It isn’t necessarily something you would take notice of, but writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen picks a most unconventional locale for one of the more important conversations in “The Last Viking,” as Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and Lothar (Lars Brygmann) discuss disassociative identity disorder. The discussion is a constant, as is the alcohol, but it’s not the kind of talk that would obviously move from a lonely bar to a packed club as Anker is too busy contemplating the psychological state of his brother Manfred (Mads Mikkelsen) to notice the increasing frivolity behind him and Lothar, a psychologist, is too intent on pitching him an unusual cure to relieve Manfred of the belief he’s John Lennon, arguing that they need to conform to his reality to get through to him rather than the other way around, suggesting they surround him with other psych patients who think themselves to be Beatles. By the time both join the party, they’re still somewhat unconscious of their surroundings when they fit right in, ebullient about the plan they’ve hatched more than the music playing and while you may not remember yourself why, the scene itself sticks because it takes place in such a fun atmosphere rather than a sterile clinic that’s to be expected.
The fun always comes first in Jensen’s hugely enjoyable sixth feature as a director and perhaps his most poignant yet, though he has always been better known outside of his native Denmark as the co-author of some of the country’s greatest dramas as a regular collaborator of Susanne Bier and Nikolaj Arcel. The stranger stuff he’s always saved for himself to helm — anyone who wants to know the full extent of longtime leading men Kaas and Mikkelsen’s range need only to look at their collaborations together over the past 25 years as Jensen has challenged himself to dress down the notoriously handsome pair — and as a result, “The Last Viking” has more interesting story elements packed into its first 15 minutes than most entire years’ worth of movies.
Introduced with a piquant animated opening about a local legend about a village where a viking was liberated of his left arm and made everyone else cut off theirs once he ruled over them to create a community of equals, the film immediately cuts to the conundrum facing Anker, a thief who robbed a security truck of 41.7 million kroner with his partner Flemming (Nicolas Bro) and knows he will soon be apprehended, leaving him to trust Manfred with the key to a train station locker with the cash that he’ll recover after some unknown amount of time in prison, asking him to bury it in the forest where they grew up once the heat dies down. Fifteen years later, the cash remains safe, but Manfred, always a sensitive child, is in a more precarious position as their mother Freja informs Anker that after feeling abandoned, his brother has insisted on being called John and shows other troubling signs from suicide attempts to stealing other people’s pets.
Anker would like to get the cash back, but to do so he needs to get his brother back first and believes he can kill two birds with one stone by returning to their old stomping grounds, welcomed by Margrethe (Sofie Gråbøl) and Werner (Søren Malling), the couple that now lives in their childhood home, and following Lothar’s plan to reunite the Beatles. It’s hard for anything to be too earnest when Manfred, Lothar and Hamdan (Kardo Razzazi), whose particular brand of the disorder allows him to think he’s both George and Paul, all are donning epaulets to recreate Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but Jensen nods to a larger society that can’t agree upon a shared reality and imagines within the wild world he’s created that there are common strands of humanity that can be building blocks towards less tumultuous times.
Like Jensen’s previous film “Riders of Justice,” there’s a recognizable genre motor when beyond Anker’s own desire to retrieve his loot, he is incentivized to ward off Flemming, who has come to collect after blowing his share of the proceeds years earlier, but that familiarity only is there for Jensen to go more unusual places when every character in the film has their own personal quirks and interests and Anker getting his bag becomes only one of many suspenseful pursuits, which range from Lothar attempting a medical breakthrough to Werner cracking a story for a children’s book. When the collaboration between Kaas, Mikkelsen and Jensen dates back decades, it isn’t only the stories that have grown a little more serious, but the skill to pull off the sillier elements without looking outright foolish and there’s ultimately plenty of wisdom in “The Last Viking,” not only in where it lands, but how well-executed it is throughout as thoughtful entertainment.
“The Last Viking” will screen again at the Venice Film Festival on August 31st at 5 pm at the PalaBiennale. It will next screen at the Toronto Film Festival at the TIFF Lightbox on September 8th at 5:45 pm, September 9th at 9:45 pm and September 13th at 8:45 pm.