R (movie)

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Movie
Original title R.
Country of production Denmark
original language Danish , Arabic
Publishing year 2009
length 96 minutes
Rod
Director Tobias Lindholm ,
Michael Noer
script Tobias Lindholm,
Michael Noer
production Rene Ezra ,
Tomas Radoor
camera Magnus Nordenhof Jønck
cut Adam Nielsen
occupation
  • Johan Philip Asbæk : Rune Pedersen
  • Dulfi Al-Jabouri: Rashid
  • Roland Møller: Mureren
  • Jacob Gredsted: Carsten
  • Kim Winther: jailer Kim
  • Omar Shargawi : Bazhir
  • Sune Nørgaard: Sune

R is a Danish prison - Drama by Tobias Lindholm and Michael Noer from the year 2010. The film, strictly according to the principles of Dogma 95 designed to show a documentary history of the Danish criminal Rune, which is taken to jail and tries to survive by he smuggles drugs. The film was not only a critical success, it was also nominated and awarded in eight categories of the renowned Danish film prize Robert . In addition, his realistic portrayal sparked a debate in Denmark about the judiciary.

action

The Danish criminal Rune has to go to the “Horsens State Prison” for two years and is already expected there by some prisoners who threaten him immediately with violence unless he does certain favors for them. So he is supposed to ambush and beat up an Albanian. But after he ambushed him in the stairwell and beat him up aggressively, the reprisals against him do not stop. He is arrested by the guards as a suspect and has to be in solitary confinement for three days, but he keeps quiet and does not reveal anything, neither that he was the perpetrator nor who the client was. But even after that, not much changes for him and he is humiliated and harassed by the inmates. He does not defend himself and becomes a patient servant of Carsten and "Mureren".

While working in the kitchen, he met the young North African Rashid and they both became friends after an initial distance. Since Rune also keeps the prison clean as a cleaner, one day he finds a way to transport objects with the other cell block of the Muslims. Rashid becomes his contact person in the other cell wing. And since the drug trade between the Danes and the Muslims has been stopped by the guards, he gets on as a courier and, in contrast, secures certain special rights. From now on he is under the protection of Carsten, gets a better cell, is no longer humiliated and is allowed to take part in the social activities of the other inmates.

But the Muslims, especially the Lebanese Bazhir, learns how the two of them carry out their drug exchange and bring it under their control. So Bazhir demands from Rune that from now on he should only do business with him. But already after the first deal, Bazhir refuses to pay, which puts Rune under enormous pressure, since he had to vouch for the drugs and the payment. He now owes the Danes an enormous sum of money, as this time he was supposed to smuggle three times the amount. And so he goes after Bazhir during the day off and demands his money, but the latter refuses and beats him up, so that in the end Rune is again put in solitary confinement. And when he comes out again, he is of course paranoid about what might happen, since he was not able to get the money for the Danes after all. But he did not see his friend Rashid luring him into a trap, where he was beaten up and stabbed by the "Albanians" and "Mueren".

Rashid is the first to be interrogated by the guards. But he doesn't reveal anything. And the other prisoners put pressure on him and threaten him. Some see him as a potential traitor and others see him as someone who has already given something away. But Bazhir gets him back on track and demands that he start smuggling drugs again. But after an emotional visit from his family, he wants to confess and goes to guard Kim and wants to tell him everything. But he doesn't want to know anything about it and says that Rashid only has three months left and should be patient. But Rashid can't and confesses who killed Rune. When Bazhir noticed this the next morning, he had him beaten up and showered him with a “morning coffee”, a boiling liquid made from olive oil and sugar.

criticism

Ebbe Iversen compared R with the French drama A Prophet in the Danish daily Berlingske and said that R is more consistent because of its "hard and depressive realism [...] and therefore does not seem as" long and bumpy "by far. He also said that one is tempted to “never want to go to jail” because of the “vulgar slang [and] the stark representation of a harsh and callous world”.

In the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten Katrine summer praised Boysen that the film "never meet the wrong tone reliable realistic representation [...]." Because of its addition, she praised the cameraman Magnus Nordenhof Jonck , the wonderful the "paranoid dirty prison corridors" could show.

Jonas Varsted Kirkegaard of the left-liberal Danish daily Dagbladet Information said that the two different directors Tobias Lindholm, who comes from the fiction sector, and Michael Noer, who comes from the documentary film sector, give the film its own character . And thanks to the “furious, unaesthetic” style, it always seems as if “the next violence could break out at any moment”. And although as the film progressed, "the concept of rehabilitation seems naive," Kirkegaard saw it as "cruelly difficult" if used as evidence to "demand even tougher prison sentences."

And although there were "some murders, heavy beatings and rituals of revenge," said Stephen Holden of the New York Times , R is very far from the worst prison films ever made and not even as bad as the American prison dramas or "the SM- Soap Opera Oz - Hell Behind Bars ”.

Alissa Simon from Variety magazine found the documentary style with the “ claustrophobic close-ups” just as good as the fact that the characters are portrayed as “pathetic rather than sympathetic”. The film refuses to "romanticize or heroize the characters and follow the conventions of the prison film genre." It is also much less about "justice or redemption", but simply about reality.

Although Xan Brooks criticized the British daily The Guardian that R was merely an "opportunistic copy" of the French drama A Prophet , he praised the consistency and the documentary style of Tobias Lindholm and Michael Noer.

In the Swiss daily Aargauer Zeitung , Sven Zaugg said that R is “pale realism” which “at least at first glance” pales in comparison to Ein Prophet and Cell 211 . However, the strength of the film lies in the "casualness of [...] psychological and physical violence".

background

As motivation for the film, Tobias Lindholm stated that he was surprised after a childhood friend of his, who was in prison for minor drug offenses, wrote him letters describing the circumstances in Danish prisons. However, he did not describe in the correspondence how he felt about it, so that Lindholm, who was still at the film school in 2007, started working on a film idea. In later research he was also surprised that the Danish judiciary kept the Muslim prisoners in their prisons separate from the Danish ones. During the development of the script, as many former prisoners and guards as possible were contacted, around 75 in number, and their stories and experiences were collected in order to write a story. All events during the film are therefore true occurrences that have only been adapted for the film.

Johan Philip Asbæk was the only professional actor in the film. The rest of the cast are ex-prison inmates and guards. These were specially selected to increase the realism in the presentation.

The film then sparked a major debate in Denmark about prison conditions.

Awards

publication

R celebrated its world premieres at both the International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Gothenburg International Film Festival in January 2010 before it was released on April 22, 2010 in Danish cinemas. It was last released in theaters on June 17, 2011 in the United States and August 26, 2011 in the United Kingdom . A German theatrical release is not yet planned.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Stephen Holden : R (2010) on nytimes.com of June 16, 2011 (English), accessed August 28, 2011
  2. ↑ Ebbe Iversen: The danske film "R" gives a rå og realistisk skildring af hverdagen i et fængsel. on b.dk of April 21, 2010 (Danish), accessed on August 28, 2011
  3. ↑ Katrine Sommer Boysen: R ( Memento of the original from October 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from kpn.dk on April 22, 2010 (Danish), accessed on August 28, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / kpn.dk
  4. ↑ Jonas Varsted Kirkegaard: Smadr eller bliv smadret on information.dk of April 21, 2010 (Danish), accessed on August 28, 2011
  5. ↑ Alissa Simon: R (Review) on variety.com from February 9, 2010 (English), accessed August 28, 2011
  6. ↑ Xan Brooks: D: Hit First, Hit Hardest - review on guardian.co.uk August 25, 2011 (English), accessed August 28, 2011
  7. ↑ Sven Zaugg: Caught in Dogma on aargauerzeitung.ch of September 27, 2010, accessed on August 28, 2011
  8. ↑ a b c Gary Kramer: Interview: Tobias Lindholm and Michael Noer on Slantmagazine.com from June 14, 2011 (English), accessed on August 28, 2011
  9. ↑ a b Interview: Tobias Lindholm & Michael Noer - R on filmfestivalrotterdam.com (English), accessed on August 28, 2011
  10. ↑ a b Todd Konrad: Film Interview: "R" co-directors Tobias Lindholm and Michael Noer on vegas-outsider.com (English), accessed on August 28, 2011
  11. ↑ Peter Stanners: Gritty films shine light on country's unknown worlds ( Memento of the original from August 28, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at cphpost.dk on April 19, 2011 (English), accessed on August 28, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / cphpost.dk