MovieChat Forums > Mænd & høns (2015) Discussion > Life is life only to slaves

Life is life only to slaves


I liked to consider myself a fan of this director. Certainly Adams Apples stands out as a fantastic film and his other works have their own amusing quirkiness that can be hard to resist despite the macabre but this one I found was just full of proverbial *beep* Having grown up in Norway before settling abroad I can partially understand the Danish language and can very much understand the Danish cultural psyche which is related very closely to the rest of Scandinavia with small differences.

The little moralizing summary that he likes to do at the end of his films just made cringe this time. As if he thinks he should wink at the audience at the end with a twinkle in his eye and give them some 'deep' moral truths from out of his ass after serving up some vulgar comedy. It's not that there is anything essentially wrong with vulgarity -- it's just important to remember that you can dress up a turd all you want and you'll still have a turd.

I had no issue with cannibalism in Green Butchers which was actually a rather pleasant film. Bestiality can be shrugged off but when combined with the abduction, rape and murder of half a dozen women and then on top of that to be told before the credits that 'life is life' just makes you sorry for the mind that created this drivel. The moralization in the film serves only as a window into the psyche of the cultural and political elite of Denmark. Do we really need more moral relativism? It's all we've had for as long as I can remember. Perhaps we need it as a drug now at this stage in history when Nordics are being forced to pay through the nose for a eugenics program designed to replace them entirely with an alien people.

Yes, the Catholic church and its offshoots were stifling and yes, fascism was frightening but this attitude of hiding in empty relativism is that of a man burning down a condemned and dangerous building and then celebrating the ashes -- he does not build again with courage but simply wallows in the soot and calls for other men from far away to build whatever they want in the ashes because the soot is all that he is worth.

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This movie is about losers and outsiders that somehow make their lives better in the end just as some other ATJ comedies. Here, the losers are more depraved than usual. But I don't see ATJ expressing moral relativism.

Moral relativism in film and art is usually from the ideology of post-/cultural marxism, where for instance rape and pedophilia becomes acceptable based on who are doing it, specifically non-whites as part of their culture.

ATJ started out by making Tarantino inspired bro-films like Blinkende Lygter. Many of the shocking activities in his films are similar to what Tarantino did in Pulp Fiction and so on.
The depravity is only to show loserdom, not to defend it.

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Silly people, both of you. One a pretentious piggy, and the other, a dullard.

I recently dined with Anders Thomas Jensen, in a lovely hilltop diner in southern Greece, and I got the real truth, straight from the horse’s mouth. You are both absolutely wrong, and simply spewing half-baked and simple-minded theories, none of which holds any water. I'll give the real story now, as I heard it from Anders Thomas Jensen.

Speaking of water, by the way, the water there was lovely. Straight from the tap. It tasted like bottled water. I suppose having lived in Germany, England, Southern California, Ukraine, and Alabama, doesn't really give a person much confidence in the quality of water which flows from those pipes. But in southern Greece, it was fantastic. Anders Thomas Jensen thought so too.

But, I digress.

We both had the same appetizer, Anders Thomas Jensen and I, which was some sort of yogurt and eggplant salad. Exquisite. It was immediately after the last bite of that appetizer was finished, that I asked him about this film, and what was the true metaphorical and symbolic relevance. Anders Thomas Jensen said "Hey whoa, slow your roll, Horse", and said to ask him again after the meal.

I ordered this odd sort of nontraditional spanakopita, cut into hexagonal shapes, instead of the squares and triangles we are accustomed to. Followed by Dotosoupa Avgolemono. And finally, a lovely plate of Mydia. Anders Thomas Jensen said I was not a very adventurous eater for ordering those things. He, chose the Tranhana soup, and Barbounia (red mullets), which smelled rather foul.

As we ate, I found myself fighting the impulse to ask again. But rather than anger Anders Thomas Jensen, I ate quietly.

We both had an after-meal ouzo, and Anders Thomas Jensen took out a small brown hand-carved ornate tobacco pipe. I could tell the answers were coming, and this excited me. Not to the degree which I was excited by hearing Sam Peckinpah explain why women were inferior beings to men, at a brothel in Tangier, but I was excited all the same. After Anders Thomas Jensen’s pipe was lit, and without any build up, he quickly, loudly, and abrasively yelled:

"THE EGG...IS A SYMBOL OF LIFE!"

He, Anders Thomas Jensen, then slapped the right side of my face, and ran out of the diner and into his waiting car, with a producer who I’d met earlier, named Aaron Finklestein.

Only later did I come to fully understand the significance, of both his actions and words.

There you have it, swine! You can thank me now. Do it!

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lol

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Well... the ending is quite tame, considering the opening.
I would not think it is the attempt you thik it is.
It looks more like a good idea getting nowhere.
By the time he movie stops being outrageous and very funny, anxiety deepens...
but thepause isnot so much pregnant and does not go into labor.
Sadly there is a gap... and it is not filled with a lot of creativity.
The bottom lab scene is quite a lot an echo from the one when Ripley discovers the truth about her genesis.
The ramble about animals doesn't amount to anything. It just gives the key to the plates jumble. Cheap.
Someone went frosting on the cake...
It could have been such a havoc otherwise. Very frustrating.
I looked forward something... different.

Manelle
"to tax and to please, no more to love and to be wise, is not given to men"

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