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Capone loves up on Danish flick THE GREEN BUTCHERS!!!
SPOILER ALERT !!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with Capone giving us the lowdown on THE GREEN BUTCHERS. I remember this making the rounds at film fests last year, but I never got a chance to see it. Capone digs it, though, so listen to him! He knows what he's talking about!
Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here with a look at a sick and entertaining little offering that has been floating around the world's festival circuit since it premiered at Toronto in 2003. The film is called THE GREEN BUTCHERS, and for anyone who has been followed the world of Danish filmmaking, in many ways it represents the culmination of so many fine works in the last 10 years from this exciting film community. Writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen was a key player in the Dogma 95 movement as one of its centerpiece writers (OPEN HEARTS, THE KING IS ALIVE, and probably my favorite Dogma film MIFUNE). THE GREEN BUTCHERS is in no way a Dogma film, rest assured, but that doesn't stop it from being a fabulously decadent and wildly vicious piece of cinema.
Our heroes are two of the least likeable guys you're likely to meet: Svend and Bjarne, two butchers who work under a master butcher who is as vile and cruel to them as any man can be. He berates them, refusing to recognize the work they do, as he stands in the front of their modest shop and takes all the credit for some of the business's more popular delicacies. The pair decide to open their own shop, which they do with few favorable results. They soon realize that they, too, need a signature dish to draw in the customers. An unfortunate accident results in the death of a customer and the addition of a secret ingredient to a chicken-based dish that has the customers lining up outside the shop well before opening. Danish superstars Mads Mikkelsen (OPEN HEARTS, WILBUR WANTS TO KILL HIMSELF) and Nikolaj Lie Kaas (OPEN HEARTS, THE IDIOTS, and the wonderful RECONSTRUCTION) play Svend and Bjarne. Each character has their own sad and lonely tale, which are fully explored with Jensen's oil-black screenplay. Probably the most interesting of the two is Bjarne, whose complicated life involves a twin brother (also played by Kaas) who is rendered brain dead by a terrible auto accident years earlier. Bjarne also has the greatest potential for a love interest in the lovely form of Astrid (Line Kruse).
The heart of THE GREEN BUTCHERS is in the details of its characters. Svend tends to sweat a lot, which is why he's afraid to stand out in front of the store with the customers. He also has something that can only be described as a nervous twitch: he kills people who wander into the store after hoursand eventually their body parts find their way into the food. Bjarne is nearly consuming with guilt over most aspects of his life. He blames himself for his brother's injuries, while still refusing to care for him in any way. On more than one occasion, he threatens to shut down the butcher shop because of the killings, but he sees how happy Svend is that people seem to like his offerings that he can't bring himself to do it. Bjarne also has a nasty and very funny habit of kicking people he finds annoying in the shins. Ouch! THE GREEN BUTCHERS is a brutally dark and dangerously sharp comedy that has you both cheering for the successes of the anti-heroes, while you're attempting not to toss your giblets. A largely bloodless, though still quite gruesome offering, GREEN BUTCHERS held my attention by breathing life into two somewhat listless characters. And what's wrong with a few deaths if it can bring a shy man out of his shell? Tell me people! I loved this tasty gem of a film, which is slowly making its way across the country right now. It opens in Chicago on February 4 at the Landmark Century Centre Theatre, and somewhere near you very soon, I'm sure.
Capone
email: CAPONE LOVES TO CHAT, SO EMAIL THE LONELY DUDE HERE!!!
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Dutch Films Rock!
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By Dutch I mean Danish.
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the kinda "look at us please. we're indie and different" crap that i will happily skip. whats the premise? two butchers? Danish? so its a language i don't speak with a weak ass premise. maybe it could be a good film, but i'm not holding my breath.
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Just another addition to make it easier to talkback.
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its quite the good idea.
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a language with a weak ass premise?!? sheesh...
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I saw a trailer for this over the holidays and though it looked kind of funny, it also looked like the millionth variatin on "Sweeney Todd". Your review seems to further confirm that, so I guess I'll wait for the video.
I also find it odd that most of the time, the staff reviewer give deriviative movies a hard time, but because this one is foreign and by a Dogme95 member, the fact that it's a re-tread story is totally glossed over. -
AICN people: I haven't had a chance yet to commend you on finally sorting out the TBs - this new form improves things even more. Well done! 7 years of us talkbackers berating you must finally have paid off! As far as this film goes, I didn't read too much of the review because I don't wanna spoil it, but I will say that some of those Dogme films have been seriously impressive. Dogville was pretty cool, but Breaking the Waves absolutely blew me away. There was a point while watching that film when I didn't think I could ever watch another film again. That doesn't happen often.
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