In Praise of the Danish Screen

In Praise of the Danish Screen: Walk With Me and The Guilty

The Canadian Film Institute’s 33^rd European Union Film Festival wrapped today presenting excellent features from 27 of 28 member countries. (See all titles and descriptions at: 

https://www.cfi-icf.ca/euff.  The UK has not participated since the 2016 Brexit vote.)

I was able to see 20, and in addition had already seen Cold War (Poland) and Transit (Germany), both by master filmmakers, at the Toronto film festival (see previous post).

            The one I was most struck by was the Danish entry Walk with Me (not to be confused with the eponymous 2017 documentary about a Zen Buddhist community). Tiny Denmark punches way above its weight when it comes to both the big and the small screen.  Borgen (Danish for “government”) sounds dull but is the best ever made-for-television contemporary (2010-2013) political drama series. There is an abundance of film talent beyond the works of internationally acclaimed directors such as Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, and Susanne Bier.

    

Walk With Me  (Denmark/Sweden/France 2016)

Directed by Lisa Ohlin, the film begins in the poppy fields of Helmand province Afghanistan when Thomas (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard), a 25-year old gung-ho Danish soldier on patrol, steps on a landmine that destroys his legs. Surviving as a double amputee he tries to maintain a macho military pose, egging on an army buddy to return to the battlefield.  But as reality sets in, and his girlfriend deserts him, he faces another personal battlefield, beyond overcoming the agonizing physical challenge of learning to walk on prosthetic legs.  While in hospital he is introduced to Sofie (Cecilie Lassen), a principal dancer with the Royal Danish Ballet, who is there for an aunt dying of cancer. The gradual bond that forms between them becomes central to his recovery and the emotional saving grace that prevents him from becoming a suicide statistic.  Thomas has to come to terms with many hard truths, including that a young Afghan boy he thought he had befriended may have placed the mine. Sofie’s touch helps him adjust to a completely new life.  This is a convincingly realistic post-traumatic story told with immense feeling and sensitivity—without any melodramatic musical score and not a trace of sentimentality. A

The Guilty  https://www.theguiltyfilm.com/

Director Gustav Möller’s debut feature premiered at the 2018 Sundance film festival where it won the world cinema audience award, most deservingly.  The film ratchets up the suspense of a homicide thriller and kidnapping in progress even though the camera stays in one room focused, often in extreme close-up, on one character, Copenhagen police officer Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren), assigned to phone duty in an emergency services call centre as a result of his involvement in the fatal shooting of a young man. The night before a key court hearing he takes a call from a frightened woman named Iben.  From her quavering dissembling voice inside a vehicle it appears she has been abducted by a vengeful ex-partner Michael, leaving a terrified young daughter at the home with a baby brother.  Asger tries to keep her on the line to identify the vehicle to dispatch a police unit, and also speaks with the daughter to try to calm her and send police to the home.  He also gets hold of his police partner Rashid, who must testify at the next day’s hearing, and has him break into Michael’s residence for clues about the vehicle’s destination. As the tension rises, there’s a heart-stopping moment that flips everything on its head and will lead to a desperate confession to prevent a suicide.  Throughout the only face we see is Asger’s; the others are only voices on a phone line.  Yet this is as intense a psychological crime thriller as any I have seen.  A  

(*Worth noting is another Sundance award winner, Searching, also a disturbing and surprising psychological police thriller, told entirely through computer screens.)