Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Men & Chicken Blu-ray Movie Review

Family

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 25, 2016

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.

Jensen has said that he likes his films to be unpredictable, and it's hard to discuss Men & Chicken beyond the basic setup without spoilers. We begin with two brothers, Gabriel and Elias, each of whom is someone you wouldn't want to be trapped next to at dinner. Elias, the younger brother, brags habitually about his alleged prowess with women, but his sexual activity is confined to compulsively masturbating multiple times a day. He's also quick to anger and prone to violence. In an intriguing case of reverse casting, Elias is played by actor Mads Mikkelson, a regular in Jensen's films and a familiar face from both Casino Royale and TV's Hannibal , who so thoroughly transforms himself here that he is almost unrecognizable. Older brother Gabriel (David Dencik, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) is the one with a job; he teaches college-level sociology and philosophy and is especially fond of Darwin. Gabriel is also the one who sometimes gets a girlfriend, but they never last long. Apparently cursed with a weak stomach, Gabriel retches perpetually like a cat with a hair ball.

Both brothers were born with cleft palates that have been repaired, leaving visible scars. Physical deformities, particularly of the face, are a central element in Men & Chicken, and while there's ultimately an explanation for them, their prominence is just one example of the fine line that Jensen walks, not always successfully, between comedy and cruelty.

After their father's death, the brothers find a videotape in which he confesses not only that they were adopted, but also that they had different mothers. The old man's lack of facility with a video recorder is evident in the bad framing (which turns out to have hidden significance), and the tape cuts out before he reveals more than the name of their biological father: Dr. Evelio Thanatos (which sounds like a rejected concept for a Bond villain).

Determined to trace their heritage, the brothers set off to find Dr. Thanatos, who is now almost 100, at his crumbling mansion on the remote Island of Ork—a locale where the population has dwindled to the point that the island is in danger of being removed from the map, much to the consternation of Mayor Flemming (Ole Thestrup). Upon reaching the island, the brothers receive an initially hostile reception from three more sons of Dr. Thanatos, all of whom exhibit bizarre behavior and physical abnormalities, including the family's trademark cleft palate. The oldest, Franz (Søren Malling), has a distorted face and a bizarre habit of clubbing people with stuffed dead animals. Josef (Nicolas Bro) is a tub of lard who suffers from both an unnatural craving for cheese and some form of obsessive-compulsive disorder about the plate from which he eats his meals. The youngest, Gregor (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), is desperate to meet a girl, but his older brothers insist on keeping him close to home, where their elderly father requires their vigilance so that his rest is not disturbed.

As the newly reunited half-siblings get acquainted, Jensen out-Freaks Tod Browning in his depiction of an outsider society, and it's often impossible to tell whether he's trying to inspire laughter or regurgitation (or both at the same time). The Thanatos home, where Gabriel and Elias are given makeshift beds in the cheese storage room, is revolting in its decrepitude, a wreck that makes the ruined Grey Gardens house look like a palace. A bewildering array of farm animals, including geese, sheep and, of course, chickens, freely roam the halls, and a prize bull is tethered in one room, where he is "milked" of his sperm every month for breeding. The mansion contains many secrets, and as each is revealed, Jensen seems to revel in the depravity, daring his audience to bear with him for one queasy development after another. Some parts of Men & Chicken play like a horror film; others recall Monty Python or the Three Stooges. Jensen's ultimate destination remains an open question, but there's a strong hint in the sequence with which he bookends the film: a gauzily shot scene of bucolic domesticity that may or may not be real. It's almost enough to make you forget the terrible violations that have led to this moment—almost, but not quite.

Men & Chicken Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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.

Men & Chicken Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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.

Men & Chicken Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailers
• Men & Chicken Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2.39:1; 2:10)
• Borgman
• The Connection
• The Invitation
• Spring



• Booklet: The cover of Drafthouse's enclosed booklet notes that it comes "From the Desk of Dr. Evilio Thanatos" (with "Evilio" spelled differently from the disc's subtitles). The booklet contains a director's statement; film and behind-the-scenes stills; and film and disc credits.



• Digital Copy: As always, digital copies from Drafthouse must be downloaded directly and are not available through services such as iTunes or VUDU.

Men & Chicken Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.