oxymoron The Danish Escape, if not the main film of last year, then at least its main oxymoron. Nominated for a number of awards in two categories, as best dock and animation, it is only for this reason stops the attention. It cannot be said that such precedents have not happened before. At the end of the zeros, two notable animated films came out one by one - Persipolis (2007) Marjan Satrapi about the escape of a young Iranian woman from Tehran to Europe and Waltz with Bashir (2008) - a political anti-war film by Israeli Ari Folman. The second work is just stylistically the forerunner of Escape, since there at the very end of the animation documentary footage is added, giving the statement a new volume.
Dane Jonas Poer Rasmussen does not have the patience of viewers for so long, breaking the entire film with documentary inserts. However, in the total weight of the animated canvas they occupy five percent, no more, so I at least thought. However, this did not diminish the contribution of the chronicles: the film, I repeat, is also generously nominated for the most prestigious awards and as a work of non-fiction cinema. This fact makes the picture a kind of oxymoron, since animation assumes the boundlessness of fantasy, and the document, on the contrary, strictly fixes reality. Surprisingly, both are not combined here in a rattling mixture. One can only wonder why these two art forms have avoided each other before.
For me, creators are divided into at least three categories: the first, who had a boring life, not rich in events, and, for lack of another, they broadcast it to the viewer, transforming it according to talent. The second category does not want to put up with this and indulges in fantasies, unrestrained and incredible, sometimes having nothing to do with real life. The third category is those who are “lucky”: their life was bright and full of events, adventures or painful trials. In Escape, we deal with this case, living with the main character, and undoubtedly the co-author of this work, a long period from the hot summer in Kabul in 1984 to the present day, when after many years of wandering, he finally finds happiness together with his Danish boyfriend.
The fact of the hero’s homosexuality does not remain on the periphery of the narrative, on the contrary, significantly complicates the collisions of his fate. And here is the place to remember another documentary - "Welcome to Chechnya" (2020), where the face of the protagonist for the same reason - for reasons of security and secrecy - was changed using computer graphics. There, as in Escape, Chechen gays are already trying to escape persecution, overcoming the hardships that have fallen to their lot.
The final and seemingly passing frame of Flugt, as Amin and his Danish friend head out to look at a raspberry bush growing near their new home, disappearing into the greenery of the garden, captures the hero's shoulder edge for a split second. And at this point, the animation seems to slide off the surface of the frame and we “see” real people. It is known that art acts irrationally on feelings, sometimes it is completely incomprehensible how. The completion of "Escape" is another confirmation of this - a short moment of transformation of reality and ... there is a catharsis. Well, at least it happened to me. And immediately the credits, like a curtain in the theater, crawled up.