Life in Denmark
Playful and occasionally provocative, veteran Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth turns his sardonic eye on his homeland in this supremely charming short documentary shot in the ’70s. A collage of interviews with almost 100 Danes, from politicians to actors, young mothers to athletes, the film was intended as a challenge to negative clichés about the small Nordic nation as a dull backwater. As usual with Leth, the irony runs deep, drawing deadpan humor from willfully mundane material.
Ann Bierlich, Stine Bierlich, Kristen Bjørnkjær
- Notes From Mike MillsIn LIFE IN DENMARK you just see people—a family, an actress, a government minister, some poets, people sitting around naked—showing you what they do in Denmark. I don't know why I find that so deep or like an opening, like a thing I can get into and explore. I find films like this very lyrical—they do more than they say they're doing. And again, very simple. I like things that are deceptively simple—it seems so, but there are currents that aren’t announced at play.
