Black comedy in the Danish nature: these are amazing wild men to see in the cinema

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Martin, on his way to the seminary, decides in a fit of madness to leave everything behind and live like his ancestors did thousands of years ago, before supermarkets and smartphones ruined everything. His path crosses that of Musa, an injured fugitive who is wanted by the authorities but also by his former accomplices. Their odyssey will take them to the edge of the Norwegian forest, encountering idle cops, Vikings, a freedom-loving rabbit and deranged gangsters.

Wild Men by Thomas Daneskov – with Rasmus Bjerg, Zaki Youssef…

Welcome to the thankless wild

The opening minutes of Wild Men are full of surprises. At first it feels like a Danish version of The Revenant (minus the virtuosic sequence and the backlighting), as we follow a man in animal skins hunting an animal and failing, to the point of being forced to fall back. A toad that offers him a restless night and difficult digestion.

Then the same character, Tom, falls on a chocolate bar and a few steps later finds himself in… a gas station. Will we be guests in the Danish remake? No! Wild Men, of course, takes place in the present, but it tells the story of a man who gave up everything to live in nature like his ancestors. Without throwing away the smartphone that his wife regularly tries to reach him on to try to understand.

Exploring a possible existential crisis, even in the analysis of the hyper-connected world of today, Thomas Daneskov’s first feature film, which appeared at the Tribeca and Les Arcs festivals last year, takes a more comical and violent path. . Which makes it comparable to the Coen brothers, and especially Fargo, because of the mix of mobsters and snow.

Because when Martin meets Musa (Zaki Youssef), a fugitive wanted by the police and his former accomplices, the story takes off, even if it means multiplying subplots and tones. But Wild Men can rely on the beauty of its sets, the haunting gaze of its lead artist Rasmus Bjerg, or its shifty art. Which is sometimes ironic when the director and his co-writer hold up a mirror to the audience.

“Every man going through the hardest part of life has heard a little phrase like, why don’t you stand up? Why don’t you be a man? Why can’t you be the man of the community? The strong quiet boy. The father who never complains.”– explains the director in the press kit.

“These stereotypes of masculinity are still praised and taught to young men around the world today and have an undeniable effect on how men deal with their emotions: drinking more, isolating themselves, holding back their feelings until the day comes.” They are falling apart.” Or go back to the wild like this amazing first film from Denmark.