KRAFTIDIOTEN
by Hans Peter Molland
by Hans Peter Molland
I caught up with
In Order of Disappearance
in TRansylvania
at a very very hot TIFF2014...
It was an afternoon of hectic driving across 7 seas and 7
mountains from my far South capital...
My mood was grey, the sun had just imploded,
and the cinema needed some refurbishing...
….and
yet...for the past years (too many)
I have never laughed as much
as during this irreverentious
dark
top politically incorrect tale!
Stellan Skarsgard plays a darkish, introverted guy,
who goes crazy when his son turns up dead.
He chases a Norwegian Mafioso,
the super hype hipster criminal Greven
(Pal Sverre Hagen),
in this work half way between a Bronson-
movie and the Italian policiers of the 70’ies.
It's
a sparkling piece
of
genre filmmaking,
packed
with black humour,
colourful
characters
and
post-modern leanings.
We've
got the lone gun + the wailing Morricone guitars;
…and,
most classically western of all,
a
disregard for the imminent modernity.
Moland
puts his man of few words;
meat
and two veg
hero
up
against the uber contemporary Greven,
Norwegian
urbanity personified.
The
old world is at war
with
the new
on
the freezing Scandinavian frontier,
and
the bodies pile up accordingly,
one
chapter at a time,
in
order of disappearance.
The Mafia boss
is the best character seen so far
in genre movies,
a cruel and hectic dandy,
a vegan bakery-magnate-cum-drug-lord
called The Count,
who hides his cocaine
trade
behind a line of cupcake bakeries
and defines his home
with punchline-bad modern art,
a guy with the hypest
haircut,
looking as alien and neet
as a brain surgeon.
"Kraftidioten"
displays mountains of bodies here,
mountains of bodies there,
whose names are shown by the director
under the sign of their religion
(a sober cross for Lutherans,
slavic cross for the Serbians,
star of David for the jews, etc.).
Director Hans Petter Moland
is clearly influenced
by the Coens’ black humour,
which superbly offsets the film’s grim,
violent events.
The ‘disappearance’ in the title
refers to actual people missing
in the desolate Nordic snow,
collateral damages of three mafia fathers.
The first twenty minutes
kicks off conventionally,
but Moland abandons quotidian drama
and reveals a dexterously plotted scheme
of one man
against an entire band of gangsters.
If that all sounds ever so serious,
it’s not.
As the film is injected
with such
unexpected
wit and deft humour!
We are offered big laughs
from the carrot-smoothie slurping gangsters,
and hilarious analyses
of Nordic welfare estate
by the police
(as it is snowing a lot in Norway)
(which is a pleonasm)(sic)…
We also learn about the benefits
of prison life in Norway
where there
is a 3 stars food,
as deemed by the Serbians.
We are told that Norvegians
are racists,
but not homophobic
(I wouldn’t
swear on life and death about it…)…
And
that Albanians are Serbs.
And by no means would you expect
such uproarious laughter
about Stockholm
Syndrome
ever...
And yes,
that’s a chilly,
high-body count
revenge comedy,
a film to see...
But if you’re in need
of a chilling palette cleanser,
be sure to seek it out.
giulia
dobre
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