativity.
However, Will's sincere friendship with Lee, their common interest in filming a remake of First Blood together, and finally, his everlasting energy help Will break through the restrictive rules. There's no way to keep a kid away from dreaming!
Since the film depicts 1980's, the soundtrack pleases us with a lot of New Wave music, and tunes by The Cure in particular. Spectacular acting by Bill Milner as Will must be mentioned as well. I've seen him in Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010), Mixtape (2009), and he always makes a great performance. This amazing move is not an exception.
An artsy guy experiencing insomnia finds inspiration in dreams about naked women's bodies while he works nightshifts in a supermarket. I guess I've just told you the whole storyline in just one sentence. :) Blame me not, since the most interesting part of the movie is in the details, but the story itself is as stupid and absurd as stated above.
Actually, apart from camera work (worth noting that some of it resembles that seen in Vertigo (1958)), there isn't much to mark. Perhaps the most important part is how this movie depicts the process of creating art. An artists has to virtually freeze the time to make out features of a person, a place, a circumstance, or whatever else they want to devote their piece of art to.
While looking through the features, the artist chooses either beautiful and perfect, or bizarre and weird ones. Finally, these features are layered on a "canvas", perhaps undergoing through hyperbolization, metaphorization, or some other sort of transformation. I put the word "canvas" in quotes because the process applies to any form of art actually, be it paintings, literature, or, say, music.
Note that there's also a short version of the movie: Cashback (2004), however, it doesn't carry the same amount of meaning as the full one. Basically it looks simply like a short comedy. Although some people may start with the short film first and consider it as a teaser for the full version (that was my case, actually.)
What's it like to befriend someone? First you challenge the person to determine whether they're tough or gentle enough. Then you verify if you can trust them. And finally... well, you've become friends already! But here comes the most troublesome part: quarrels, betrayals, or simply disappointment. Can these obstacles ruin the friendship? Or do they build it up actually?
Quite unusual, this story depicts relationship between two schoolgirls Rikke and Bea. One would never guess that girls can be as crazy as boys: they play with matches setting a school building on fire, come running through the opposite sex locker room, and what not! Besides at the age of 13 they start to become sort of obsessed with boys which only complicates the story. Not to mention their relations with siblings and parents.
I like Scandinavian (and Northern European in general) realism: they tend to present people and situations in movies much like they're found in real life. Just take the father of the family for example: oh, there's some problem at home? He puts on his cycling suit and goes ride a bike. "I need some fresh air" - that's the only answer to Rikke's question on "what's the matter with my mom and sister?" Adults complicate teens' lives so very often...
The title of the movie doesn't mean, of course, that making friends is any different at other age. It's just that teenagers first realize how complex and multi-layered relations with other people are. Going through all the difficulties, Rikke and Bea end up being the best friends. They've learned a good lesson. Now it's time to move on. So, goodbye 13! :)
I guess it's getting a bit dark here. Let's have some fun with this bright story for a while. Unlike modern comedies, this movie doesn't contain any toilet humor. A tiny teaser:
- It's 2 o'clock in the morning and all this loud music around. How are people supposed to sleep here? - ??? Together!
:) Well, yeah, the sex theme is present in almost all American movies, but in 50's it wasn't as explicitly expressed as it is today.
There's plenty of jokes there. Just look at what 8 yo Nando does to take another cigarette puff. He'll even cry on his aunt's shoulder while smoking her cigarette! What a smart kid! :)
If one wants to relax and have fun, this movie is worth watching.
