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FILMS
Denmark Review: A
Fortunate Man
by Jan Lumholdt, Cineuropa 30/08/2018
Bille August, the director of Pelle the Conqueror, nails
another Danish classic
The case of Bille
August is similar to those of many a talented “foreign” director: a
fertile domestic output leads to international recognition – in
August’s case, he was crowned with an Oscar and a Palme d’Or
for Pelle
the Conqueror (1987), and scooped the Palme again for Best
Intentions (1991) – and then to English-language assignments.
Esben Smed in A Fortunate Man
(© Rolf Konow)
And then, all too often, it leads to artistic remission –
in this case, witnessed in The
House of the Spirits (1993), Smilla's
Sense of Snow (1997) and Night
Train to Lisbon (2013), which were tidily crafted prestige
projects but had the personal voice on mute mode. Ingmar
Bergman, full of praise for August’s handling of Bergman’s Best
Intentions script, spoke of “the meat factory
out there, where you may lose an arm, a leg, or more”. Sadly, this often
means the roots.
Thankfully, August
has also tended his Scandinavian soil, especially in the last decade: A
Song for Martin (2011) and Silent Heart (2014) are
fine-tuned family studies, while the grandly designed The Passion of
Marie (2012) got somewhat lost among all the period paraphernalia. He
now seeks out more of the same, in even grander fashion, and this time, he nails
it.
A Fortunate Man, as
challenging as any project that August
has taken on, is based on Henrik
Pontoppidan’s Nobel Prize-winning Lucky Per (written between 1898 and 1904), voted
the second-greatest Danish novel of the century in 1999. First published in
English in 2010, international awareness will be of the director, rather than
the novel – a director, let it be said, not so much of Night
Train to Lisbon as of Pelle
the Conqueror (itself based on a classic Danish novel, placed fourth in the
aforementioned novel-of-the-century vote).
Indeed, the protagonist, gifted hothead Peter
Andreas Sidenius (an electrifying, downright James Dean-like
performance by 2017 Shooting Star Esben
Smed), is a would-be conqueror himself. In the 1880s, he flees
his suffocating Lutheran surroundings in rural Denmark for the relative
metropolis of Copenhagen. Engineering is his calling, and his progressive ideas
eventually gain ground, not least in the opulent Jewish milieu. Sidenius is
welcomed by the wealthy Salomon family and baptised “Lucky Per” by the son, Ivan, who runs his own
little sponsoring project in search of “geniuses”. Per also gets acquainted with
the winsome Salomon sisters, especially the older Jakobe (a radiant Katrine
Greis-Rosenthal, seen in The Bridge), whose insightful humanistic worldviews
intrigue him. They get engaged, Per’s precious blueprints
are about to get realised, and he’s on the verge of conquering the world. But
escaping the constraints of social heritage is hard when you’re your own worst
enemy…
It’s poignant storytelling, melancholic, refined, wry,
timeless and modern, empathetically adapted by the father-son team of
Bille and Anders August. Their liberties with the original text
(some 600-900 pages, subject to font size) are sometimes considerable but are
ultimately tailor-made for the screen and may well entice new readers to delve
into the book.
The film looks gorgeous on every technical level, from
the Copenhagen locations to the costume design. Lead parts and walk-ons alike
are cherished by solid veterans. Overall, this is a dazzling
experience.
Whether Bille
August will again conquer the world remains to be seen, but he has
just been shortlisted for the 2019 Academy Awards by the Danish Oscar
committee.
A Fortunate Man opens in Danish
cinemas on 30 August and will be shown in prolonged miniseries format in
December on TV2. It was produced by Nordisk Film, and its international sales
are managed by TrustNordisk.
Delicious
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