Adam's Apples
by Anders Thomas Jensen
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Mads Mikkelsen, Nicolas Bro, Nikolaj Kaas, Paprika Steen, Ulrich ThomsenDirector: Anders Thomas Jensen
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Danish (Original Language)
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 94 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-01-08
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Film Movement
Movie Reviews of Adam's Apples
Movie Review: The Book of Job, postmodern style
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the things that the postmodern turn has given us permission to do is to read fresh perspectives into hallowed texts. Take the Book of Job, for example. For centuries, it's been viewed as a sober and solemn reflection on the mystery of innocent suffering. That's certainly one legitimate reading. But if you think about it from another perspective, the Book of Job is also incredibly funny. Poor schleppy Job initially refuses to acknowledge that he's really suffered any harm, even when it's apparent he has, on the grounds that what was taken from him wasn't his to begin with. When he finally comes round to the realization that he has indeed been screwed, his three Keystone Cop pals fall all over themselves to assure him that he really hasn't been because he deserved it all along. It's a funny story--but at the same time, a story whose insight into the human condition touches one's heart.
Anders Thomas Jensen's "Adam's Apples," a deadpan comedy that serves up a 21st century Book of Job, is just as funny and just as heart-breaking. Pastor Ivan (Mads Mikkelson) simply can't bring himself to doubt in God's goodness, despite the escalating Job-like tragedies that befall him: his mother's death in birthing him, sexual abuse when he was a child, his wife's suicide, his child's handicap, Khalid's thievery, Paul's drunkenness, the likelihood that Sarah will give birth to a deformed child, and Adam's (Ulrich Thomson) violence and cruelty. The undeniability of undeserved evil keeps piling up and Ivan keeps denying, going to such lengths to do so that, after awhile, the viewer can't help but laugh. When reality finally does puncture Ivan's illusion, he's "rescued" from despair in an equally laughable (because so implausible) manner (more detail would give the game away for folks who haven't yet seen the film), and the film winds up with a deliberately artificial happy ending--the same sort of deadpan that concludes the "real" Book of Job. And always in the background is the cynical and somewhat manipulative but not really evil God-figure--in the film's case, Dr. Kolberg.
Despite the vaudevillian humor in "Adam's Apples," the story of Ivan's constancy and Adam's transformation (not to mention Paul's, Sarah's, and Khalid's) gesture at great and touching truths. That's why, as a friend of mine said, this film is funny, sad, dark, and uplifting--and why it, like the Book of Job, has something worthwile to say.
Highly recommended.
Summary of Adam's Apples
Ivan is an insanely optimistic preacher who takes in convicts to help around the remote, rural church he ministers to. His current charges are a psychotic Saudi immigrant addicted to robbing gas stations and an alcoholic tennis pro convicted of sexual assault. His newest "helper" is Adam, a vicious neo-Nazi anxiously biding his time before he can return to hell-raising. Asked to set a goal for his stay, Adam sarcastically answers that he'd like to bake a cake. Ivan cheerfully takes that statement at face value and puts him in charge of the parish's pride and joy: the only apple tree in the vicinity. Grasping the extent of Ivan's crazed, preternatural determination to look on the bright side of everything - Adam immediately decides to shake him out of his rose-colored stupor.Art House & International DVD Video
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