De gamle

Tobias Jacobsen is 42. When the doctors tell him he is fatally ill, the earth opens up beneath him and he finds himself plunging into the abyss. It makes him think of the time he was 13 and his girlfriend got him to jump off the balcony of her father's house with a sun umbrella for a parachute. Two stories separated by 29 years are told in parallel, but gradually intertwine into one drama. Both stories have moments of joy and tragedy, as fates wondrously separate and are brought back together again. It is a story about making a leap of faith, trusting in yourself and realizing that, ultimately, life is no good without humour, even of the darker variety.

When Edvarda arrives at the little Norwegian village, to stay with some family, she find the Lt., Thomas Glahn, very interesting. Soon they fall in love. It's a very passionate relationship, but this leads to problems. Both of them are very strong in their opinions, and both are behaving a little strange. Love turns to hate, and instead of doing all they can to please each other, they do all they can to hurt the other person psychological. They both do a great job, and what began as a love story turns into a sad and depressing story of two ruined persons. The story is told by Thomas Glahn from his "exile" in Thailand, where he in the beginning of the movie receives two green feathers from Edvarda.

To celebrate his 90th birthday, an old single journalist, Sabio, who accustomed to intimacy with whores since childhood, decides to gift himself with an intense night of love with a virgin teenager. Rosa Cabarcas, his old friend as a brothel madam arranges him the ideal young woman, Delgadina, a factory worker, who sells her virginity to support her family, but when he sees her sleeping angelically, he loses interest in pure pleasure and falls in love with her. That love was not meant to be true, but fate changes, and that hope is born of an opportunity for unbridled love.

The story begins when Toby (Ivan Jackson), a young English businessman, arrives in South Africa to take charge of a publishing firm. He knows little about apartheid and so at first sees no contradiction in developing a relationship with an elite, upper-class white woman and with a woman dedicated to fighting apartheid. But as Toby makes friends with one of the black South Africans (Zaku Mokae), and as he registers both the subtle and more obvious, deep-seated racial prejudices of the minority white population, some of the truth of the oppression here begins to dawn. That is brought to a head when tragedy strikes.

This is a film about the stuff dreams are made of, yet, there is nothing elevated in this concept, on the contrary. The characters around the bar Strudsen (the ostrich) are doing what ostriches do, hiding themselves from the threats of life and keeping their dreams to themselves. Scriptwriter Benny Andersen being a poet is rendering a loving portrait of a number of persons, who fail to try to make their dreams come true, possibly not being sufficiently dissatisfied with their life after all. The manager would like a bar of his own but dare not admit to it, the butcher would like to be an opera singer, the window cleaner (sorry, window polisher) is secretly in love with the bar lady, but dare not show it and the pianist willingly listens to all the different dreams being presented to him. This film was the best accomplished movie from Henning Carlsen since his debut with 'Sult'.

The second part of Carlsen's documentary trilogy explores the structure and importance of the family unit as an institution, and the opinions of family members as individuals.

In 1890, Pontus, the starving writer, wanders the streets of Christiania, in search of love and a chance to get his work published. All he meets is defeat and suffering while his sense of reality is withering. One moment he is delighted and the next he curses everybody. All the time he manages to maintain human dignity and pride.

A group of women are workmates at a laundry. Rike is spreading a rumour about Marta who is in charge, a rumour that Marta is a lesbian and that she once tried to seduce Rike.

The late 1930s. A young enemployed, unskilled worker walks through the streets of Copenhagen, sustaining himself partly on the dole and free soup-kitchen meals and partly on day-dreams. He spends time at a cemetry studying headstone inscriptions. Mild-mannered and of poetic bent, he understands little of an intellectual friend's advice and shies away from the love of a woman who shares her bed with him.

After having been rescued from suicide, a young man is the object of a bet by his doctor that the doctor can help him recover his joy in life. Ironically, the doctor's life is not a very happy one either, and his boast has a hollow sound. For one thing, although he seemingly has a "happy divorce," in which he, his ex-wife and her new husband are all great pals, it's not true. He wants his wife back. All sorts of complications arise out of these lies and distortions.