An introduction to Danish cinema
Oct. 23rd, 2005 09:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicOur local Blockbuster has about quadrupled its foreign film collection
so it fills two sets of shelves now and comprises more than "Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Cyrano de Bergerac," which is a good start.
I picked a Danish film from 1993 called "Pretty Boy" ("Smukke dreng," and no, I'm
not going to attempt to pronounce it) because I'd never seen a Danish
film before and, yes, because the boy on the cover was indeed pretty.
Luckily the rental case was standard white-yellow-and-blue Blockbuster
with small print or else I'd've been tempted to wait for a time when I wasn't browsing
with my father. Yes, I am that pathetic.
Nick is a very pretty 13-year-old from Copenhagen who's run away from home temporarily and goes to live with a hesitant astronomy professor, Ralph, in exchange for "services rendered." They bond for a while over a mutual love of the stars -- it's sweet, if a little disturbing -- but Nick gets tossed back on the street when Ralph's girlfriend comes home. He finds a few other men and makes enough money to keep sending flowers and toys to his mother and brothers, but keeps coming back to gaze up at Ralph's loft wistfully. He tries going home but his frizzy-haired, mascara-laden mother is too busy entertaining male guests to pay attention; when he calls from a pay phone, she actually asks him to wait another night before coming back. So he ends up falling in with a vicious pack of young hustlers that includes a girl, Renée, who dresses as a boy when she isn't minding her mother's produce stall. They know how to work the trade, and when any of them takes a beating from a client, the group descends on the perpetrator with an array of weapons and only a sliver of mercy. Most of the movie is about Nick growing closer to Renée and further from Ralph, though it's not that simple.
It was scary, and funny, and violent, and tender. Scary in the things it said about youth, about the violence kids are capable of, especially when they lack strong role models, and the adults they could respect can't muster the fortitude to stand up to them. Scary that a boy could be sleeping around the city with strange men in the weeks leading up to his confirmation -- let alone what he does the night after the service (the end of the movie). Scary that the group could be so tight-knit and at the same time so ruthless, with their own members as much as with their misbehaving clients; when one of the gang comes "home" infected with AIDS, they throw him out without a tear. Funny in moments like when Nick and Renée have to pause in front of the men's and women's locker rooms at a public swimming pool before going through the right doors. Or when they pay a visit to Nick's grandmother, whom he hasn't seen since he was a toddler, and Renée leaves the room after kissing him:
Granny: He looks very nice.
Nick: Who, Renée?
Granny: You look like a proper courting couple.
Nick: Renée is a girl, Granny.
Granny: Oh? I thought maybe you'd turned into one of those people like on TV.
Violent in that from the first scene, the movie didn't shrink from showing the punches and bruises and blood and saliva of fights in dirty bathrooms or semi-consensual domination. And sweet and sad in all the moments in between. It was understated. It was only 83 minutes long but it took its time. And (though this has nothing to do with the film's merit) I liked listening to the cadence of the language, even though a lot of the lines were muttered and murmured and mumbled and spat and otherwise barely discernible. Hey, Danish lurkers -- do all of you speak that quickly and quietly? :)
In short, good movie, go rent it, unless you've seen it already, in which case, let's chat!
Nick is a very pretty 13-year-old from Copenhagen who's run away from home temporarily and goes to live with a hesitant astronomy professor, Ralph, in exchange for "services rendered." They bond for a while over a mutual love of the stars -- it's sweet, if a little disturbing -- but Nick gets tossed back on the street when Ralph's girlfriend comes home. He finds a few other men and makes enough money to keep sending flowers and toys to his mother and brothers, but keeps coming back to gaze up at Ralph's loft wistfully. He tries going home but his frizzy-haired, mascara-laden mother is too busy entertaining male guests to pay attention; when he calls from a pay phone, she actually asks him to wait another night before coming back. So he ends up falling in with a vicious pack of young hustlers that includes a girl, Renée, who dresses as a boy when she isn't minding her mother's produce stall. They know how to work the trade, and when any of them takes a beating from a client, the group descends on the perpetrator with an array of weapons and only a sliver of mercy. Most of the movie is about Nick growing closer to Renée and further from Ralph, though it's not that simple.
It was scary, and funny, and violent, and tender. Scary in the things it said about youth, about the violence kids are capable of, especially when they lack strong role models, and the adults they could respect can't muster the fortitude to stand up to them. Scary that a boy could be sleeping around the city with strange men in the weeks leading up to his confirmation -- let alone what he does the night after the service (the end of the movie). Scary that the group could be so tight-knit and at the same time so ruthless, with their own members as much as with their misbehaving clients; when one of the gang comes "home" infected with AIDS, they throw him out without a tear. Funny in moments like when Nick and Renée have to pause in front of the men's and women's locker rooms at a public swimming pool before going through the right doors. Or when they pay a visit to Nick's grandmother, whom he hasn't seen since he was a toddler, and Renée leaves the room after kissing him:
Granny: He looks very nice.
Nick: Who, Renée?
Granny: You look like a proper courting couple.
Nick: Renée is a girl, Granny.
Granny: Oh? I thought maybe you'd turned into one of those people like on TV.
Violent in that from the first scene, the movie didn't shrink from showing the punches and bruises and blood and saliva of fights in dirty bathrooms or semi-consensual domination. And sweet and sad in all the moments in between. It was understated. It was only 83 minutes long but it took its time. And (though this has nothing to do with the film's merit) I liked listening to the cadence of the language, even though a lot of the lines were muttered and murmured and mumbled and spat and otherwise barely discernible. Hey, Danish lurkers -- do all of you speak that quickly and quietly? :)
In short, good movie, go rent it, unless you've seen it already, in which case, let's chat!
no subject
Date: Oct. 24th, 2005 04:37 pm (UTC)see how I make you watch it again?
no subject
Date: Oct. 24th, 2005 09:16 pm (UTC)I remember the posters, though, and he is indeed very beautiful! I remember being in awe at this boy back then.
And yeah, we do mumble and talk fast, especially on the streets in Copenhagen where this is set *G* I'm horrible myself, my mother tells me. She teaches Danish to immigrants (it's a horribly difficult language) and she berates me for being completely un-understandable to foreigners :-)
no subject
Date: Oct. 26th, 2005 05:37 pm (UTC)Anyway, it's good to know that the movie made a splash when it came out -- I wasn't sure how the message and characters translated across cultures, and lacked context for how it was received. For all I knew I could have been singing the praises of a movie that was the laughingstock of the country, or is hopelessly outdated, or was outrageously popular (it's hard for me to really enjoy something, especially a blockbuster Hollywood movie, when everyone else talks about it), etc. If you do get around to seeing it I'd be curious to know what your reactions are.
no subject
Date: Oct. 26th, 2005 05:48 pm (UTC)I'll let you know once I get around to seeing it. I really have to, since I've always wanted to. I should write that "to see"-list of movies I've been thinking about.
no subject
Date: Oct. 28th, 2005 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Oct. 28th, 2005 07:13 am (UTC)Danish is very similar to Swedish and Norwegian, but I am a bit unclear on wether they have the same thing - I will ask someone about this at the University.
Danish is Germanic in origin, more specifically it is a Norse language and has a common origin with Swedish, Norwegian, Faroe and Icelandic. In fact, Icelandic is highly similar to old Norse - the aboriginal language to all of this.
Old Danish influenced English through the Saxon invasion and is itself influenced much by German due to neighbourghship.
It is in fact quite similar to Dutch... Which to me reads as a weird mix of English, German and Danish *G*
(One of my secret not-to-be dreams are to study linguistics.)
no subject
Date: Oct. 28th, 2005 02:21 pm (UTC)When we read the Old English poem "Beowulf" in high school, we were given a crash course in the history of the language, namely, what you're saying about Old Norse traveling to the barbarian land of England during the Norman invasion and evolving as the people mixed (read: fought) with the Angles, Saxons and Celts. (If I'm remembering that right.) And our teacher mentioned that modern Icelandic, another offshoot of Old Norse, has remained very close to it, so someone from Iceland would have an easier time reading the untranslated "Beowulf" than a native English speaker.
no subject
Date: Oct. 28th, 2005 03:09 pm (UTC)One of my ambitions is to learn Icelandic.
Unfortunately, linguistics is a dead-end, career-wise, here. I'd like to perhaps add it on as a later education.
no subject
Date: Oct. 27th, 2005 11:42 pm (UTC)And no, I'm not just saying that because it's Draco and it'll piss bironic off. Though that helps.
no subject
Date: Oct. 28th, 2005 07:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Oct. 28th, 2005 07:09 am (UTC)Draco is my little dirty not-secret *G*
no subject
Date: Oct. 26th, 2005 06:49 pm (UTC)And yes, Danish is difficult especially some of the sounds that only exist in Danish. Another thing that makes it difficult to understand is the tendency to use strange sentences, one which translates into something like "I'm standing in the the dirty dishes" actually just means "you caught me doing the dishes". When you've finally caught on to the language, you discover all the dialects. Even Danes can't understand people who speak with a strong local dialect. I don't think you're wrong about the secret club, although sometimes I think I'm not in it for all I can understand :-D
no subject
Date: Oct. 28th, 2005 12:04 am (UTC)