\n<\/p>\n
\n\tIf you\u2019ve loved a Danish film in the past 20 years, there\u2019s a good chance it was written by Anders Thomas Jensen. The wildly prolific Danish screenwriter has been a co-author with Susanne Bier \u2014 on the Oscar-winning In a Better World<\/em> (2010), as well as Brothers<\/em> (2004) and After the Wedding <\/em>(2006), both of which got U.S. remakes) \u2014 Nicolaj Arcel (The Promised Land<\/em> from 2023) and Kristian Levring (2000\u2019s The King is Alive<\/em>), while still regularly churning out darkly comic gems as a writer-director.<\/p>\n \n\tHe started with 2000\u2019s Flickering Lights<\/em>, where four inept crooks hole up in the country and accidentally open a restaurant. The Green Butchers<\/em> (2003) went darker, with Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas discovering human flesh is a best-seller \u2014 Hannibal<\/em> with slapstick. Adam\u2019s Apples<\/em> (2005) upped the dysfunction, pitting a neo-Nazi, a priest and assorted misfits against stray bullets and falling fruit in a warped take on the Book of Job. A decade later came Men & Chicken<\/em> (2015), where five maladjusted brothers learn their quirks may stem from dad\u2019s Frankenstein-style experiments. Most recently, Riders of Justice<\/em> (2020) cast Mikkelsen as a grieving soldier turned vigilante in a revenge thriller that mixes John Wick-esque carnage with math jokes.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Last Viking<\/em>, premiering out of competition in Venice and being sold by TrustNordisk, may be Jensen\u2019s wildest yet. Kaas plays Anker, a bank robber whose loot is entrusted to his traumatized younger brother Manfred (Mikkelsen). But by the time Kaas is released from prison, Manfred \u2014 a former viking obsessive \u2014 has been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder. He now believes he\u2019s John Lennon. Kaas sees no alternative: He has to find a collection of similarly afflicted patients \u2014 ones that think they\u2019re George, Ringo and Paul \u2014 and bring the Fab Four back together, all in the hopes of jogging his brother\u2019s memory and finding the cash before their past catches up with them. An action comedy combined with a sharp but still sweet satire on identity politics, The Last Viking<\/em> sees Jensen at the top of his game.<\/p>\n \n\tJensen spoke to The Hollywood Reporter<\/em> about finding the funny in trauma, giving Mikkelsen his most challenging role yet and why, in the never-ending Beatles vs. ABBA debate, he\u2019s team Bjorn.<\/p>\n \n\tThis is a crazy idea for a film. What was the spark that initiated it?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tYou always get this question, and I like the idea of being in the shower, and an idea just pops up. It\u2019s not like that for me. Ideas come when I work with them. For the last 15 years, every conversation with my kids and everywhere in the media has been about identity. The whole Western civilization has, instead of looking out towards others, turned the camera on themselves, because they suddenly could, because of social media and whatever.<\/p>\n \n\tSo I wanted to do something about identity. And I had this idea about a boy who always wanted to be a Viking and wasn\u2019t allowed to do it. I sat down with [Danish producer] Peter Aalbaek Jensen and was telling him about this old idea I had about a psychiatrist putting together the Beatles with people suffering from identity disorders. He told me to work that into it. It was a lot of different stuff put all together.<\/p>\n \n\tYou have a lot of empathy for your characters, but you also seem to be mocking some of the more extreme elements of identity culture, about everyone having the right to their own version of reality<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \n\tI don\u2019t try to mock. And this is an elevated story, it\u2019s sort of absurd. I think it\u2019s fantastic that we live in a part of the world at a time where everybody can seek out who they are and become who they really are. But when the surroundings have to adapt to the reality of one individual, things become absurd. That\u2019s basically where a lot of the comedy in the movie comes from.<\/p>\n \n\tThat seems to be personified in Mads Mikkelsen\u2019s character, who is convinced he\u2019s John Lennon. It\u2019s an \u201cidentity\u201d for Mikkelsen unlike anything we\u2019ve seen him do before.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI wouldn\u2019t have dared to do this if it hadn\u2019t been with Mads. It\u2019s not easy what he\u2019s doing. The whole struggle was to get real emotions into a character that is this far out and still make it relatable. I think he pulls it off. Mads approached this role with caution. I know he was challenged by it. But he comes across as real. You believe that this person exists. He lands.<\/p>\n \n\tThere\u2019s another conflict in the story, between Beatles and ABBA fans\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tMy whole childhood, all the intellectuals liked the Beatles. Like all of Scandinavia, I grew up with ABBA. But it was like: ABBA might be fun, but it\u2019s not art. The Beatles, they\u2019re the real thing. ABBA was always in the shadow of the Beatles, intellectually.<\/p>\n \n\tBut any dance floor will tell you otherwise. The Beatles is fantastic music and young people today of course, still know the Beatles. But ABBA is part of mainstream culture in a way that nobody could have foreseen.<\/p>\n \n\tDo you see this film as a spiritual sibling to <\/strong>Riders of Justice<\/strong><\/em>? I see a lot of thematic connections\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tThey are very different in their structure. With Riders of Justice<\/em>, I think you could teach a class with that structure. The midpoint is exactly halfway through. I don\u2019t think this movie has a midpoint. It\u2019s more experimental. But we are dealing with people who are on the edge of sanity in both films. <\/p>\n \n\tI think in Riders of Justice<\/em> there\u2019s actually one normal person, the daughter. But in this movie, there\u2019s nobody who isn\u2019t lying to themselves about who they are. There\u2019s nobody who\u2019s straight or normal in this movie. So that\u2019s a little development there. That was my journey. It took my five years to get away from anything normal.<\/p>\n \n\tYou bookend the story with a \u201cchildren\u2019s book\u201d about The Last Viking, in which the push for inclusion involves chopping off hands and legs to make everyone equal. It seems to undermine the more inclusive message about identity in the rest of the film. Why was it important to include it?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tWell, first of all, the book sets the tone that this movie is a fable, a fairy tale. Because the first 20 minutes of the movie look very realistic, almost like a Danish 90s crime movie, like Pusher<\/em> of something. So you need to tell people they are watching a fable so you don\u2019t get a shock when you hit the second act.<\/p>\n \n\tOn the themes, I tried with this movie to represent everything I\u2019ve heard and seen over the last 15 years about identity. The tone of the movie celebrates the idea that we should all be whatever we are, and there should be room for everybody. I had all the characters from my reality represented, except for the older white male, which is why I put in Werner [played by Soren Malling], who writes the children\u2019s book. So that\u2019s his voice telling us: \u201cHey, there\u2019s a limit to this identity thing. There\u2019s a reality out there too.\u201d I\u2019m not saying that\u2019s my opinion. It\u2019s Werner\u2019s vision. <\/p>\n \n\tI also just thought it was funny to put such violence and absurdity into a children\u2019s book.<\/p>\n \n\tI imagine Werner\u2019s book won\u2019t be a best-seller.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tWe\u2019re actually going to publish it as a real kids\u2019 book. For older kids. So we\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n \n\tYou\u2019ve had a lot of your work adapted. How involved are you in the remakes?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI try not to get too involved. Normally, I\u2019ll read the script. With Brothers<\/em>, I spoke many times with the director, Jim Sheridan, and I really liked the American version. I think it turned out quite good. But normally, I just pass it on and just wait and see what they do with it.<\/p>\n \n\tI learned this very early as a screenwriter, and I tell younger screenwriters this: If you\u2019re too emotional about what you do and how it turns out, you shouldn\u2019t be a screenwriter. Because a script is not a finished piece of art. It is a working tool that you pass on. Others might elevate it, or they may wreck it. If you get depressed for two years every time you go to a screening and see one of your scripts ruined, you won\u2019t get any work done. <\/p>\n \n\tMy philosophy is: Make it as good as you can, make sure you\u2019re on the same page with the director and producer, and then lean back and enjoy what you can enjoy and forget the rest.<\/p>\n \n\tYou do your own stuff, but you also co-write with other directors \u2014 Susanne Bier, Nikolaj Arcel. Do you adjust your voice to match their sensibilities?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI do. You have to be a sort of chameleon. You try and see what other directors do well. Nikolaj Arcel, for example, is really good at structure, so I won\u2019t put my energy there. For others, it\u2019ll be character. You try and focus your energy on the parts where it needs help.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd you need to be aware of what movie you\u2019re doing. When I\u2019m writing for Susanne Bier, doing a very dramatic scene, I have to slap myself on the fingers when I\u2019m writing, because I tend to slip in jokes in what\u2019s supposed to be a melodrama.<\/p>\n \n\tWhat\u2019s up next, then, another directorial effort?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI\u2019m writing a few screenplays now. I\u2019m doing one with Arcel and I\u2019m working with another director, but I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s going to land, so I won\u2019t put names on it yet. It\u2019s really good that I can both direct and write. Writing is very internal, a kind of lonely process. After a while you really want to go out and direct. Right now, after finishing this film, it\u2019s the exact opposite. Right now, I\u2019m happy not to have 100 people asking me questions every day. I\u2019m looking forward to being alone to write.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you\u2019ve loved a Danish film in the past 20 years, there\u2019s a good chance it was written by Anders Thomas Jensen. The wildly prolific Danish screenwriter has been a co-author with Susanne Bier \u2014 on the Oscar-winning In a Better World (2010), as well as Brothers (2004) and After the Wedding (2006), both of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[11155,11156,11158,11159,1456,4775,11157],"class_list":{"0":"post-18311","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-anders","9":"tag-jensen","10":"tag-mads","11":"tag-mikkelsen","12":"tag-talks","13":"tag-thomas","14":"tag-viking"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}