Mads Mikkelsen has arrived at the film festival in Venice with "The Last Viking", the sixth film the Danish film star has made together with director Anders Thomas Jensen and actor Nikolaj Lie Kaas.
It started 25 years ago with "Flickering Lights" and has since continued with "The Green Butchers", "Adam's Apples", "Men and Chickens", "Riders of Justice" and now "The Last Viking".
What they have in common is that they are black comedies with breathtaking humor and often shocking elements of bloody violence.
But it must never be provocation as an end in itself, just as it must not be sentimentality as an end in itself. It's important to have a good story that underlies it, says Mikkelsen.
Playing brothers
In "The Last Viking", Mikkelsen and Kaas play the brothers Manfred and Anker. The latter has just been released from prison after a long sentence for robbery and murder. Now he wants to get to the loot that Manfred has hidden.
The problem is that while Anker was in prison, his brother has had a breakdown. He thinks he is John Lennon and does not know where the millions are hidden. Then follows a typical Anders Thomas Jensen story with complications, humor and violence.
Mikkelsen has a rather unusual hairstyle in the film, which prompts the comment about permanents. He had another, even stranger hairstyle in "The Green Butchers"
It's not me who's forcing him. It's Mads himself who comes up with the ideas, says Anders Thomas Jensen.
In Denmark, the films have become big critical and public successes. Not so in Sweden, at least not in terms of audience. Mikkelsen himself has put forward the theory that the films have been too non-politically correct.
There was a time when you in Sweden made films that were "larger than life", films like "My Life as a Dog" and "The Simple-Minded Murderer". Then came a period when you didn't make such films anymore. But I don't think that's the case anymore. You have it in you, says Mikkelsen.
Gunnar Rehlin/TT
Fact: Mads Mikkelsen
TT
59 years old. Got his breakthrough in the film "Pusher" in 1996 and has since alternated roles in Denmark in, among other things, the TV series "The Crime Unit" and "Pusher II", "The Hunt", "A Royal Affair", "After the Wedding" and "Another Round" with an international career.
Internationally, he is best known for his roles in the Bond film "Casino Royale", "Doctor Strange" and "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story".
