'The Last Viking', Anders Thomas Jensen Rolf_Konow/Elisabetta A. Villa/Getty Images Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment If you've loved a Danish film in the past 20 years, there's a good chance it was written by Anders Thomas Jensen. The wildly prolific Danish screenwriter has been a co-author with Susanne Bier - on the Oscar-winning In a Better World (2010), as well as Brothers (2004) and After the Wedding (2006), both of which got U.S. remakes) - Nicolaj Arcel (The Promised Land from 2023) and Kristian Levring (2000's The King is Alive), while still regularly churning out darkly comic gems as a writer-director. He started with 2000's Flickering Lights, where four inept crooks hole up in the country and accidentally open a restaurant. The Green Butchers (2003) went darker, with Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas discovering human flesh is a best-seller - Hannibal with slapstick. Adam's Apples (2005) upped the dysfunction, pitting a neo-Nazi, a priest and assorted misfits against stray bullets and falling fruit in a warped take on the Book of Job. A decade later came Men & Chicken (2015), where five maladjusted brothers learn their quirks may stem from dad's Frankenstein-style experiments. Most recently, Riders of Justice (2020) cast Mikkelsen as a grieving soldier turned vigilante in a revenge thriller that mixes John Wick-esque carnage with math jokes. Related Stories Movies Nicolas Wadimoff's 'Who Is Still Alive' Brings Palestinian Voices to Venice: "This Isn't Just Another War" Music K-pop Stars ATEEZ Want to Keep Performing Even When They're Grandfathers The Last Viking, premiering out of competition in Venice and being sold by TrustNordisk, may be Jensen's wildest yet. Kaas plays Anker, a bank robber whose loot is entrusted to his traumatized younger brother Manfred (Mikkelsen). But by the time Kaas is released from prison, Manfred - a former viking obsessive - has been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder. He now believes he's John Lennon. Kaas sees no alternative: He has to find a collection of similarly afflicted patients - ones that think they're George, Ringo and Paul - and bring the Fab Four back together, all in the hopes of jogging his brother's memory and finding the cash before their past catches up with them. An action comedy combined with a sharp but still sweet satire on identity politics, The Last Viking sees Jensen at the top of his game. Jensen spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about finding the funny in trauma, giving Mikkelsen his most challenging role yet and why, in the never-ending Beatles vs. ABBA debate, he's team Bjorn. This is a crazy idea for a film. What was the spark that initiated it? You always get this question, and I like the idea of being in the shower, and an idea just pops up. It's not like that for me. Ideas come when I work with them. For the last 15 years, every conversation with my kids and everywhere in the media has been about identity. The whole Western civilization has, instead of looking out towards others, turned the camera on themselves, because they suddenly could, because of social media and whatever. So I wanted to do something about identity. And I had this idea about a boy who always wanted to be a Viking and wasn't allowed to do it. I sat down with [Danish producer] Peter Aalbaek Jensen and was telling him about this old idea I had about a psychiatrist putting together the Beatles with people suffering from identity disorders. He told me to work that into it. It was a lot of different stuff put all together. You have a lot of empathy for your characters, but you also seem to be mocking some of the more extreme elements of identity culture, about everyone having the right to their own version of reality. I don't try to mock. And this is an elevated story, it's sort of absurd. I think it's fantastic that we live in a part of the world at a time where everybody can seek out who they are and become who they really are. But when the surroundings have to adapt to the reality of one individual, things become absurd. That's basically where a lot of the comedy in the movie comes from. That seems to be personified in Mads Mikkelsen's character, who is convinced he's John Lennon. It's an "identity" for Mikkelsen unlike anything we've seen him do before. I wouldn't have dared to do this if it hadn't been with Mads. It's not easy what he's doing. The whole struggle was to get real emotions into a character that is this far out and still make it relatable. I think he pulls it off. Mads approached this role with caution. I know he was challenged by it. But he comes across as real. You believe that this person exists. He lands. There's another conflict in the story, between Beatles and ABBA fans... My whole childhood, all the intellectuals liked the Beatles. Like all of Scandinavia, I g