‘Terribly Happy’: Town Without Pity

Kurt Loder over at MTV does a good job of getting me excited about the Danish film”Terribly Happy.” In case you don’t keep up on cutting edge cinema, Denmark has been one of the top producers of interesting film lately (see: “Antichrist,” “Burma VJ,” “Brotherhood,” and “Applause”).

A Nordic Creepfest the Coen Brothers Might Admire

The movie is wonderfully warped. There are overtones of horror and noirish depravity that recall both the 1973 cult film “The Wicker Man” and Shirley Jackson’s famous 1948 short story, “The Lottery.” But “Terribly Happy,” which was Denmark’s submission in the foreign-language category for this year’s Oscars (and will soon be remade in English), has a mind-knotting fascination of its own. Working from an adaptation of an Erling Jepsen novel by screenwriter Dunja Gry Jensen, director Henrik Ruben Genz builds tension in oblique increments. We see that the downcast Hansen (Jakob Cedergren) isn’t quite right in the head himself — he screwed up in Copenhagen (exactly how, we don’t learn till late in the film), and this reassignment to the faraway village of Skarrild is his only chance to salvage his career. The troubled cop is already taking anti-anxiety medication — with which the local doctor (Lars Brygmann) is oddly eager to keep him well-supplied — and the director presents the flat, featureless landscape as an emblem of his isolation and unease. (read more)