If there is something that I miss more and more when I walk into a movie theater, it is more often experience a feeling of real surprise. Feeling your eyes widen at a shocking trigger, getting stuck in the chair after a totally unexpected turn that makes you wonder what’s next, going from stupefaction to laughing and, from there, to crying in a few minutes. .. A series of stimuli that seem to have less and less place within those “big leagues” so friendly to formulas.
Although, doing the math, it may seem that the South Koreans have the gold medal in the noble discipline of dislodge and fascinate even the most seasoned viewer —His games with the structures, the fourth acts, and the transitions between the first and second acts that seem more like mid points are inimitable – the nordic cinema It has its own identity and sensibilities that approximate its effect to that of the Asian country without making distinctions of genres or styles.
Omitting its great classic references and only sticking to recent years, the Scandinavian industry – extending beyond the peninsula – has left us fascinating biopics like ‘Tom of Finland’ and unclassifiable romantic dramas like ‘Dogs Don’t Wear Pants’ – both Finnish-, criminal thrillers like the fantastic ‘Headhunters’ —from Norway— or, of course, the motley work of renowned Danish filmmakers like Nicolas Winding Refn, Lars von Trier or Thomas Vinterberg.
The latest example of the exceptional and unique Nordic gaze also comes to us from Denmark. It is directed by Anders Thomas Jensen, it is titled ‘Horsemen of Justice’ and it is, plain and simple – and I say this without fear of being wrong – one of the best films that will pass through our retinas this 2021, if not the best; an impossible cocktail of tones and genres capable of thrashing you for 116 minutes that could easily have been reduced to the most absolute absurdity in the hands of another person in charge.
Orderly chaos
Since it closes its raw and magnetic first act, ‘Horsemen of Justice’ has made an effort to emphasize on numerous occasions that statistics, number games with probability and mathematical logic are not compatible with the events of life. The feature film itself seems to serve as a tangible example of this, interconnecting and uniting a set of incompatible a priori components that, when fused into a whole, give rise to a marvel against all odds.
Without going any further, and leaving aside an exemplary and unpredictable dramatic structure —Jensen’s veteran as a writer is palpable—, the fusion of tones, subgenres and underlying readings borders on the insane. And it is that the film does not hesitate to turn suddenly from the most heartbreaking father-child drama to a wild, uncomfortable and coal-black comedy, and then flirt with the thriller seasoned with a dry and terribly forceful violence.
This tonal tangle serves as the bed for a dense compendium of themes that ranges from concepts such as the arbitrariness of our existence, dominated by chaos theory, to more earthly matters such as grief after loss, the sense of revenge or the feeling of fault; all of them deep on paper, but treated with an unexpected lightness once they are integrated into the story and its dynamics.
Putting face and eyes to this exquisite mess we have an assortment of characters that, beyond any doubt, rise as the brightest of an already pristine function. It is difficult not to fall fully in love with this group of protagonists made up of outcasts turned into heroes; a collection of traumatized and antagonistic people who generate instant empathy thanks to the impeccable work of the scriptwriter Jansen.
This dysfunctional family without blood ties dazzles, enhanced by a contrast between the grotesque and the tremendously human. Danish author lovingly mold arches and backgrounds to escape the simple caricature and give soul to unforgettable characters which, furthermore, are transferred to the screen through top-level performances; Special mention for a Mads Mikkelsen whose role as Markus has nothing to envy of the display of talent he displayed in the celebrated ‘Another Round’.
In the same way, the work of Anders Thomas Jensen and his team in terms of form is spectacular due to a maxim that is increasingly forgotten in these times: camera work, planning, editing or directing. art, to give a few examples, are imperceptible. Each and every one of the narrative tools is camouflaged among the purest, organic and visceral emotion, who feels on the surface without giving up for a moment the most direct and strangely jaranero entertainment.
‘Horsemen of Justice’ is an unclassifiable film in which its chief executive has managed, in some way, order the absolute chaos and transform it into an almost perfect symphony in which each and every instrument fulfills its function: that of moving and immersing the stalls in a spiral of unhealthy fascination — and, why not, morbid — that turns human misery into a direct line to the heart. In fact, let me rectify: ‘Horsemen of Justice’ is not unclassifiable; It’s fucking awesome.