Mennesker Bliver Spist (2015) - Clausen hits home with jewel of a film

♥♥♥♥♥

 

+ Best Dramedy of the Year

 

'Sometimes you've gotta go far to find your way home' reads the tagline on this poster for Erik Clausen's Mennesker Bliver Spist

Herluf is an auto mechanic with a wife who is no longer very impressed with him. Now he is beginning to suffer from dementia, but no one really notices it, which leads him on an unplanned journey.

 

Mennesker Bliver Spist is written by Louise Clausen (Aldrig Mere i Morgen (2017)) and great Danish co-writer/director/co-star Erik Clausen (Cirkus Casablanca (1981)). The title translates to 'people get eaten'.

Clausen's films are especially for Danes. But you don't have to subscribe to every societal opinions of his in order to enjoy Mennesker Bliver Spist, which is his best film in years and maybe the year's best Danish film. (Just as a matter of form, some of those opinions of his include; being a national-conservative is a life-crisis; modern man is selfish and without a sense of propriety; Danes are extremely concerned with possessions and forget the value of human care; and finally, that women are tough on their men.)

Clausen himself is deeply moving and convincing as Herluf. The story, which involves the increasingly blank man going to Poland by mistake, is outstanding and inventive, and it contains a long list of good performances: Bodil Jørgensen (Badehotellet (2013-20)) is matchless as the wife who has frozen herself into an iceberg in their marriage and has begun cheating; Nicolas Bro (Sorrow and Joy/Sorg og Glæde (2013)), Charlotte Fich (Drabet (2005)), Lærke Winther (Mille (2009, TV-series)), Rasmus Botoft (Danish Dynamite (2012, TV-series)), Leif Sylvester (Hodja fra Pjort (1985)) - all are great. Unknown amateur actors also light up scenes; a son, the shop master in Poland and a lady there, Herluf's car-interested old buddy among them, - the cast is terrific.

The title comes from John Mogensen's song Mennesker Bliver Spist i Polynesien (1975), used to great effect in the film. Clausen also pokes fun at modern missing persons searches here, and he generally keeps the film in an often moving farce style. Whatever you'll hold against Mennesker Bliver Spist, you'll easily forgive due to its warm-hearted, funny and edifying qualities. 

 

Related post:

 

Erik Clausen: 2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]

The Great Day on the Beach/Den Store Badedag (1991) or, My Copenhagen Boyhood (actor)

 

Watch a clip from the film here of Herluf being forgetful while on a stage

 

Cost: Reportedly 17.5 mil. $, approximately 2.78 mil. $

Box office: 2.6 mil. $

= Huge flop (returned 0.93 times its cost)

[Mennesker Bliver Spist was released 26 February (Denmark) and runs 104 minutes. Shooting took place from February - April 2014 in Denmark and Poland. It spent its first two weekends at #1 in Danish cinemas, where it sold 235,547 tickets, a decent haul in the small country. Its only foreign market was Brazil, which doesn't have a listed gross. The film was nominated for 3 Robert awards, Denmark's Oscar. Clausen returned with Aldrig Mere i Morgen (2017). As an actor he returned in Sverige Er Fantastisk (2015); Jørgensen with a voice performance in Albert (2015) and a physical performance in Parents/Forældre (2016). 457 IMDb users have given Mennesker Bliver Spist a 6.6/10 average rating.]

 

What do you think of Mennesker Bliver Spist?

The Great Day on the Beach/Den Store Badedag (1991) or, My Copenhagen Boyhood

♥♥♥♥♥

The warm and pleasant poster for Stellan Olsson's The Great Day on the Beach with the tag-line that translates to; 'If the rays of the sun were as dangerous as my dad claimed - then we lived in safety...!'

QUICK REVIEW:

Gustav Adolf lives in a little apartment in Copenhagen with his Swedish mother and proud, heroic, omniscient father. Who changes his mind one day and takes the residents of the building along for a day at the beach. - And who might not be so infallible after all...

The Great Day on the Beach, (the original Danish title translates best to 'the great bathing day'), is a wonderful, warm coming-of-age film about the painful discovery for a boy of seeing for the first time who his idealized father really is. The story is told with eminent eye for the boy's perception of reality and with grand humor and performances from Erik Clausen (People Get Eaten/Mennesker Bliver Spist (2015)) as the father, Nina Gunke (The Bomber/Sprängaren (2001)) as the mother and Benjamin Rothenborg Vibe (The Two Penny Dance/Klinkevals (1999)) as Gustav Adolf.
This is a very Danish production, (although strictly speaking a Danish-Swedish co-production) which also has a lovely narrator in Jesper Klein (The Boy Who Wanted to Do the Impossible/Drengen Der Ville Gøre Det Umulige (2002)).
Great Swedish writer/director Stellan Olsson (Fleas Bark Too, Don't They?/En Loppe Kan Også Gø (1996)) wrote the screenplay with Søren Skjær (Fish Out of Water/De Frigjorte (1993)), based on the same-titled 1982 novel by Palle Fischer (Gøglerens Sidste Bolde (1976)).
The Great Day on the Beach is a memorable, great film.

Some stills from Stellan Olsson's The Great Day on the Beach from the back of the DVD cover

In lieu of a trailer, which isn't currently on Youtube, here are the cabbage scenes from the film, (regrettably without subtitles)

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown
[The Great Day on the Beach was released September 27 and runs 100 minutes. It won awards at three film festivals, and 228,078 paid admission to see it in Denmark and 5,181 in Sweden. Without knowing the budget, it is impossible to say whether this makes the film a theatrical success, although it was likely a flop, maybe just a minor flop. The Great Day on the Beach was reportedly well-reviewed in Denmark and Sweden, and 454 users have given it an average rating of 6.8 on IMDb.]

What do you think of The Great Day on the Beach?