I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that at least a few of you remember me raving about a little Danish / Scottish film called Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself not so far back. I caught it at the Toronto Film Festival purely because it was written by Anders Thomas Jensen who was a pretty key player in the original Dogme movement and I was completely blown away. What I didn’t notice until it was too late, though, is that Jensen had a second film at the festival which he had both written and directed. That film was the Green Butchers and word was that it was even better than Wilbur. Thus, because I am an obsessive freak about such things, I went on a long and difficult search for a film that apparently is not currently allowed to be sold to people outside of Denmark. I found myself a willing Dane who dropped it in the mail and thanks to the miracle that is the international postal system it arrived today. And it is as good as I’d heard.
Apparently Jensen’s a fan of dark comedy. Wilbur’s about a man who wants to kill himself. Hence the title. The Green Butchers is about a pair of butchers who become an enormous success by selling human flesh. It’s bitingly funny, very well written and perfectly executed thanks to Jensen and a cast that will be largely familiar to any fans of Dogme films. But why am I telling you this if it’s so bloody difficult to find? Because it’s not going to be for very much longer. Newmarket Films has picked it up and though they don’t have any specific dates or locations online yet they are promising a fall 2004 release. No english lanuage trailer yet, but you can catch the original Danish one here.
This one is not at all a Dogme film – lots of crane shots and artificial lighting. I don’t think any of the original Dogme crew are still doing films that way, though Von Trier keeps messing about with different ways of accomplishing the same thing … Celebration’s my favorite of the Dogme films, too. Two of the stars of The Idiots are key people in this one and Mads Mikkelson from Open Hearts and Wilbur is the other lead …
awesome! i think my favorite dogme movie was the celebration. the star of that was also in mifune, which i don’t remember if it was dogme or not. also, the idiots is a good one. i got really into those for a while last year and watched all of them i could find. luckily, my brother works at the only “cult” video store in tallahassee, so i get free rentals :)