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| Co-star Jacob Oftebro's attractive mug and other exotic elements are arranged on this neat poster for Daniel Dencik's Guldkysten - regrettably a larger version of a poster for the film is unavailable online |
A naive Danish botanist gets sent by the king to the Danish colony in West-African Guinea in order to create a coffee plantation. But his opposition to the slavery of the day destroys the project.
Guldkysten is written by Sara Isabella Jønsson Vedde (Hvor Kragerne Vender (2021)) and debuting co-writer/director Daniel Dencik (Out (2006)). It is based on real people and events around 1836, following after the end of transatlantic slave trade from Africa to North America.
Jakob Oftebro (Tom of Finland (2017)) is a fully adult man, but he portrays his botanist protagonist more as an innocent boy here, SPOILER who in the third act suffers disintegration. We are meant to embrace the character, I suppose because he has an almost modern rejectionist view on slavery; but Oftebro doesn't make this position in 1836 credible, and his performance seems instead to turn towards starvation in order to convince us. (He reportedly shed 18 kg. for the performance.)
The film is attempted shaped as modern, but it is a sanctimonious facade: The villains are connected - in a most old-fashioned (not to speak of immature) way - with whoring, alcohol and homosexuality, meanwhile the hero as written comes off as a newly minted, childishly enamored fellow. It is also jarring that Guldkysten has not a single African character with any lines to speak. The Oftebro character is didactic and always in the center in a way that may make one think that we are many years free of slavery and yet obviously still far from cultural equality.
All of these noted problems are somewhat alleviated by periodically beautiful images (photography by Martin Munk (Norskov (2015-17))), particularly of the borders between sea, surf and the forest line, as well as other natural phenomenons, and an interesting score by Angelo Badalamenti (Dark Water (2005)), Johan Carøe (Nina (2018)), Mads Heldtberg (Lulu (2014)) and Lasse Martinussen (It's All About Love (2003, assistant editor)).
Still Guldkysten is an unconvincing, misguided film from Dencik, who fancies it an art film, which it doesn't strike me as, and if so it certainly comes from a poor artist.
Watch a segment from Danish TV2 with English subtitles about the film
Cost: Reportedly 14.6 mil. DKK, approximately 2.34 mil. $
Box office: Uncertain, but likely in excess of 569k $
= Some uncertainty, but surely a mega-flop
[Guldkysten was released 2 July (Denmark) and runs 115 minutes. 6.2 mil. DKK or nearly half of the budget came as support from the Danish Film Institute. Shooting took place in Denmark and Ghana from August 2014- ?. The production claims to have employed 500 locals in Ghana. The film sold 71,074 tickets in Denmark, where it was screened as part of Biografklub Danmark, which means that a probably large part of the audiences only paid half the admission prize. Here I have set the Danish gross at a tentative 426k $. Dencik stated that the film's reception in Denmark is a sign of "an intelligent and curious people." The film was shown at several film festivals and was released generally in Oftebro's Norway, where it grossed 142k $. The film was nominated for 3 Robert awards, Denmark's Oscar. Dencik returned with 2 documentary shorts and is set to return theatrically with Miss Osaka (2021). Oftebro returned in Så Ock på Jorden (2015); Danica Curcic (Out Stealing Horses/Ut og Stjæle Hester (2019)) in EWA, Out of Body (2016, short) and theatrically in Fuglene Over Sundet (2016). 580 IMDb users have given Guldkysten a 5.2/10 average rating.]
What do you think of Guldkysten?
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