In Order of Disappearance (Kraftidioten)

Director:	Hans Petter Moland
Country:	Norway
Year:	2014
Running Time:	116mins
Principle Cast:	Stellan Skarsgard	Nils
	Bruno Ganz	Papa
	Pal Sveere Hagan	Greven
	Birgitte Hjort Serensen	Marit
	Jakob Oftebro	Aron Horowitz

Described as ‘hugely enjoyable, gruesome, ingenious, brilliantly-cast pitch black comedy set against the hugely cinematic snow covered landscape of a rural winter’[4] If you found the Jo Nesbo scripted Jackpot (2011) funny, your going to just love the extremely blacker than black humour of another Norwegian export The Order of Disappearance (2014). Certainly a revenge drama that unlike the subtle direction and handling of Alejandro Fernandez Almendras’s Chilean thriller To Kill a Man (2014) is nearer to the Death Wish (1974) and Fargo (1996) format of blood and gore.

Citizen of the year Nils Dickman drives the snowplough to keep the local roads clear. When the police inform Nils that his only son has died from a drug overdose he does not believe it and suspects that he has been murdered. He sets out to find the culprits, starting at the bottom rung of the drug cartel gradually getting to the truth but not before the body count increases. The local gang boss and health food fanatic Greven thinks that the Serbian gang, who share the local territory, are behind the sudden disappearance of his henchmen. This in turn starts a turf war that only Nils can bring to a successful but bloody conclusion.  

As well as the beautifully photographed snow covered scenery it’s the politically incorrect laugh out loud humour that carries the film. It was a good job we had undertitles because the laughter drowned out the dialog at times especially when every time someone was killed the screen went black and the victims name appeared along with his gang name and a cross denoting what religion the person was i.e. a Christian or Serbian Orthodox or Jewish - Star of David! Like most Nordic films the acting was superb with both Stellen Skarsgard and Bruno Ganz underplaying their roles to great affect. A cracking watch in which the two-hour’s just melted away.

King of Devils Island.

Prison dramas normally make for gutsy viewing and the fictionalised retelling of a violent uprising by the young male inmates at the Bastoy Reform School in 1915 is just that. Located on the Bastoy Island in the Oslo Fjord in Norway the reformatory, which was originally open in 1900, is depicted in Marius Holst’s 2010 Norwegian film King of Devils Island as a cold, hard desolate place for ‘maladjusted boys’ who with time and discipline will turn into ‘an honourable, humble, useful Christian boy’ but not before repeated beatings and in some cases sexual abuse. It was this abuse that sparked the rebellion amongst the inmates.

The central character of the film is the 17-year-old Erling, played by newcomer Benjamin Halstead, who arrives on the island accompanied by a younger vulnerable boy called Ivar (Magnus Langlete). It’s rumoured that Erling has killed someone therefore identifying him as a candidate for the prison governor’s introductory lecture! But the young inmates biggest problem is the housefather Brathen, a violent sexual predator who can’t keep his ‘hands’ off Ivar.

Erling and .......

........Ivar arrive on the Island.

Yes, it is pretty obvious what happens, but it’s conveyed in a way that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Bold widescreen cinematography gives you a vista that is both bleak and cold. The acting is first rate and really makes you empathise, not only the boys but also Hakon the governor (Stellan Skarsgard) with all his obvious emotional complexities. Apparently the film fuelled an intense public debate in Norway forcing the country to re-examine part of its buried history. A good intelligent movie that’s puts you in mind of Scum (1979) and Lord of the Flies (1963) and I warn you like these two films it’s a dour watch!  

An attempted escape, but will it succeed? 

Jackpot.

Monday nights Film Club look on intently!

This weeks offering at the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club was the Norwegian movie Jackpot (2011) with yours truly as the host for the evening. I think it’s fair to report that 99% of Monday night’s audience viewed and enjoyed the film in the spirit it was meant to be, that is a black comedy that was obviously not intended to be taken seriously. Whereas one of our senior members did complain to me that in her opinion the film should never have been a ‘15’ but should have been certified as an ‘18’ and to be fair other club members also expressed their surprise. Although I can’t see what difference it made as the audience were all over 18 and we all were capable of reading the films synopsis. But to keep the record straight I thought you may be interested in the reasons for the BBFC giving the film a “15” certificate.

ARME RIDDERE – JACKPOT is a Norwegian black comedy about four friends who win big on the football pools but then violently fall out over the money. It was classified '15' for strong violence, gore, language and sex references.

 The BBFC's Guidelines at '15' state 'Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable'. There are several violent gory scenes, including a shootout with machine guns and a scene in which a corpse has its head cut off with an axe. However, there is no dwelling on the violence and little detail of the injuries inflicted. A number of scenes take place in a sex shop where erotic magazines and sex toys are on display. The Guidelines at '15' state 'Sexual activity may be portrayed without strong detail'. There is no strong detail in the sexual images in question. There are around ten uses of strong language. The Guidelines at '15' state 'there may be frequent use of strong language (for example, 'fuck')'.[1]

So back to my introduction which I more or less reproduce for your interest:

Scandinavian crime fiction, known fondly as Nordic Noir has become very popular in the last couple of years on both TV and the cinema screen.  BBC 4 have shown well received series like the Swedish Wallander about a maverick detective Kurt Wallander based on the novels of Henning Mankell, The Killing a Danish series which followed the police investigation of one specific crime, with each episode covering 24 hours of the investigation and my own personnel favourite The Bridge, which has a wonderful female lead character whose attitude reminded me of Lisbeth Salander, it’s was about the investigation of a dead body found in the middle of the 5 mile long Oresund Bridge that connects Sweden with Denmark.

The cinema has played its part by adapting Stieg Larsson’s Swedish trilogy of novels about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that not only gave us some great cinema but also gave us one of the very best characters to ever appear in a movie, the previously mentioned Lisbeth Salander played by the wonderful Noomi Repace. (Except no substitute)

The Author of Jackpot.

Tonight we highlight another prizewinning Scandinavian author Jo Nesbo whose best known crime novel’s feature a Detective called Harry Hole, who has been described as a classic loose cannon in the police force, with few close friends and some unorthodox methods, this series of novels were first published in Norway in 1997. They have been a huge success for Nesbo in the UK and across the world selling over 14 million books. (7 books published in the UK to date of which I’m on my 4^th, the 8^th book is due later this month). It has been rumoured that these will be adapted for cinema of perhaps TV.

The first of Nesbo’s books to be adapted for the big screen was the stand alone novel Headhunters made into a film of the same name last year with some success. Although it turned out to be a rather simplistic version of the book.

Tonight’s film Jackpot (2011) is the second of the author’s stories to be adapted.  Director Magnus Martins was handed a story that Nesbo had written with the sole intention of it being turned into a film. Martins has been quoted as saying ‘it was a very cool premise and a very cool plot, The characters are great and obviously with it being a Jo Nesbo story there is a lot of humour’ which in fact goes a long way to sum up the film. Martins worked on the screenplay and has now turned it into this hilarious black comedy. The film starts with Oscar Svendson being questioned by a detective who is interested in finding out how Oscar came to be in a sex shop lying face down in a pool of blood with a shotgun in his hand, a large dead women lying prostrate on top of him and surrounded by dead bodies. Svendson’s explanation involves three dangerous ex-cons who all work in a plastic Christmas tree factory who win 1.7 million kroner gambling on the football results!

Oscar makes his excuses......

This energetic and somewhat outrageous movie is laugh out loud funny as was reinforced by the amount of hilarity that was generated at its UK premiere which I attended at the Edinburgh Film Festival earlier this year. A very Coenesque film that brings to mind the brilliance of film’s like Blood Simple (1984) and Fargo (1996) add in Johnny Too’s Hong Kong eastern/westerns and you got some idea of how the film works.

.......but inspector Solar is having none of it!!

As with other Scandinavian films and TV series the acting is totally credible and the entire ensemble cast are a credit to Martins adding kudos to an already exceptional and enjoyable piece of work. Although Kyrre Hellum does deserves a special mention for his under played performance of Oscar Svendson.

Paraphrasing one critic who said it was a fine eccentric and deeply sarcastic interpretation of contemporary greed that brings out the worst in people, but can also be hilarious. I suspect its not a film for everyone but it certainly appealed to my sense of humour and if you enjoying BBC 4’s latest Norwegian offering Lilyhammer I have no doubt you will enjoy Jackpot.

---

[1] British Board of Film Classification 26/06/2012

Troll Hunter.

Trolls have become humanised. 

Norwegian director Andre Ovredal has turned a authenticated rough-cut version of a mysterious documentary in to an intriguing cinematic experience about creatures that up to now were thought to exist only in fairy tales! Apparently a group of media students decided to investigate a series of suspicious bear killings. A shadowy hunter comes under suspicion but wants nothing to do with the young students in the first instance, but gradually they win his trust. Han’s admits that he works secretly for the government and his job is to eradicate trolls that escape from their defined territory and put human life at risk. He agrees that our students can join his dangerous mission and film the Trolls!

The Mountain King.

Trolls became people in their own right, but generally refer to live away from humans to who there considered dangerous. They can be ugly and are considered slow-witted and are generally found in Scandinavian countries but allegedly can also be found in Shetland and Orkney. There are four basic types of troll; The Mountain Kings, the smallest of the species who can be recognised from their noses which appear like a certain part of the male anatomy, The Three Headed which means that no pray can escape their grasp, The Ferocious, the only one of the four that prefers to live in urbanised areas and are often found living under bridges. These have a particular taste for goats and rubber tyres. The final troll species is known as The Jotner, a gigantic deformed fast moving beast and the ugliest of the four. They all can smell Christians blood, usually eat rocks, but love meat including that found in humans. The only way to kill these largely unseen beasts is by exposure to light when they can turn to stone or explode. If your thinking of hunting trolls then I would suggest you take with you protective headgear, eyewear and a change of clothes. Also a UV-light may be a good idea. It’s wonderful what you can learn from watching an informative documentary!

The Jotner the biggest of the Trolls.