On March 26th, My brother is a Viking (trailer), the last feature film by Anders Thomas Jensen starring Mads Mikkelsen, presented Fuori Contest in Venice 82.
Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) is a robber who, before entering prison for fifteen years, entrusts Manfred (Mikkelsen) the task of burying a loot of millions of crowns. Uncounted the penalty, the man is determined to recover the money but Manfred is not collaborative, in fact the absence of his brother has worsened his mental health conditions: now he is convinced to be John Lennon.
© Rolf Konow
The film opens and closes with an animated sequence that tells the story of Baldur, a Viking warrior who lost his arm during a battle. Derived and excluded from his community, the father, head of the village, decides to make up forcing all inhabitants to mutilate themselves in turn in the motto “if we are all menomati is not really nobody”, introducing the theme of diversity that characterizes My brother is a Viking.
In fact, the film explores the subjective concept of diversity by presenting us a whole series of outsiders: a psychiatrist proposes that Manfred/John reshape the Beatles with other patients with the same dissociative personality disorder. I thank, a mute boy, and Paul/George, a Swedish obsessed with the Holocaust become the adventure companions of a crazy and reckless musical and therapeutic project. In his absurdity, the psychiatrist in fact suggests to Anker that allowing Manfred’s fantasies his recovery will be faster.
Jensen spares no one, from disability, mental illness, child abuse to violence against women with ironic purposes, Scandinavian humor shoots zero on Western policy by proposing a reading without filters. If on the one hand the operation seems also interesting, on the other hand the message of the film is not very clear because first it seems to criticize those who abide every kind of diversity from the “absurd” manifestations, then after celebrating the inclusivity simply accepting the existence of the different. Also the mix between cynical dementia and extremely sentimental moments makes it a little balanced film of which at times it is difficult to perceive genuineness.
© Rolf Konow
The growth parable of the protagonist Anker who indulges his brother to pocket money instead to reconnect with him a healthy relationship is not supported enough by the script, which is affected by this alternation of registers. In some moments, especially melensi flashbacks show the difficult past of the two brothers heavily abused by the father who did not accept Manfred’s diversity. Anker ends up rediscovering his most caring part of his older brother who seems to have completely lost as an adult, but the narrative passage is little fluid and progressive.
Mads Mikkelsen at the sixth collaboration with the director disappears behind Manfred’s character, giving life to a last unsuited but incredibly cunning, straluted and in need of love returning to his Scandinavian debuts (like Adam’s Apples of the same director). The good support cast gives rise to a somewhat sbile comedy but from solid interpretations, creating a colorful ensemble that turns out to be the best part of the whole feature film.
© Plaion Pictures
The point of the film seems to be that diversity depends on the context in which one lives and only finding one’s own community is able to accept it without subduing it but the history of the Viking which acts as a frame is in contrast with this kind of reasoning: it does not seem particularly intelligent that all the villagers – as the final says – are beheaded to each other because the boss’s son died beheaded.
My brother is a Viking is a black comedy with a classic Scandinavian taste that addresses the theme of diversity without throwing an incisive message.
L’articolo My brother is a Viking – the review: the incorrect comedy that does not go to the point proviene da Dituttounpop.it.
