Adam's Apples
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Movie Reviews of Adam's Apples
Movie Review: Beautiful--a profound experience
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie is a fable, not unlike many of Anders Thomas Jensen's other films (mostly as scenarist, whereas here he writes/directs). But much more so--the often fairy-tale-pretty photography of landscapes and the ominous yet whimsical score signal that we're not meant to take anything here as "realism." Yet the violence is brutal, the issues thrown in to exacerbate this modern-day "Book of Job" include Nazi skinheads, child sexual abuse, suicide, and other things that some folk may find impossible to take at anything but ugly face value.
Which may make it hard to believe that "Adam's Apples" is largely a hilarious if very black comedy. At the same time, all its major characters are at first glance caricatures that prove unusually complex/contradictory--both appalling and likable, to paraphrase another poster.
More surprising still is that the story is ultimately, profoundly tender and uplifting. Or at least that's how it effects me, every time. I've recommended it to friends both evangelical Christian (rather to my shock, he recommended it to some of his fellow congregation) and diehard atheist, all of whom loved it. I
I'd suspect that Jensen, like me, is an agnostic suspicious of organized religion but respectful of faith--especially the kind that's primarily altruistic, held by people who really think in terms of "What would Jesus do" rather than using their selective reading of the Bible as a pious, judgmental bludgeon.
Unlike most traditional fables, "Adam's Apples" doesn't spell out its final "lesson learned." You can interpret it however you please, in religious or secular terms. But for me the final "redemption" is extremely powerful either way, and very subtly built towards despite the film's often rude/rough plot elements. How often do you see a movie that's simultaneously shocking and hilarious, then pulls off a last-lap switch to poignant, even inspirational transcendence? For a movie with such dark themes/content, "Adam's Apples" can make you cry toward the end--largely from happiness.
Nonetheless, this film can't be recommended to those faint of heart--toward either subtitles or profane, upsetting content. It's not gratuitously nasty a la something like fellow Dane Lars von Trier's "Antichrist" (a movie without any of this one's heart, let alone sound narrative construction), but it does push the envelope at times in terms of violence, sexuality and simply crass behavior.
Movie Review: Epic struggle of good and evil in this metaphysical dark comedy -- cross between Kierkegaard and Groucho Marx
Summary: 5 Stars
Adam, a convicted criminal and skinhead prone to violent rages, is sent to serve out the remainder of his jail sentence in community service at a small town church. The pastor, who refuses to accept -- even in the face of the most plain evidence -- that anyone can possibly be evil, assigns to him a task that seems trivial, until it begins to appear that the very cosmos is conspiring against him. The film explores the classic conflict between faith and reason and between good and evil in the most blunt way imaginable -- by pitting an obstinately naive believer against a stubbornly unrepentant and bitter neo-Nazi -- and completely avoids the pitfalls of predictability.
Adam's Apples manages to be both hilarious and profound, as well as endlessly inventive. Just when you think the stakes can't get any higher, something happens that is utterly unexpected and over the top and in hindsight completely in line with the plot as so far developed. Then the filmmaker ratchets things up a bit more. The mood, alternating between cheerful optimism and deep pessimism, is perfectly sustained by a rich musical score and by the lavish cinematography. This is a finely crafted film.
For those who are familiar with Danish film and especially with the Dogme 95 movement (in which Anders Thomas Jensen was a major contributor), the major actors will be familiar but are playing here gleefully against type. Mads Mikkelsen (yes, the bad guy from Casino Royale) as the pastor; Ulrich Thompson as the overweight convict Nazi, Adam; Parika Steen as a pregnant alcoholic. Every one of the characters is somehow both despicable and extremely likable. This was my favorite film that played at Sundance in 2006, and I have been surprised that it didn't get more widely publicized -- since every audience I saw it with (twice at Sundance and again in Florida) was practically rolling in the aisles and raving afterwards. My sense is that the religious theme, combined with a bit of pretty graphic violence and language, scared critics away and kept it from being widely released. That's a shame since it is a very well-made and very funny movie, that raises intriguing questions anyone with an open mind, whether religious or not, should find important. (in Danish w/ English subtitles)
Movie Review: Job deserves a good spank
Summary: 5 Stars
It is a simple but effective film. In spite of the fact that it is a rewriting of the Book of Job, the film conveys interesting questions. We totally have to forget about who is torturing the poor minister, God or Satan. That's not the question. The question is that his attitude is determined by what he believes. He believes he is being tortured by the devil and that is enough to justify the final miracle of the end of his cancer with a single gunshot. What is important is that, no matter what he believes, he follows a road of truthfulness and he brings comfort to extreme cases of a-social people. The apple tree then becomes a cross between the Book of Genesis in which the apple tree is the tree of knowledge and wisdom but absolutely out of reach due to one of God's ukases and that Book of Job I was citing before. The newcomer being called Adam the allusion is obvious. That tree is God's tree. Then all the attacks he suffers can only come from the snake, Satan, the devil. The point is that the plagues that tree suffers are quite reminiscent of the plagues of Egypt. That's where we meet with Job. God is not only planning the future ahead but he is also testing his servants by torturing them and the plagues come from God and the silly mortals around that tree have to make penance because they are punished by God and tested by God and they have to go away or keep their faith. And they just do so. Adam will make a small apple pie with the last scavenged apple of the tree and he will share that apple pie with the minister Ivan, a direct allusion that has to be designed so to Adam and Eve, or here Adam and Ivan. But after that episode they are not rejected by the parish, they can come back to their little piece of Christian paradise in a world of squalor, the two of them and yet they won't make many children but they will welcome the lost errant children of god. And guess what: they welcome two men together coming from some prison, Abel and Cain of course, and the world can go on turning. Bad of course, but turning all the same.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
Movie Review: Religion for Agnostics
Summary: 5 Stars
I first saw Adam's Apples on cable and knew I had to buy it as soon as it was available in the American market. Although it has too many f*** words for many of those who claim to be religious, this is as close to a religious experience as I have had for many years. In a way, it's predictable -- vicious Danish skin-head (Adam) is sent to finish his prison sentence doing public service under the tutelage of a rural pastor whose other charges include a former tennis player turned alcoholic and thief, and a terrorist who still goes around holding up service stations. This is very predictable because we know the skin-head is likely to undergo some kind of redemption. The beauty of this black comedy is in the How. The pastor is either the most insane fellow to wear the cloth or the holiest. Totally in denial, the pastor's sufferings -- abuse during childhood, suicided wife, profoundly disabled son and brain tumor -- are fully comparable to Job's. Indeed, when the skin-head finally reads Job -- the copy the pastor has given him keeps falling off the chest and opening to Job -- the result leads to a dramatic confrontation with the parson. Bent on destroying the crazy parson, Adam nearly achieves his goal of killing a man who seems totally out of touch with reality, and at the same time, holy. One dark-humored incident follows another. I found this movie to be a grabber. It stayed with me long after the closing credits. In our secular era, is it possible that salvation lies only in profound denial and near-insanity? This one is a keeper. Viewers who have a shallow theology should keep away from it -- not only because of the coarse language but also because of its dark humor and unusual moraltone.
Main negatives for me -- the translation could have been better.
Movie Review: A Black Comedy of Behavioral Psychology and Psychoanalysis
Summary: 5 Stars
This film should be required viewing in graduate school for psychology students. It is unfortunate that most reviewers look at it from the rather limited perspectives of Judea-Christian ethics, the good vs. evil dichotomy and morality. I am hoping that the film was not made by the director and the producer to give the viewers a moral or religious message, and that the reviewers do not always watch films in search of messages.
The film is simply explained by the Doctor who, I found to be, an incredible character and a terrific actor. "We are living in an accidental world, as accidents ourselves, and things just happen." (not a quotation, but what I perceived from the film,) whether you look at it from an existentialist perspective or as if it was a Beckett or a Pinter work.
None of the characters, with the exception of the doctor, can laugh at themselves. They take life and their views of it and their values and beliefs as selfishly important as possible even if they are not concerned with good and evil. I found that Miyazaki films like Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle are very educational in showing the viewer that good and evil are not absolutes and can be quite interchangeable.
I enjoyed the cinematography, the characters, the events in my first viewing, without subtitles. The jokes hit me with the subtitles, and caused, not necessarily loud laughter, but smiles, grins and a mischievous feeling. Please do not be offended by the treatment that the cat or the former Danish concentration camp soldier gets.
Looking at things from the perspective of the makers of the film will not necessarily make you a very happy person, but you sure will spend more of your life laughing (mostly at yourself).