Adam's Apples

The Danes have a curious sense of humor. Clearly still interested in wrestling with existential questions of meaning in life, Denmark is seen to possess itself an eccentric demeanor. Every character in the film has a strong flavor of personality. And yet each has an acceptable character flaw – not to be taken judgmentally, but matter-of-fact: this is the way people become.

The intersection of all these lives centers around rehabilitation of criminals in a church. This itself is bizarre to the modernist, who does not view religious edifices as anything assuaging, and instead constricting. Nevertheless, the program is run by a Protestant minister who has seemingly repaired the lives of two convicts and is embarking on repairing another one, who happens to be a neo-Nazi.

In truth, the Nazi symbolism does not reveal itself stridently in the film. It is only used as a proxy for the protagonist’s inclination toward destroying the world around him: most especially the sanctimonious feeling he ingests from the minister.

The story arc is in the demolition of the priest’s ambitions of goodness. His awful life has been cloaked by his irrational zeal, or so the neo-Nazi wants to believe for himself. Believing in God is a weakness, yet paradoxically, hanging a portrait of Hitler in replace of a crucifix shows a higher moral order to subscribe to.

That simple gesture which plays itself ancillary to the drama around the life of the church is the most telling aspect of the film. A man is not allowed to find meaning in God: he cannot orient his life and his worldview to look at the mechanics of existence as orderly and rational and intelligent. Good does not correspond to man aligning himself with this intelligence. Good is nothingness. It is a distraction. Truth is in the fact that the Aryan race is supreme, predicating itself on the faculty of human reason through the practice of science. Truth is in aborting a fetus damaged by alcoholism versus embracing and cherishing the responsibility of a difficult life. Life is not a test but vanity.

And yet what a marvelous rebuttal by the film, in the most Kierkegaardian-twist of cosmic fate. Such nihilistic teleology of the Nazi is abdicated, and in its place, not vain emotional appeals to “good”, but the actual experience by the protagonist in a metamorphosis; in becoming a grander form of himself. It is in this metamorphosis which was single-handedly caused by the “foolish” minister which provides such an ostracized religiosity to film in the age of decadence.

Grade: A-