It’s not often that two films that were created separately, are as similar as the Danish R and the French Un prophète. While the latter was widely praised and attended; the first one drew hardly any people to the cinema, which is why Pluk decided to screen it. And rightly so: it’s a good film.
Warning: R is a brutal film and probably not for everyone. It’s not long into the movie before someone’s face is beaten to a pulp on a stone staircase. Not that the assaulter, our protagonist Rune, gets any pleasure out of it, but as a fellow inmate explains: ‘Either you beat the crap out of someone, or they beat the crap out of you.’ And so you beat the crap out of someone.
Un prophète – nominated for an Oscar and awarded the Special Jury Award in Cannes – was a brutal European prison movie as well, and the similarities don’t end there. A realistic looking fictional film about a prison in which a newly arrived prisoner, of whose criminal past we learn hardly anything, is forced to perform a violent ‘job’ for an in-house criminal gang. Cunning and contacts with a competing Arabic gang elevate his status, until setbacks force a confrontation with his gang leader. Un prophète? Indeed. R? Likewise.
R is an hour shorter than Un prophète – not necessarily a bad thing – and boils the story even further down to its essence. We never venture outside the prison and protagonist Rune is in every scene, suffocating close-ups in bleak areas. A threatening, shrill electronic soundtrack creates an atmosphere of doom and misery. Not exactly pleasant.
‘But,’ said first-time directors Lindholm and Noer, ‘we wanted to show what life was like in a Danish prison. People call for harsher punishments, but they don’t know what that means. This is what it means.’
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Now, I’ve always had the feeling that Denmark, of all the countries in the world, is most like The Netherlands. Does this mean that our prisons are like the one in R? If so, that scares me. And I have no reason to suspect that R is lying about the situation in Denmark.
Lindholm and Noer filmed in the real Horsens-prison, which has stood empty for several years, and apart from the amazing actor who plays Rune, no professional actors were used. Former inmates and former guards fill the hallways of this former prison. With tattoos, muscles and attitudes you couldn’t make up. An important role is played by Roland Moller, who spent five years as a detainee in this prison and was the original inspiration for the title R.
The result is an extremely oppressive view of a prison, which, if you survive it, can only be considered an educational institute for criminals. If you weren’t one going in, you will become one, and if you already were, you will be harder, better, more ruthless.
Does the same go for The Netherlands? ( KD)
translated by Marjan Westbroek
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