When unhappily married Christoffer and Maja travel to Prague to retrieve the remains of Christoffer's recently deceased father, their misadventures expose both a cultural gap and the cracks in their own relationship in this Danish drama. From doctors who sprint through the morgue to hotel workers who misunderstand simple requests, the bickering couple finds that every interaction in this foreign land leads to confusion and conflict.
Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Stine Stengade, Borivoj Navrátil, Jana Plodková, Josef Vajnar
So many things about this film are excellent. But at the same time, there are a few little things that are not so good that seem to overshadow the good parts.
Like: The way the film really lets the viewer experience a piece of Prague. The combination of wide angle shots and different shooting locations is fabulous. It made me almost feel as though I have actually been to be Prague and would recognize it again. Compared to Good Evening Mr. Wallenberg, this film does a much better job of taking advantage of the location.
Like: I am normally not a fan of films shot with a hand held camera but this film is the exception. The main reason I usually don't like it is because it makes me dizzy. I guess it worked for PRAGUE because there were a lot of close up shot...sometimes there were long stretches where all you see are the actors' faces. It just worked...which is also related to my next....
Like: The acting was wonderful! Mads Mikkelsen has impressed me yet again. The whole cast did an excellent job though. When there are a lot of close ups of faces, then it is really easy to pinpoint bad performances. But its also easy to spot great performances. If I'm not mistaken, I think Mads was in every scene....such an awesome performance.
Like: The script itself contributed to much of the success of this film. It gave the viewer an in depth look at a failing marriage without going overboard or being cheesy. There was also enough comic relief for the plot to not be too depressing.But now for my major dislike: The Music and even just the audio in general was very distracting. There was just too much music for my taste. I guess I understand the role of the music (of course its trying to affect the viewer emotionally) but it seemed as though music played every time Mads' character didn't want to hear what people were telling him...which isn't necessarily a bad thing but in my opinion this could be have been much better achieved with muting the voices a little bit.
The other problem was that I was constantly having to adjust the volume...which doesn't allow for the best viewing experience. It would go from loud music to the characters speaking English very very softly. This wasn't a problem when they were speaking another language because there were of course subtitles. The editing could have just been much much better.
Some of my favorite quotes:
"Life is hard. You can't have everything." (spoken by 2 different characters)
"Life is hard. You either bend or you break."
"We are always ashamed and never good enough for the world." (which was spoken in Czech by the housekeeper to Mads who didn't understand what she was saying. This was by far the best scene of the movie. The two were pouring each others heart out...yet the other one didn't have a clue what the other one was saying)
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