Scandinavian cinema has its own unique atmosphere of cold comfort and sweetness. Green Butchers, being a black comedy about two not-so-normal friends plotting to open a butcher shop, looks surprisingly easy. The film does not hide special confusing plots, does not seek to shock or laugh to the core. The film is more like a subtle joke with eerie motives, slowly told by the fireplace in the cold winter. A small number of actors, a local scene, a calm pace and music enters the viewer into a fairly calm state that is not able to shake a certain number of corpses and murders.
The plot and motive of the picture is quite interesting. The show of friendship between two very strange, freakish people and how they support and help each other in the rest of the “normal” world is enhanced by the scene – a small Danish village, where the conflict of abnormality and quiet philistineism is especially visible.
Of the actors known to a wide audience, there is only a beautiful, young Mads Mikkelsen in a very unusual role for himself - so you have not yet seen him.
In general, I think the movie is perfect on a cold winter evening, when you just want to relax, as well as fans of Scandinavian cinema and Mikkelsen in particular.
About life, happiness and delicacies. Jensen retrospective. Part 3.
After I had the chance to watch the completely untypical ' Knights of Justice', I became interested in the director Andres Jensen. It's a very extraordinary handwriting. And a panopticum of completely crazy, but bizarre, and cute characters. I’ve heard of green butchers a decade ago. I remembered the image of Mads with baldness, and neurotic thinness. Already after reading the synopsis, I was surprised, a film about butchers, with a hint of dirty European cannibalism. But already having an idea of some features of the director's handwriting, I was preparing for the fact that the film would be atypical. That's what happened. For I was let into the world of lonely Denmark, somewhere in a parallel reality there is a neurotic, business-obsessed, and his friend in misfortune. And around there is a magnificent Gothic architecture in the spirit of surreal dams. A beautiful country where the traditional butcher business flourishes. Only the butcher suddenly realizes his own strength and self-confidence, and people begin to disappear in the district. Bon appetit.
Andres Jensen’s heroes are extraordinary by the standards of domestic morality. Who watches the film, and I am amazed how the types fit into the entourage of the local Denmark. But, against the background of the ideas of the average layman, the inhabitants of the worlds of Jensen are absolute marginals of life. The two butcher brothers do not represent opposites, but rather they both go with the flow on the way to such a conditional thing as happiness. And by virtue of a completely marginal concept, happiness for Swan is a world where he is respected. While Bjorn is not looking for anything in life, for he is disappointed, and by the nature of misanthrope. The initiation of the characters, Swan in particular, occurs through a characteristically ridiculous as life itself situation with a freezer. Here it seems to be time to sympathize, and call at a well-known address, but, as in life, dormant qualities awaken inside Swan in a miraculous way. Confidence, strength, and boldness. The butcher shop acquires the features of a strengthened ego and the place where a hitherto unknown feeling – a sense of happiness – was born. My turn to wonder, Mikkelsen disgusting and chic, does not fit into the image of the brutal knight of justice, or the refined tastes of a cannibal. Talent is multifaceted, and his Swan is a living embodiment of low self-esteem under the yoke of circumstances. And the other members of the ensemble are not inferior in originality. Typical villager Bjorn, obsessed with contempt for others, spends his days with taxidermy, and dates with no less colorful friend.
The world of Jensen is a world of people thrown out of sight, people with strange hobbies and means of earning money. Not pretty, but painfully real. Although the whole world around them is screaming about the grotesque, the whole nature of the characters suggests that they live next to us, and this may well have happened. What's the fault? That's right, the desire to be happy is what every living person deserves, and no matter how much sweat is shed, happiness finds itself suddenly, and spreads unexpectedly.
Green Butchers is a black comedy drama from Anders Thomas Jensen, better known as a screenwriter than a director. “The Butchers” became the second full-length film of a young Dane by directorial standards.
Lonely people
Almost all the heroes of Jensen are united by loneliness, the presence of ghosts of the past, as well as the search and attempt to understand themselves and what is happening around.
In "Green Butchers" he uses his favorite technique, which is traced by the director from film to film, namely the clash between opposites. For example, in Adam’s Apples (in my opinion, his best work at the moment), Jensen throws a neo-Nazi atheist into an environment where he needs to communicate with a priest and a refugee, with all the ensuing consequences.
In "Green Butchers" in the foreground conflict of two twin brothers. In the role of both wonderful actor – Nikolai Li Kaas. One is the shaved-headed Bjarne, whose profession is a butcher. After a serious accident that occurred through the fault of his brother and took the lives of relatives and friends, he has serious problems in communicating with people, and as a hobby collects the skeletons of various animals and birds. The second - Eigil, became disabled after the accident, his main hobby in the "new" life - collecting toy animals.
Weak-minded Eigil tries to find a rapprochement with his brother, while Bjorn tries his best to fence himself off from him with a wall. Not so much because of dementia as because of a reminder of the past. The link between them is the girl with whom Bjorn falls in love.
Super Mads
The situation in the "Green Butchers" is aggravated by Bjorn's partner in the butcher business - Svend, performed by the incomparable Mads Mikkelson. The character of Super Mads is another, deeply lonely, "Jensen hero." What did not beat Svend his peers in childhood, and in adult life, the boy turned out to be an unloved, useless man, who, in addition to all the problems, was also abandoned by his wife. What is the problem with mental illness?
As a result, there was another great role of Mads Mikkelsen, who gained the greatest fame in the world on the series Hannibal. Unfortunately, I have not yet had time to get acquainted with this creation, but I am sure that it was in the “Green Butchers” that the talent of the actor was honed for the subsequent role of a maniac-cannibal.
Delicacy from killers
So, the outcast butcher throws all his remaining psychological energy into opening his own butcher shop, attracting only the lost Bjorn to the cause. Thus, the partners rush into all the difficult work of the butcher. In this field, the duo manages to bypass the brutality of the murders of many famous mobsters and maniacs from famous films, as well as feed thousands of their neighbors in the city themselves. The composure of Danish green butchers could easily be envied even by Tony Soprano if he accidentally visited our heroes.
Evaluation
The whole action is served with Jensen’s inherent uncompromising black humor and irony. Despite the terrible nature of what is happening, the film is not full of hard scenes and blood streams. “Green Butchers” is not a diary of serial maniacs, but an attempt by the director to tell us about ordinary people. People who are trying to solve their problems and find themselves in life. And let Jensen’s characters resort to strange methods for this, but we should not forget that the characters are thrown into these conditions with only one purpose – to make the viewer interesting, and also leave topics for reflection aftertaste.
I don't want to see people.
- Do not enter the freezer.
Anders Thomas Jensen probably has a twenty-fifth frame in the movies, because I can't understand why the hell they're so funny, even though there's nothing really funny going on there. All right, just look at the hairstyle of Sven (Mads) to understand: a person who can come up with a character such a hairstyle is capable of anything.
The story is about two loser butchers who decide to start their own business and rise above a hurtful former boss. Björn is a little shaken and battered by life, he just needs some outlet, something meaningful, and Sven is a deeply offended neurotic who needs to prove everything and gain universal respect.
And like well, they started normally, but because the electrician froze in the refrigerator, the former boss came to mock, Sven was nervous and everything was wrapped up.
No sooner had Björn opened his mouth and said: “Kaarl, we have a dead man in the kitchen!” (c), as the queue for the man (who knew!) lined up almost a block. And you could calm down on one electrician, noo... spoilers.
And as Jensen always does, everybody's good, but Mads is great. That is, to meet his character in real life – in the minibus you will not even sit next to him. Or rather, so: in a minibus this is just the guy who in thirty-degree heat demands to close the window, or he blows. He is nasty, he is boring and picky, with a terrible inferiority complex and a painful desire to assert himself. He tyrannizes his woman and immediately whines and presses on pity ... but it is interesting to watch him, you even empathize with him, his desire to be loved and respected is so insanely and grotesquely expressed. Here he stands behind the counter, talks to customers about the weather, smiles and he is already a person, no one else gnaws or despises him, everyone loves his store. What does it take to make sure this holiday doesn’t end?
That’s right, sell more delicious meat that everyone likes.
Björn's line is not so crazy, but it has its own heavy, sad conflict. If Sven's story is about acknowledging and believing in oneself, it's about forgiveness and believing in others. How difficult it is to forgive.
How do you turn it all into a comedy? What kind of morality is there to draw? How the hell do you make a movie like that?
But Jensen can. And he does.
And the secret of popularity is not in human meat, but in the marinade, which Sven masterfully prepares. But he does not even think that they can love him, just for what he himself invented and did. It is easier for him to imagine the whole city as latent cannibals than for himself to achieve something. And it's fucking touching with all the black people.
There's nothing funny about the movie. And what involuntarily caused laughter ... shameful and sorry to laugh at it.
It's a miracle movie, Miracle! It's a miracle!
Humanity, namely humanity, forgiveness, kindness, and the Real Miracle!
Everything is shot very well, believe not only every frame, but every frame seems to itself. Every moment is soaked in its own juice, and in what, so many emotions cause, touch well.
In some places a terrible film, one Mikkelsen with a half-shaven, unshaven hairstyle, what is worth!
The actor’s eyebrows are so light that you can’t see them. But with that hair, he looks like an alien! Definitely the worst, but it shows the condition and pain of the hero, his difficulties.
"That's why I'm so thin." I had nothing to eat until I became a butcher.
Like a horror (conditionally), but with a touch of drama, and a very strong touch.
Yes, no, not a horror movie, in fact, "The Green Butchers" is a chic and still kind drama.
Cinema smells very much not only meat, but the real life!
That's what art should be, it's amazing. It hurts and hurts a lot!
P.S. It's an incredible, just amazingly bright movie, the light is breaking through, it finds its way! Don't believe it, then look!
A fairy tale of phantasmagoria about the butchers Sven and Björn, who sell human meat in a marinade under the guise of chicken.
This is a fairy tale, a terrible Scandinavian legend about cannibals - but rewritten by a Christian storyteller. Monsters have tender hearts, love atones for evil, and our sins are paid for and forgiven.
In the film, topical themes are intertwined with eternal ones: the value of life and euthanasia, the illusion of death and organ transplantation, teenage violence and brotherly love. What is the story of the twin Björn Eigel, who want to disconnect from the machine artificial respiration, because he died brain. But since Eigel is mentally retarded, brain death does not prevent him from getting off the surgical table and going to change his brother's life for the better. Cannibalism should not be taken literally. In the films of Anders Thomas Jensen, dubious truths are often carried by people who work with bodies - butchers, bandits, doctors, hunters - as opposed to priests and gardeners who protect and cultivate miracles.
In each film, the director strives to say a lot, easily sacrificing laconicism. If you are looking for style in a high sense, then it is not here: Jensen is more suitable for the words “original” and “original”. Don't expect "Green Butchers" black gags in the style of "Hands and Feet for Love" or the surreal brilliance of "Delicates." It's a specific local product on the Danish menu, as are the Dogma Project films. Jensen’s magical stories are stylistically opposed to the ruthlessly realistic close-ups of Dogma, but in content only complement them: it is not for nothing that he wrote the script for “Open Hearts” by Susanne Beer.
And lastly, if Jensen’s butchers figured out that the secret to success is a great marinade, then the movie itself is good because of the meat. I mean the cast, whose marvelous performance atones for some of the script's pretentiousness. To fans of Mas Mikkelson, I especially recommend this film: his creepy Sven is discharged with such humor and drama that each episode with him becomes a small audience celebration.
A very gentle, touching film and these words are said without any quotation marks because to understand the works of Anders Thomas Jensen, you need to see at least a few of his paintings, of which unfortunately not so much, but a pity. He is a very subtle master of his craft, a real artist, whose humor is worthy of praise and a genuine smile, his humor did not send, and not even cruel, as many people perceive, he simply shows life, if you can put it in all truth, as it is without concealment - simple and complex, living and dead, eternal unity and struggle of opposites. His characters, they are inherently metaphorical, and they do not look like passers-by that surround us, but who will give a guarantee for what is hidden inside an individual, and Anders Thomas Jensen does the main thing, he turns the human inside out, emphasize the Human essence in his characters, showing it to the viewer. Remember “Beauty and the Beast”, so its heroes are just that “Monster”, in which lives a kind, responsive, easily vulnerable and even a very weak heart, despite all its threatening appearance.
When the French introduced such a term as author’s cinema, where the director’s handwriting is much more important than the entire eminent team of professionals and specialists making albeit expensive, very popular, commercial, but without a soul cinema, so in this film there is a soul and believe me, it will make you smile and laugh to tears, and empathize and maybe even think about what is still such true happiness for a person.
A slow, pastoral and reliable story about ordinary people who do not easily earn their own bread. The title characters, two of them, are shown with love, but without sentiment, gloomy, stiff, raw men, somehow made and somehow living in this world, in the characteristic half-sleep of reason, as well as the dream of reason that gives birth to monsters - are there few of them on the streets, in dwellings and trolley buses? One, by the way, suddenly looked like Mayakovsky! The calm, thoughtful good nature in depicting two colleagues, knife and axe workers, makes the picture existential and philosophical. All moralizing is superfluous here: watch and be horrified if you are horrified. Oh, those lethargically good-natured, unhurried monsters, clumsy grown-up kids! Do you want meat? - I want meat. Bon appetit.