Copenhagen – Podcasting Them Softly

The Scandinavians really seem to like their grim, chilly serial killer procedurals, The Chestnut Man being the latest Netflix offering from Denmark that gets about as grim, nasty and dark as these kind of narratives ever do. It’s a bit of a jumble to be honest, needlessly overstuffed with characters, subplots, hairpin turns, red herrings, dead ends and asides. As the story opens, police in a rural town outside Copenhagen discover a string of ruthless murders, each crime scene eerily decorated with a little figurine made from chestnuts. That’s their main clue going into an investigation involving a dozen different cops, social workers, a coroner, a bunch of old sealed records dating back to foster homes and adoptions and so many moving parts and dense plot content it made my head spin. I’m sure the story is in fact a concise series of events that check out logically and the reason I got so lost was because I binged this entire thing on a night where I was spectacularly exhausted and just could not focus. I will say that this production has some gorgeous spooky Fall vibes, they seem to have shot in autumn, which makes sense for a killer that needs a constant supply of chestnuts I suppose, but there are some truly breathtaking overhead shots of seasonal forests all steeped in golden brown and auburn hues. There’s also some razor sharp, terrifying suspense that’s extremely well orchestrated and effectively scary as well. Sometimes the material gets oppressively dark and so bleak it can be off putting, there are themes of child abuse that are directly depicted, and the murderer himself is one heinous motherfucker who doesn’t discriminate one bit in victim selection or brutal methodology, so just bring an iron lined stomach for this one. It’s got great atmosphere, thrills n’ chills that mostly work and it’s a quick six episode binge, but I almost feel like it could have been a two and a half hour feature film and in doing so, strip away a lot of the excess narrative clutter because at times I felt like I needed a big pinup board with photos of all the characters in relation to each other, just to keep track.

-Nate Hill

Smilla’s Sense Of Snow begins with a specific inciting event: a young Inuit boy plummets off the roof of a multi storey building in Copenhagen, to his death. The only person who seems to care is Smilla (Julia Ormond), a girl who lives in the complex, is half Inuit herself and did her best to take care of the poor kid when his mother drowned in alcoholism. From there the film spirals into curious, unexpected thriller elements that seem to have left many viewers baffled (reviews over time haven’t been so kind), but it’s the uniqueness of this story that appeals to me, the way we find ourself wondering how such a simple and straightforward incident can lead to the kind of sequences you’d find in a Bond film. That’s the mark of an absorbing thriller, no matter how ‘out there’ people complain it is. Smilla deliberately cloaks herself in a facade of coldness not dissimilar from the snowy northern landscape around her and comes across as initially unpleasant, but when we see how far she’s willing to go and what she will risk to uncover the truth around the boy’s death, we realize there’s a heart in there and Ormond creates a mesmerizing protagonist. There is indeed a clandestine web of secrets, coverups and conspiracies revolving around the whole thing, and it’s great fun watching her follow the breadcrumb trail to where it all leads. She’s a withdrawn, introverted person, and these qualities don’t lend themselves to hands on detective work, but therein lies the gold mine of character development for her as she discovers perhaps one of the most bizarre string of events I’ve seen in a thriller. The supporting cast is full of gems, starting with Gabriel Byrne as her neighbour and love interest, just darkly charismatic enough to suggest that he may not be who he says he is. The late great Robert Loggia makes a stern but soulful appearance as her powerful father, who pulls some strings to help her out. Soon she’s led to a shadowy scientist (Richard ‘OG Dumbledore’ Harris) with ties to it all, and other appearances from Jurgen Vogel, David Hayman, Bob ‘Clever Girl’ Peck, Vanessa Redgrave, Ona Fletcher, Tom Wilkinson, a quick cameo from one of the Doctor Who actors and an excellent Jim Broadbent in full exposition mode. The eventual premise here is set up in an arresting prologue concerning a lone Inuit hunter observing a meteor fall to earth and cause an almighty mess on the tundra, serving to inform us right off the bat that although this film initially sets off on the trajectory of a straightforward murder mystery, there will be elements of the fantastical. Said elements proved to be either too far out there or too removed from the grounded opening for people to grasp hold of, but not me. I love the journey this one takes, I love the heroine we get to take it with, I’m awed by the stunning arctic photography every time and the story always draws me in. Great film.

-Nate Hill