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The Green Butchers
(2003)
Dir: Anders Thomas Jensen
A pair of mildly psychotic and dispossessed butchers open their own shop to escape the continual berating of their boss. The brooding Bjarne (Nikolaj Lie Kass) and sweaty Svend (Mads Mikkelsen) are driven to succeed, but neither seems in touch enough with the pitfalls of reality to make anything good last. Mentally scarred and frantic, both appear to have been born to lose. Thusly, their new store opens to no business, and soon they are desperate. One thing leads to another and suddenly they’re selling their neighborhood loads of marinated human flesh--and calling it “chicky-wicky.” An overnight sensation, the store is featured on local newscasts and in papers, and before you know it, their signature delicacy is in short supply. So how could a premise with more room for bombastic consumerist satire than an all-night Romero film-festival be so inert?
Synergy is what’s missing. For the most part, The Green Butchers feels like a sprawling drama. That’s what the musical score repeatedly suggests. Amidst the film’s grim subplot, Bjarne furrows his brow, puffs on one of his 20 daily joints, and stares at the gravestones of his parents and wife, and the soundtrack billows gravitas. And when Svend perspires, conspires and locks unsuspecting victims in the meat locker, the orchestral mood is heavy and serious. The dramatic portions are actually quite compelling. But then there erupt several unwieldy moments of wacky, black comedy--biting wisecracks and somewhat harsh physical violence--that interrupt the heartfelt character development. The surface story bubbles with absurd gore, but because the subplot involves a hyper-tragic car crash, a twin brother in a coma and a love story, the 95 minute film quickly bloats itself. Also, because Butchers has been marketed as a black comedy, and the trailer suggests plenty of prat falls and high-fives, the inconsistencies only flare brighter. It’s clear throughout that Butchers longs to wear the murky shroud of baleful laughs, and this saddles the film’s more interesting dramatic potential.
Director Jensen is one of the founders of the Dogma 95 movement--the famous Dutch school of filmmaking that eschews all fantasy elements like special effects, props, fake lighting and musical scores. Butcher has all of these elements in surplus, but Jensen isn’t inept at employing them. His direction is skilled, and with the proper subject matter, could easily be nuanced and powerful. Unfortunately, this movie pulls too hard in different directions, and never makes up its mind. By the end it loses all sense of itself and settles for an insultingly neat-and-tidy resolution. Maybe there were just way too many joints lying around that were way to good.
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