6.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Two eccentric brothers discover after their father dies that they are only half-brothers -- and adopted. The search for their true father takes them to the small Danish island of Ork, where they stumble upon three additional half-brothers living in a dilapidated mansion overrun by barn animals. Initially unwelcome by their newfound kin, the two visitors stubbornly wear them down and uncover a dark family secret that ultimately binds them together.
Starring: David Dencik, Mads Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Søren Malling, Nicolas BroSci-Fi | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Danish: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Danish: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
BDInfo is wrong; it lists tracks as "English".
English
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
Digital copy
DVD copy
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Danish writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen did not make a film for ten years after 2005's
Adam's Apples, a dark comedy set in a half-way house for paroled
prisoners and featuring a battle of wills between a skinhead and a saintly priest. During his time away from the director's
chair, Jensen worked on screenplays for films as diverse as The
Duchess, The Salvation and the
Oscar-winning In a Better World. He also became
a father of four children, thereby prompting extended introspection about parenthood and its responsibilities. Though Jensen was certainly
not the first new parent to fret about his children's development as responsible members of
society, he is among the select few to have transmuted those concerns into a disturbing tale of
nature and nurture gone awry. With 2015's Men & Chicken, Jensen has crafted a chamber of
intimate horrors worthy of Frankenstein's creator Mary Shelley (though I suspect even Mrs.
Shelley would have blanched at the animal abuse).
It no doubt says something about Denmark's film industry (in which, let's not forget, enfant
terrible Lars von Trier is a revered figure) that something as perversely disturbing as Men &
Chicken made the short list for the country's submission to the 2016 Academy Awards. (It lost
that distinction to Tobias Lindholm's A War, which
was subsequently defeated by Son of Saul.)
Drafthouse Films promptly snapped up Jensen's latest work, which is a natural fit for the
specialty publisher's bizarrely eclectic library.
For Men & Chicken, director Jensen reunited with Sebastian Blenkov, his cinematographer from his previous film, Adam's Apples. Specific information about the shooting format was not available, but the film is clearly a product of digital origination, and Drafthouse's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray reflects the usual virtues of digital capture. The image is clean and sharply detailed, reproducing the decaying Thanatos mansion and the distorted features of its inhabitants with almost nauseating clarity. Men & Chicken has an earth-toned palette that was aptly described by one reviewer as "varying shades of manure", and the Blu-ray brings out all the subtle gradations of coloration, including feathers of the assorted fowl and coats of the animals. A slight haze overlays numerous indoor scenes, but this appears to be a deliberate part of the visual design. With no real extras, Drafthouse has placed the 100-minute film on a BD-25 with an average bitrate of 21.45 Mbps. The encode is capable, and it no doubt helped that Men & Chicken isn't what you'd call a kinetic film.
According to the end credits, Men & Chicken was released to theaters in Dolby Atmos, but
Drafthouse has provided a standard 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA. Given
what's on the soundtrack, I'm not sure how much room there is for improvement with the more
advanced audio format. Men & Chicken has a few noteworthy directional effects—rain, thunder,
a fire crackling off-screen—but it's largely a quiet and dialogue-driven film, with its big
moments all in front (e.g., the initial fight when Gabriel and Elias first arrive at the Thanatos
mansion). While I don't speak Danish, the dialogue reproduction was clear enough for me to
recognize the degree to which Mads Mikkelsen altered his intonation and the pitch of his voice to
play Elias. The orchestral score, which slides easily from horror to comedy to drama and back
again, is by Frans Bak (who composed the soundtrack for both the Danish and American versions
of The Killing) and Jeppe Kaas (Headhunters
).
Drafthouse has included an alternate 2.0 track, also in lossless DTS-HD MA. The English
subtitles are essential; unfortunately, they contain multiple typos, which is unusual for
Drafthouse.
Like so many films in the Drafthouse library, Men & Chicken is a challenge to score on a five-star scale. By design, the film defies
categorization, and it's sufficiently off-putting that some viewers won't last to the end (and others who do will regret staying). Horror legend Clive Barker
once said that what he wants from cinema is to feel something, even if it's disgust. Measured by
that standard, Jensen's film is a masterpiece, but it's not something I can recommend. For those
interested in finding out for themselves, the Blu-ray treatment is superior and technically
satisfying.
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