The Last Viking Review (Venice 82): Between Dark Humor and Melancholy
The Last Viking Review (Venice 82): The Last Viking, presented in competition at Venice 82, Anders Thomas Jensen reaffirms his ability to blend black comedy, grotesque, and melancholy, restoring a cinema that knows how to entertain and disturb at the same time. The Danish director once again finds two of his favorite performers, Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas, here in the role of two opposite brothers, united by a painful past and by a “treasure hunt” that becomes a pretext for a deeper search for himself. It is a film that plays with surreal tones and absurd situations, but beneath the humorous surface exposes the universal need to find one’s identity. The film features protagonists Nikolai Lie Kaas and Mads Mikkelsen create a winning pairing, along with the other great interpretations of Sofie Gråbøl, Søren Malling, Bodil Jürgensen, Lars Brygmann, Kardo Razzazi, Nicolas Bro, and Peter During. The Last Viking, after a fifteen-year hiatus following Anker’s arrest after a robbery, sees Anker himself and his brother searching for that hidden loot.
It was Manfred, Anker’s brother, who took care of keeping him safe, but Manfred has a mental disorder that seems to have made him forget everything, and now he lives in a sort of alternative reality. His name isn’t even Manfred anymore, but John. However, Anker desperately needs to find that money, and to do so as soon as possible. Anders Thomas Jensen confirms his ability to move between the most disparate registers: black comedy, slapstick, robbery noir, and reflection on family ties. No other contemporary European director seems capable of juggling with such naturalness between irony, violence, and tenderness. Making it all the more memorable is yet another piece of evidence of Mads Mikkelsen, which here lends face and body to a fragile and surreal character, but also surprisingly human.
The Last Viking Review (Venice 82): The Story Plot
After fifteen years in prison for robbery, Anker (Mads Mikkelsen) is released again, determined to recover the loot hidden by his brother Manfred (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) in the woods surrounding their childhood home. The money, however, seems unattainable: Manfred, afflicted by mental disorders, no longer seems to remember the hiding place and lives immersed in delusional visions, including the belief that he is the reincarnation of John Lennon. What begins as a criminal mission thus turns into a daring journey, where the two brothers move between dysfunctional families, sui generis criminals, and grotesque encounters. Chasing the remains of the stolen goods, the two find themselves forced to deal with the wounds of the past and what really defines them.
The film opens with a quick and decisive sequence: Anker (played by Nikolai Lie Kaas) commits robbery, hides the loot, and entrusts his brother Manfred with the task of hiding the key in a secret place. Moments later, the story leaps fifteen storm: Anker has just been released from prison, and Manfred is no longer the same. Or, rather, it is no longer Manfred: convinced that I am John Lennon, he even refuses to respond to his real name and reacts with extreme gestures to those who try to bring him back to reality. This premise immediately gives the tone of the film: a story that intertwines paradoxical situations, black humor, and a melancholic subtext. Anker desperately tries to recover the hidden money, but he has to do it with the instability of his brother and with a world that seems populated by equally eccentric figures.
The Last Viking Review and Analysis
The film opens and closes with the suggestion of the Viking village, a childhood memory that returns as an obsession. For Manfred, dressing up as a Viking meant being different, standing out from others. It’s a metaphor that runs through the whole story: the “Viking” becomes the symbol of an irregular identity, which escapes labels and is built in contrast with the gaze of others. In this sense, Jensen uses myth to tell not so much about a historical era, but about the need to recognize one’s uniqueness, even when it seems incomprehensible to others. Under the grotesque and comical guise, The Last Viking stages two brothers imprisoned by the traumas of childhood. Anker embodies guilt, repressed violence, and anger that finds no outlet except in aggression; Manfred, on the other hand, is the mirror of fragility, a man who reacts to pain by taking refuge in visions and obsessions. Jensen talks about his characters without moralism: he observes them with irony and compassion, letting the need for reconciliation and forgiveness emerge. It is precisely this emotional tension, hidden behind the farce and paradox, that gives the film authenticity and delicacy.
Jensen’s trademark remains intact: the alternation between black comedy, sudden violence, and moments of poignant melancholy. Grotesque situations, paradoxical dialogues, and eccentric characters create a universe that entertains and destabilizes, but behind every laugh, there is a bitter background. It is the portrait of a humanity struggling between the need to belong and the impossibility of finding a stable place in the world. This unstable balance, which goes from the ridiculous to the tragic, makes The Last Viking a living work, capable of surprising and touching intimate chords despite its apparent lightness. The Last Viking it’s a fun and charismatic film, an irreverent story made of comedy, action, and a pinch of scathing irony. The gags, the jokes, the looks, from the gestures to the lines of dialogue, are lilting, sometimes exploding with surprise. To the film of Anders Jensen nothing is missing, more macabre and violent elements, such as a barbaric aggression experienced as children; an instinct to protect one brother towards the other who knows no limits, and who for this very reason appears almost unnerving; a belief in knowing oneself which instead leads to an unanswered thematic question, the focus of the film and that is identity.
Who you are, who you want to be, who you can always choose to become. Everyone has a double, triple, and infinite identity in the film Jensen, and each of these can be more or less true. And perhaps labeling or defining a person with realistic relevance makes less sense than one might expect. The “diversity” told in The Last Viking is both destined and inescapable as a choice dictated by an inability to manage one’s emotions and evaluate one’s reactions. Problems and difficulties that everyone has and has always had, and which in the immoderate search for what is considered normal, have precepts to follow. But Manfred’s character doesn’t have these precepts; he acts as he wants and when he wants, with all the exaggerations, and he is allowed. Although Nikolaj Lie Kaas’ performance is effective and immediate in its the obstacles and complications regarding taking care of Manfred, Manfred is a character you cannot help but love. Interpreted by Mads Mikkelsen, the actor had never been seen so eccentric and extravagant. A figure who makes his absurd and embarrassing sincerity his greatest gift. The disorder he has is treated with respect, but at the same time, lightly, without focusing on the clinical aspects.
The screenplay is an example of balanced writing: there is no excess in the jokes, explanations, or even clarifications of some events that occurred in the past. Any joke is plausible and often likable, conforming to the character’s personality. Characters built through a few brushstrokes and who, faced with a dream or a realized ambition, are childish and joyful like grown-up children. Just like Manfred. Even the secondary characters of Sofie Gråbøl, Lars Brygman, and Kardo Razzazi are a real “icing on the cake” that adorns the alchemy of a cast that, despite the high number of characters, has a word, a movement, a concept, and an attitude that is identifiable to everyone. Rare beauties, dreams never realized, instinctive cruelty, multiple personalities, and fantasies bordering on the illegal. In The Last Viking, all the ingredients are there for an excellent black comedy, for a fairy tale with hilarious implications.
The Last Viking works, from start to finish, with a mix of genres that convinces and a technique that is a demonstration of skill, mastery, and even temerity in the use of narrative tools. Everything that might have seemed extremely cinematic is taken away from acting, directing, and photography. The Last Viking is a real film, well packaged in a photograph that in Denmark of the film is nebulous and grey, and in Northern European cinema it is crisp and compact, without a brightness that is not befitting either of the genres or the setting. The Last Viking is the eyes of others that watch and judge, and that the film invites us to welcome, answering questions and questioning ourselves. Taking seriously what deserves it and preferring hilarity to that serious point of view that would need to be lighter, more light-hearted, and subtle to be truly understood. The Last Viking involves cuddles, moves, and above all, makes you laugh, with a humor that is never taken for granted. You have the feeling that you can’t get enough of that provocative panache in the film.
The protagonists, played by Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas, work perfectly together: they make people laugh in their expressions and exchange for much of the film, until the final part, when the tone becomes serious and the drama, at first only hinted at, definitively takes over. The supporting characters also contribute to making the film solid, including Sofie Gråbøl to Nicolas Bro, which enrich the plot and make it more varied. Perhaps, compared to other works in the genre that focus almost exclusively on the protagonists, The Last Viking shows an excessive number of secondary figures, sometimes shifting the focus from the central pair. Despite the laughter, The Last Viking it’s also a sobering film: it’s about family, solid bonds, and traumas to overcome. He faces mental frailties with irony, never offending or belittling the characters’ condition. It is a story that touches on themes such as identity, past, and never-overcome traumas, memories to be exhumed, and those to be forgotten, all treated lightly but without falling into the banal. At times, however, the central part goes on too long, without adding much to the narrative heart of the story.
The beating heart of film is just the relationship between the two brothers. Jensen builds a relationship made of contrasts: on the one hand, Anker, pragmatic, rough, and sometimes brutal; on the other, Manfred, fragile, visionary, and apparently unanchored from reality. Kaas manages to restore all the harshness and secret vulnerability of Anker, while Mikkelsen offers one of his most subtle performances, giving dignity and grace to a man psychologically unstable but capable of absolute devotion. Next to them, he moves a gallery of secondary characters that enrich the plot of absurd and irresistible situations. The owner couple of the Airbnb where brothers take refuge, for example, it seems exit from a domestic farce; the doctor Lothar brings two psychiatric patients with him with the crazy idea of setting up a beatless cover band, convinced that this can “heal” Manfred. But beyond the gags and paradoxes, the film never falls into ridiculousness: on the contrary, it shows how everyone, with their own oddities, long live a form of disconnection from normality.
As already in Riders of Justice or in Men & Chicken, Jensen proves an extraordinary ability to change tone without ever losing coherence. In The Last Viking, we move on from comedy slapstick to raw violence in a fluid way, without tears. Some scenes are authentic moments of farce, others veer towards a more thriller dark, still others are tinged with melancholy thanks to flashbacks of the childhood of the brothers, when Manfred dreamed of being a Viking and getting bullied for it. The title of the film finds its symbolic root in the child who doesn’t give up to the cruelty of the world and chooses to resist with imagination. These memories, which emerge gradually, give the film a powerful emotional subtext, and they reveal how much the family bond, although marked by wounds and misunderstandings, is the true glue of narration. The choice to open and close the film with an animated sequence is another demonstration of the wealth of author registers.
The parable of the king orders his subjects to mutilate themselves to match his son, crippled, initially enigmatic; it acquires a touching meaning only at the end, retrospectively illuminating the path of the two protagonists. What makes The Last Viking so successful is his ability to be, at the same time, a grotesque story and a universal reflection. Jensen never mocks the fragility of his character, but he hugs her. And in doing so, it returns one to the viewer’s worldview in which normality is an illusion, and what really matters are the bonds. The Last Viking is a brilliant, violent, and at the same time human black comedy. Thanks to a close-knit cast and a direction that doesn’t fear the leaps of register, the film manages to entertain and move, often in the same moment. It is a reflection on brotherly love, on resilience, and on being able to survive the chaos of life, even when you feel out of place like a Viking or like a Beatle out of time.
The Last Viking Review (Venice 82): The Last Words
The Last Viking is a black fairy tale that alternates between ferocious irony and moments of sincere emotion. Jensen signs a surreal work, but capable of touching deep chords, telling two brothers in search of themselves, even before the loss of money. Grotesque humor and eccentric characters build a narrative universe that amuses and displaces, but that does not forget to question the burden of trauma and identity. Mikkelsen gives an intense and unpredictable interpretation, while Lie Kaas perfectly embodies the man who struggles against a cumbersome past. Not everything is balanced, but the result remains fascinating and courageous. Bottom line, The Last Viking is a black comedy that surprises the audience with its originality and the energy used in the narrative, mixing irony and introspection. What comes out of it is an analysis of the human mind and one’s identities, all done lightly, but also with moments of true tenderness.
Cast: Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Mads Mikkelsen, Sofie Gråbøl, Søren Malling, Bodil Jørgensen, Lars Brygmann, Kardo Razzazi, Nicolas Bro, Peter Düring
Directed By: Anders Thomas Jensen
Where We Watched: At the Venice Film Festival
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars)
