Adams æbler(2005)

English Title: Adam's Apples
Director: Andres Thomaas Jensen
Country: Denmark

I generally drop by my University Grad student lounge every thursday evening with a friend to catch a film. This thursday they weren't screening any. And the friend was busy. So I went out on a chilly evening, all alone in a quest to find the comparative literature department where they were supposedly showing a film. I found the building after a 20 minutes long search, but it was empty. I waited for another 20 minutes and then people started coming. I told to myself, the film better be good. And boy, it was!

The story starts with Adam, a neo-nazi who's serving a sentence. He arrives at a church in a Danish countryside to serve community service. The church has a vicar, Ivan and two more such fugitives, Gunnar and Khalid. Each of these men are unique. Gunnar is an overweight, alcoholic, ex tennis champ who spends his day fondling his cat and drinking and stealing other peoples stuff. He's kleptomaniac. Khalid is an Arab, who's saving money and buying guns because he wants to rob some people and then run away to Saudi Arabia. Ivan puts up a smiling face all the time and finds the best in everything around him. He believes that god is with him in all his endeavors. And there's the village doctor, who plays the perfect devil's advocate. As Adam, the Hitler worshipping neo-nazi ruffian arrives, Ivan assigns him the job of looking after the church apple tree so that later he can bake a pie with them. The film then meanders through the labyrinths of belief, good, evil, redemption. As events unfold we learn that Ivan had such a terrible past(his mother died young, he was raped by his father his wife committed suicide, his only son is spastic) that he become inane to all the evil in this world. He believes in the goodness of life. To Ivan, anything bad happening is the satan testing his goodness. His belief is so strong that he walks joyfully even with a huge brain tumor. It is here where the main conflict of the film is. Adam thinks he is pure evil and he can't help it. He thinks Ivan is just a hopeless liar when he claims that his wife died from an accident or his son is a normal child. Ivan refuses to see the evil Adam poses. Ivan puts another cheek forward when Adam hits him. Adam tries to break through Ivan's demeanor of faith continuously. In the process he starts believing in the goodness of life instead.

Thomsen as Adam and Mikkelsen as Ivan puts up wonderful performances. The constant tension between the two alongwith the director's very very crooked sense of humor adds so much spice to the film. The ensemble of a powerful side cast also helps the cause. Jensen uses some recurrent themes allover the film. Like the song "how deep is your love" which Ivan loves and Adam despises. And there's also the reference to St.Augustine who told that one should read the bible from where one opens it 'cause that is the story of one's life. Jensen uses this beautifully as whenever Adam or Ivan chances to throw away the bible, the book opens at "The book of Job" which is deeply concerned with the same parables of faith and redemption as this film. He uses small things like the apple tree, fruit worms, crows to excellent effect to add to the theme. Boasting of a very tight script, the film definitely catches you and makes you question your own ideas about good and evil.

In short, it was worth so much more than the endeavor :P