Dark Horse (Voksne Mennesker, Dagur Kári, Denmark-Iceland 2005, 106mins)
Responsibility is not exactly Daniel’s (Jakob Cedergren) middle name. Working a regular job and paying taxes and rent are foreign concepts for this amiable slacker. Cocooned from the world in his vintage Fiat 500 and listening to 'The Well Tempered Klavier' on a set of headphones virtually sutured to his person, Daniel is blithely unaware that the time for living off his idiosyncratic charm is soon running out.
Daniel is a graffiti artist whose commissions are from young romantics who give him messages of love to be sprayed on the walls of Copenhagen City. An endearing and harmless occupation, it’s just not exactly legal and Daniel is wanted by the police. And it’s not just the police who are after him: Daniel has serious issues with the tax office and his landlord, too. Daniel is so far behind in his rent that his landlord resorts to selling his belongings in a makeshift yard sale run by the landlord’s 7-year old daughter (who drives a very hard bargain), and he’s having a hard time reconciling his accounts with the tax office who have become just a tad suspicious as Daniel has only declared earnings of seven dollars for the past four years. To make matters worse, Daniel has fallen in love with ex-bakery girl, psychedelic mushroom-eating Franc (Tilly Scott Pedersen), who is the love interest of his best friend, Grandpa (Nicolas Bro). Too shy and insecure to have declared his feelings for Franc, he sublimates his disappointment and redirects his energy into becoming a football referee with evangelical zeal. Grandpa, is of course opposite to Daniel in every way. Big and fat, he is an ardent moralist with a strong need for law and order (a need that he takes to excessive measures on the football pitch). He is proud of being a responsible, tax-paying citizen and proud of his job as a lab technician in a sleep clinic.
While Grandpa prepares for his debut match, things are beginning to come apart for Daniel. Unable to even cash-in on his good looks because his parents will appropriate the money (if it weren’t for their good genes he wouldn’t be so good-looking), Daniel can’t raise the rent money and gets evicted. Not only that, he gets busted by the police who catch him red-handed with spray gun in hand. He receives a relatively light sentence from the Judge (Morten Suurballe), a married, middle-aged man with a serious mid-life crisis. Unbeknownst to either of them, their brief crossing of paths sets them on a parallel journey where each will cross a threshold critical to each becoming their own complete person – albeit in very different and unexpected ways.
Dagur Kári’s second feature is a fairly formulaic “indie”-slacker film that is appealing enough though it has little to distinguish it from so many others of that ilk. There are a number of good, if but predictable gags, and the black-white photography recalls the visual style of early Jarmusch. Dark Horse would have benefited from a shorter running time and a crisper, more robust approach to its editing and narrative exposition, but all-in-all it is an amiable but slight and forgettable film.
Review by Erica Rosen
Daniel is a graffiti artist whose commissions are from young romantics who give him messages of love to be sprayed on the walls of Copenhagen City. An endearing and harmless occupation, it’s just not exactly legal and Daniel is wanted by the police. And it’s not just the police who are after him: Daniel has serious issues with the tax office and his landlord, too. Daniel is so far behind in his rent that his landlord resorts to selling his belongings in a makeshift yard sale run by the landlord’s 7-year old daughter (who drives a very hard bargain), and he’s having a hard time reconciling his accounts with the tax office who have become just a tad suspicious as Daniel has only declared earnings of seven dollars for the past four years. To make matters worse, Daniel has fallen in love with ex-bakery girl, psychedelic mushroom-eating Franc (Tilly Scott Pedersen), who is the love interest of his best friend, Grandpa (Nicolas Bro). Too shy and insecure to have declared his feelings for Franc, he sublimates his disappointment and redirects his energy into becoming a football referee with evangelical zeal. Grandpa, is of course opposite to Daniel in every way. Big and fat, he is an ardent moralist with a strong need for law and order (a need that he takes to excessive measures on the football pitch). He is proud of being a responsible, tax-paying citizen and proud of his job as a lab technician in a sleep clinic.
While Grandpa prepares for his debut match, things are beginning to come apart for Daniel. Unable to even cash-in on his good looks because his parents will appropriate the money (if it weren’t for their good genes he wouldn’t be so good-looking), Daniel can’t raise the rent money and gets evicted. Not only that, he gets busted by the police who catch him red-handed with spray gun in hand. He receives a relatively light sentence from the Judge (Morten Suurballe), a married, middle-aged man with a serious mid-life crisis. Unbeknownst to either of them, their brief crossing of paths sets them on a parallel journey where each will cross a threshold critical to each becoming their own complete person – albeit in very different and unexpected ways.
Dagur Kári’s second feature is a fairly formulaic “indie”-slacker film that is appealing enough though it has little to distinguish it from so many others of that ilk. There are a number of good, if but predictable gags, and the black-white photography recalls the visual style of early Jarmusch. Dark Horse would have benefited from a shorter running time and a crisper, more robust approach to its editing and narrative exposition, but all-in-all it is an amiable but slight and forgettable film.
Review by Erica Rosen
posted by Barnaby at 2:01 PM
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