Adam's Apples (2005)

Wonderful character development!

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Mean, very funny satire with amazing performances by all - and with an absolutely outstanding Mads Mikkelsen. This is a very black comedy, but also a very smart one that shows once more that Scandinavian - and especially Danish - cinema had some of the most diverse and creative output in Europe over the last two decades. 8 stars out of 10.In case you're interested in more underrated masterpieces, here's some of my favorites:imdb.com/list/ls070242495

This comment is mainly about Anders Thomas Jensen and his incredible talent. If you check out his titles you will be impressed by the quantity and the outstanding quality of what he has already written. And by the variety of themes he touched.In the present movie (which he also directed) he shows the world what a creative author can realize with a handful of actors, one church, one hospital and a couple of cars…The film is original, catching and endearing. The acting is convincing and the long lasting impression you'll get is that you have watched a story whose plot was somehow predictable and yet it surprised you.

Adam's Apples is an unusual film in that you instantly dislike all the characters. The Pastor of a church without a congregation is sanctimonious. Life has handed him a long series of cruelties, a father who repeatedly raped him, a wife who committed suicide, a catatonic son, a terminal brain tumour, workers who beat him up. He deals with all this with exaggerated Christian denial. He insists his child runs around and does his homework. He insists nothing bad has ever happened. He lies to a women with a foetus likely to be disabled, using his own "happy" experience.This denial drives his skinhead Nazi worker crazy. Another worker shoots people on whim. Another is grossly obese, a pervert, and a kleptomaniac.Then the magic "glorious messenger" highly improbable happy ending made possible by divine intervention. The message is creepy and disgusting, that somehow god exists and despite everything, is perfect, despite his sadistic tinkering. The crazy pastor was right all along.It contains scenes of crow and cat killing.It is original and fascinating in a car wreck sort of way.

It is a simple but effective film. In spite of the fact that it is a rewriting of the Book of Job, the film conveys interesting questions. We totally have to forget about who is torturing the poor minister, God or Satan. That's not the question. The question is that his attitude is determined by what he believes. He believes he is being tortured by the devil and that is enough to justify the final miracle of the end of his cancer with a single gunshot. What is important is that, no matter what he believes, he follows a road of truthfulness and he brings comfort to extreme cases of a-social people. The apple tree then becomes a cross between the Book of Genesis in which the apple tree is the tree of knowledge and wisdom but absolutely out of reach due to one of God's ukases and that Book of Job I was citing before. The newcomer being called Adam the allusion is obvious. That tree is God's tree. Then all the attacks he suffers can only come from the snake, Satan, the devil. The point is that the plagues that tree suffers are quite reminiscent of the plagues of Egypt. That's where we meet with Job. God is not only planning the future ahead but he is also testing his servants by torturing them and the plagues come from God and the silly mortals around that tree have to make penance because they are punished by God and tested by God and they have to go away or keep their faith. And they just do so. Adam will make a small apple pie with the last scavenged apple of the tree and he will share that apple pie with the minister Ivan, a direct allusion that has to be designed so to Adam and Eve, or here Adam and Ivan. But after that episode they are not rejected by the parish, they can come back to their little piece of Christian paradise in a world of squalor, the two of them and yet they won't make many children but they will welcome the lost errant children of god. And guess what: they welcome two men together coming from some prison, Abel and Cain of course, and the world can go on turning. Bad of course, but turning all the same.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID