Mads Blog

So I have long had the preface to this review as such:

The lovely title of this film comes from Emily Dickenson's poem Flickering Lanterns. Stefan is reading a copy of poems by "Mily Dickenson" (the "E" missing from the torn-up cover) , and begins to cry because of the beauty of one of them. Arne the tough guy (a real twat, actually) calls him a fag, but the other two gangsters, Torkild and Peter, jump to his defense. After some bickering about and what else to call the restaurant they're hiding out in, they decide to name it Flickering Lights (Blinkede Lygter). How they came to hide out in an abandoned restaurant in the countryside and how it changes them is the rest of the story.

At the beginning of the film, you see a quaint Tudor-style (verify that!) farm house with smoke coming out its chimney and the Swiss flag flapping in the breeze.

—Wait. Swiss?

—Yeah. That's the Swiss flag.

—That's not the Swiss flag. You should know.

—Yes it is!

—You've only been going out with a girl with a Danish nose, you said so yourself, for four years now, and more, you've been on the sailboat with the same flag up with the Canadian one, and now it's Swiss?

—C'est le drapeau de Danmark, cela la? Oh.

And back to the review. Except one complaint that the disk manufacturer screwed up and the video was slightly (maybe 10%) horizontally compressed; I don't know why they did this for a wide-screen film; you are supposed to letterbox it. And the DVD menu is annoying with the loop it plays.

more to come after Canadian Thanksgiving…I'll be watching it again with my Dad.

If you want to read about Thanksgiving weekend in total, click here. In short, we hooked up the laptop to the projector and pulled down the screen and watched it like a home movie. I love doing that! I wish I didn't get rid of the screen I once had…

I wonder one thing about this movie: was Mads originally second-billed? Was it supposed to be one guy and his three sidekicks, or one guy, one other guy, and the two that hang out with them (welcome to the 'girlfriend' role, boys!). Or was Stefan (Nicolaj Lie Kass) supposed to be just as compelling as crazy-assed Arne, seeing as at least he had a relationship story? Hey, Stefan had a story; Arne was just a crazy m____, and Peter I think Nicolaj was very good, BUT I think Stefan's compulsion to eat was poorly explained, it was the least believable of the tales, which admittedly were all a little far-fetched. I also think he was miscast according to age; I cannot believe he's older than 28 (skewing high!) and so how would he possibly meet the others when they were ALL boys? Torkild is 40! At the most, they would have six years' spread between oldest and youngest.

One other movie reviewer commented on how this movie was "philosophical" about the many kinds of violence we face, both the accepted and unaccepted kinds. I don't think it was philosophical at all, but I will allow that it was a commentary, or even a moral tale, told with great affection.

There was one thing Arne/Mads did that I absolutely loved in this movie. It was an actionless action. He spun around and kicked the wall at the end of a scene. Simple, right? You'll have to watch it . Most of the things Arne did, I didn't like, for instance, wearing the same dirty wife-beater the whole film, shooting the cow, which was bad but somewhat redeemed with humour, and then pulling a Begbie on some guys. Which is why it was so satisfying that he found a buddy to hunt with and exchanged all his guns for just one sentimental hunting rifle, and that his mood just lightened up after that.

There was something else I noticed: in order to do a shot in the kitchen filmed from Arne's side looking at someone else, they shot under his arm, where he's stirring a pot. He's stirring with his left hand, when in reality, he's right-handed. He shoots his guns with his right hand. You stir a pot with the hand you usually use for other tasks, it's kinda hard to do it with the other. Maybe I should add this to the FAQ: Mads is right-handed. My dad was left-handed in a time when they (oh those evil Danes - and everyone else, too) beat it out of small children. As a result, he is ambidextrous.

In such a strong movie, it was kindof unfortunate how they finish the story of the Eskimo. You see, he seems actually hurt that they pick up and leave without him (well, duh), showing that he's tired of the life himself. But because he's lived by the sword, he dies by the sword. And what a sword it was - another fault in the writing, filming, editing, whatever. You know the scene in the Matrix Reloaded where Morpheus is tied to a chair in a tower and Neo and Trinity come to rescue him and they blast the windows in with machine gun fire? How does Morpheus, weak from his torture and not in a position to see that "there is no spoon," not get hit? So, how does Torkild not get hit?
Sorry for the spoilers!

I am working (hard, or hardly) on a review for the site. But to bide myself some time which I haven't enough of, I wanted to give you an image to think about.

I'm taking a course in Pagans, Jews and Christians at school, about the dawn of Christianity. This past week we read all about the cults of Demeter and Dionysus. We read the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, where Persephone tells her mother about how she and all the other maidens were playing ball and picking flowers on a hillside when Hades thundered in in a cloud of mist and smoke, plucked her up, and rode off with her. And I saw this in my mind with Mads as Hades. And Persephone would be some young girl like Kate Winslet was in that Jane Austen movie, Pride and Prejudice I think it was.

Now why is Hollywood so damn bad at Greek mythology? I think they think we're all illiterate fools. Surely if this movie were done, Mads would be wonderfully cast as Hades (and so on to the real puzzle: who would be Zeus? Who would be Demeter? Now that would be a wonderful role!), but they'd fuck it all up because Zeus and Demeter and Hades are siblings, and so it was Dad giving his daughter to his brother for a wife. And the truth wouldn't fly with some people, so they'd invent some crap like they did for the movie Troy. Which I was wayyyyy too excited about until I heard it was jam-packed with blatant inaccuracies. It didn't matter to me when I first saw the trailer that it showed thousands of triremes on the Aegean sea when triremes weren't invented for another 500 years…but they got the story all wrong, writing Queen Hecuba out of the story, for crying out loud, and inserting an optimistic Hollywood ending. What a slap in the face to Euripides, the virtual inventor of creative license! At least he had a modicum of respect for his audiences' intellect.

This post has nothing to do with Mads. Or almost nothing. I'll just pretend you care about what I do, and tell you all about it anyway. Oh, come on, it'll be fun!

So we drove the astoundingly long and boring 7 hours to the farm I grew up on north of Toronto. The next morning when I got up, rather, when my dad got up from his usual mid-morning nap, I said:

Siden du aldrig har lært mig dansk, er jeg begøt at lært det mig selv nu. Det er meget svært!
Since you never taught me Danish, I'm learning it myself, now. It's really hard!

Dave finally figured out then that "jeg elsker dig" means I love you. I made him laugh by coercing him into saying "Hej svigerfar, jeg elsker din datter" – Hi father in law, I love your daughter. AND OF COURSE my dad says that Dave speaks Danish better than me, because my accent sucks, blah blah blah, and Dave says my Dad speaks better french than me, because my accent sucks, blah blah blah, and I would like to take their heads and clunk them together because those two can only say the words I put in their mouths because I'm the one making the effort to learn and speak either language. MEN! They're all the bloody same. The women make the effort, the men take the credit.

So that night we went over to my brother's house, had a drink in the living room, where I picked up a Hans Christian Andersen book that my cousin Kirsten and Gunnar gave them when they were over for the summer two years ago. I read the inscription they wrote in Danish, and I understood that it was a little souvenir from their visit in Denmark. Roger laughed and said that Gunnar was quite a character, he didn't speak much English, but said that "Denmark is a very small country" until one day, driving like a madman ("they go like 180 there") he got lost, and suddenly, "Denmark is a very, very big country!" Roger also had a postcard, like Mom and Dad, from Gitte (Gitta?) who writes excellent English, and now that two of her three kids are in boarding school, she has the time to write. I should get in touch with Gitte. Roger says she's really nice, and that she and Kirsten are big believers in family. He also proposed that the four of us go to Denmark one day.

So with that we trooped downstairs and set up the movie projector and wall screen. I had the Blinkede Lygter DVD in my laptop and I finally figured out how to cable it for a projector, and Roger had the audio splitter, so it was perfect. We watched a few chapters of the movie (in an early scene, Torkild gets dumped by his girlfriend, and the others said that she looked like a younger cousin Kirsten), and funnily enough my Dad finally said "I understand!" when the slightly retarded character, Alfred, appeared (Dave found this funny). But before that, everybody recognized the bridge that the they crossed in their getaway van, everyone except Dave and I, and I can't remember the two cities that bridge spans between. Roger and Aileen got a real kick out of the "Spazzabus!" comments everyone was making at Arne for the nondescript and also nonfunctional vehicle. Arne shoots it, of course.

Hey, wait, this isn't supposed to be a movie review. Except that I'll mention: when the Eskimo comes looking for them, they crossed the bridge and paid the toll, and when the sidekicks said "let's turn back" the Eskimo said he "always wanted to see the country." What he really said was Jylland, the Jutland peninsula from which my family came.

And my Dad doesn't understand modern Danish because he grew up speaking a dialect that is now dead, thanks to radio broadcasting. Does anyone have a clue where he might be from? I could always just ask again, and forget, again.

We took an intermission for popcorn, more alcohol, and a glass of Akvavit for Dave and Dad. Dad said it lost some of its potency, but it was plenty potent for me. So I didn't have any. Nope, nope, Akvavit is attributable to a very bad dating decision in my young life, and until I experience it the way it's supposed to be enjoyed, i.e. in Denmark with food and friends, it just isn't going to be very enjoyable.

On the way home Dad said that Blinkede Lygter was too Americanized. But that doesn't mean much, because we don't get to see much Danish cinema (and please, hold the Lars von Trier), and anyway the last movie we watched in such a fashion at my brother's was The Two Towers, and Dad said "That's a movie without much of a story." Dad, the Great Film Critic, I think not.

We had real Austrian white wine for Thanksgiving dinner and I got to say "Fed kalkun" and that was satisfactory, but all in all it was a pretty low-key Thanksgiving. I probably should have gone to karaoke on Sunday night. Better remember that for next time.

So I just found a japanese fan page for Mads, and they have tons of nifty pics from television feeds and magazine covers and the like. One of them was quite startling, for if you cut his hair and bleach it blond, he looks like my brother, doncha think?

Mads My brother

This was a very strange movie, beautifully filmed on fjord in Norway, about an elemental force of a woman who had no scruples and a hell of a lot of power. Oh, and she sees ghosts, and sees herself as sort of an angel of death. Whoever wrote the screenplay or the book was evidently influenced by Henrik Ibsen (now there was a real feminist!). This film was definitely not boring but I still don't know what I've got to take away from it.

I don't know what Mads did for his role but he looks positively gaunt and dour. His eyes are sunken and his lips non-existent. Yet though his face looked skeletal, I can't say for sure whether he famished himself for the part. Whether he did or not he probably didn't have a happy time filming because his was a truly miserable character: no less selfish than Dina with half the smarts or charisma and in direct opposition to her. Niels ends up making it to America, but in the Dostoevsky way.

I wanted to review some of its scenes again, but when I put the DVD back in the machine and heard the soundtrack lady sing, I knew I didn't really want to. I sped through the scenes in the chapters I chose, and felt that Marie Bonnevie didn't necessarily deserve the Best Actress award she won for this film at the Montreal World Film Festival. Maybe that's why she tied. Why didn't she deserve it? Well, frankly, too much staring. Belligerent and blank. She was chosen for the role because the producers knew that Scandinavian audiences knew her previous work and that was all very sweet, endearing girl-like parts, and she is also reportedly a very nice person. They felt she'd be able to tone down the monster in this woman, or at least show that the monster had another side to her. But with all the staring she did with her startlingly green eyes, and the more monstrous she became, the more I wanted to take a swing at her. I did not find this a sympathetic character in the least, and there were two things that the director should have known and cut because they were roundly cited as irritating: the staring until her eyes practically bugged out, and the frequent voice-over "I am Dina." I am a megalomaniac. I am solipsistic, and I am going to do everything to men like they have done to women since time immemorial. Not only that, but if you look at me while you die, or I kill you, then you'll be released from all the cares of this world. And your ghost will come to haunt me, and won't we have a nice time then?

Some could admire her, but come one - who could like or love her? The ending of the movie was apparently changed for North American audiences. Clearly she lives on, because there are a whole two other books out there on her (the movie was based on a book). But does her Russian live on? Oh, I hope not! I hope what he said to her just before she "killed" him was true!

We were supposed to hate Mads' character Neils - he's exploitive. How do we know he's exploitive? Because he tells a customer to shove it when the customer complains that his prices are too dear. Well, welcome to Newfoundland. Oops, Norway. I know more about Newfoundland but I imagine similar livelihoods, similar customs. Then he skims off some of the customer's money and locks it away for himself. Long before the end, though, we just feel sorry for Neils - in the pity way, not the sympathy way - because he's an alcoholic idiot who meekly takes the shit Dina gives him, just as women have always been meek in the face of manipulation and abuse from their male superiors. He's not smart enough to negotiate or turn the tables on her, only smart enough for her to keep away from - Dina saves her sexual exploitation for the likes of the stable boy. Oh, and then to a Russian anarchist, for whom Dina gets a thing for because he flies in the face of everything the men of the village represent. How logical, when you have to do business with these men. Alienate everyone because you have power to.

But the film isn't logical. Why would Neils, the stepson, lose everything? DIdn't his dead mother have a will of her own? What about the legacy from his presumably long-deceased father? If Dina got the property from lack of Jacob's will (and I bet any money that destruction of a will was a serious offense), Norway not so fucking backwards that orphaned sons didn't have some claim to property.

Wow, I'm really ripping this film, aren't I? Let's continue!

How did Dina and Neils become so opposed? Well, in one of the most awkward scenes in the movie (one that lends itself as an example to those who said it was badly acted, though I had no complaints about their accents), they meet. Jacob, Dina's new husband, introduces her to his mother, who embraces and kisses her, and then to the cook. And then to his stepson. Neils says something about kissing the bride and as he moves in to do so, Dina flinches away. Jacob tells Neils to settle down or something. And that's that. A few more scenes where Neils seems oblivious to everyone around him, and then him seeing stable-boy scurry out from a tryst after Jacob's dead. It does not seem terrible to us that Neils finds Dina suspect - SHE IS suspect!

And for this Dina sets out to punish him. All of his faults - and there are plenty! - are magnified 10 times in Dina, except maybe for social ineptness, because you have to be socially adept in order to manipulate. When Neils transgresses with the maid, Dina's intent to punish him is through humiliating him. She demands he marry the maid. Well, his response is "I can't marry a girl like that." There are countless songs from medieval days where the maiden is spurned by her betrothed precisely because she has sex with him before marraige (Oh, don't deceive me/Oh, never leave me/How could you use a poor maiden so?). Neils statement is obvious. He can't marry her because she's not of his class, she is of the class that even Dina exploits and knows better than to become involved with, he can't marry her because she was used beforehand, and he can't marry her because he was the one using her and there is nothing good to come of it if he had. Funny how Dina never thought of Stina when she thought out this humiliation. No, Stina's good for her stable-boy.

And then when Dina gets her way and forces Niels to leave Reisnes, the look on her face could make your blood run cold.

Who would like this movie? Someone said is was by and for Scandinavian women. That isn't a very flattering thing to say.

So I was watching the news on Radio Canada (french CBC) last night and they had a feature on wind power in Denmark, because Hydro-Quebec has just bought 600 turbines from GE Energy and they and the government have plans for 8 private wind farms in the east. It's the single largest purchase in the history of wind energy. About time, too – they just shut down plans for a thermal plant just south of Montreal. Anyway, they did the feature on Denmark because Denmark has scads of windmills in the North Sea. Even so, the report said something about how wind power costs twice as much to produce as gasoline power. I wondered if that was according to European gas costs, or those in an oil-producing nation like ours (incidentally, I think I heard something once that Norway is the largest oil producer in the world!)

Anyway, I didn't quite make everything out, what they were talking about, but they interviewed a young Copenhagen couple who spoke french, likely she was french and he was Danish but in any case, they were very attractive people. The showed us their energy bill - $88 in environmental fees per month! That's crazy! I always hated it when bills would nickel-and-dime you, make you pay separate charges for everything in order to deflate the marketable price of something. But the woman said they were happy to pay it because the air in Copenhagen is clean, clean, clean.

Well. Speaking as an avid bike commuter, dontcha just think that might not be because of the environmental tax, but because Copenhagen is smaller than your average big city, and it has one of the most extensive cycling networks in the world (not that you need one when you're like me) that, most importantly, people actually use?

My said to me when I was 23 or so that he's ridden more than I ever would. Fat chance now.

I should do a poll: what visitors ride their bikes to work? And do you think Mads does when he's not on location elsewhere?

I went to Danish lesson again on Saturday, where we did a quick review of Week 1 and started on Week 2. We also took some Mads-related articles I'd found – including an interview – and combed through them for words I recognized, and I learned some new vocabulary. For the next week, my homework is to continue the Week 2 lesson on the web and also create new sentences out of the vocabulary I've learned, and e-mail them to Jens. We also created a sentence that I'm supposed to say to my dad when I visit on the weekend. I've forgotten it and I don't have my notes here, but it ends with "Tale dansk til meg, for fendem!" I was going to say that to a friend of Jens over the telephone but his line was busy. It means "Speak Danish to me, dammit!" Now, I don't mean that to sound like I'm asking you to talk dirty to me. But seeing as I'm learning all the naughty words…

I learned a few naughty words in Spanish and Danish from a childhood friend, whose dad is also Danish. This friend is a polyglot, he speaks English, Spanish, Danish, and Italian, and I think he's learning Chinese. He is doing his Ph.D. at MIT right now. As I'm bilingual (not so good with writing but whatever), I've noticed that learning a third language is easier. I learned Turkish fairly well when I took an extended trip to Turkey, but Turkish is about the only language I didn't learn any bad words in, as the people refused to teach me (I did, however, learn two in Farsi). Maybe one day I'll be a polyglot too.

I will start transcribing that interview as part of my homework. When it's half-done, enough for a reader to maybe get the gist of it, I'll post it and then continue to fill in the blanks as I learn.

Incidentally I talked to my mum and the only Danish she knows is that 'ikke' is the negative of something and "Jeg elsker dig" which set me off in a fit of exuberant yelling of the phrase at my boyfriend: Yai elsker die! He still has no clue what I'm saying.