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Huset (2023)
Convoluted storyline
Sofie Gråbøl rose to fame for her role in the admirable Forbrydselen 1,2 and 3. In Huset, or the House, she plays a jailer. The series highlights the problems surrounding the incarceration of people maintaining a.o. Their gang-affiliation, and tribal association. Jailers weaknesses are exploited and because the system is blind, in the end the system always wins, despite all sorts of deplorable weaknesses, as f.e. Racism.. The director of the prison is married to a deteriorating Alzheimer-patient who beats her; and her subordinate, the jailer, 'betjent' Gråbøl has a son who is a junk, and that makes her vulnerable. Relationships create weaknesses, that is the underlying message, and that goes for all characters in the series. Collagues and criminals exploit these weaknesses and hence questionable situations. The baseline is: removing hell from prison creates hell. The series raises the question if justice does exist? It highlights sexual relationships that are not okay.
Despite the fine actors this series let you believe that the difference between criminals and prison personnel is only marginal. No redeeming traits or characterfeatures, only weaknesses and helplessness, groping thru darkness in this series. But is the system really without any checks? A corrupt system will explode.. but perhaps that is in store for another series?
Stillwater (2021)
Confused people
A story about confused people, loosing emotional and moral direction. Story setting: A lesbian daughter fleeing US-backwaters and and emotionally deplorable setting, swapping the USA for southern France. In Marseille the girl (Damon's) daughter falls in love with an Arab girl that taunts her. After that Arab girl is found murdered the daughter is sentenced foto prison. Her father, Matt Damon, visits her every year and tries to find the person he believes murdered the Arab girl. That and dishonesty and people's brokenness is the backbone of this movie. A real arthouse movie. Not bad, but on the verge of documenting insignifance and in the end edging the story towards calousness and malignant love. More bitter than sweet tasting film.
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
cardboard communists
A story hard to believe with the overacting and the clear influence of the McCarthy communists period scare. The old ladies in flowery dresses that assist the communists with hypnotizing US soldiers are a pastiche of the southern daughters of the revolution (who promulgated the southern myths and erected racist statues) . And the communists are cardboard commissars that have nothing in common with reality in Russia and China. The Vietnam was being prepared in those days. The period is more exquisitely portrayed by the storied of John Le Carré. There are better period movies, and this one is obviously still lingering in the fifties. Angela Lansbury is s superb hag, a red witch, and Frank Sinatra tormented as usual, but okay. Funny that this picture was highly rated. But if you like this sort of fiction, choose the one with Denzel Washington.
Southern Comfort (1981)
Scrutinizing the role of the army
This picture seems a very obvious 'thing'. You are hunting men or are being hunted by other men. More important than this classic paleontic scheme is the way society is being portrayed. And government and its institutions. The national guard is seen in this movie as a jumble of wacko's, first there is a goofy goon shooting blanks at local primitives, getting his sergeant killed, then there is a private that should be hospitalized as a serious case of insanity, thirdly an insecure platoon, amongst which there is an afro-American pushing drugs to school-kids, leaving out only two sane men. One comes from a redneck environment and graduated college, and the other one is a gentlemanly Southern pimp. Either the national guard should be abolished if this was true or people should seriously question their appetite for adventurous but anti-society entertainment and they should look for more reality in the movie they are craving. Lots of stereotyping in this movie. But hey made 30 years. America is much wiser now. No?