When trying to sum up director Nicolas Winding Refn's latest work, Copenhagen Cowboy, it would be a serious mistake to focus too much on its plot. This is because, up to a point, what is happening matters much less than how it all plays out. One could describe how it follows a young woman named Miu who is on a revenge journey in the seedy underbelly of Copenhagen, where Refn himself is from, and it would sound like another generic action thriller. The same could be said of the director's other recent series, Too Old to Die Young, which twisted the genre beats of a crime drama in ways that were both macabre and riveting.
While each has a similar quality due to Refn's consistent visual and tonal control, they also remain distinct works that play more as complementary pieces to the others that see him continue to experiment. Though Copenhagen Cowboy tends to be more restrained in its violence and gore, it's still a dynamic and haunting experience that's less concerned with the expectations some may have of its structure than with immersing us in its finger-dipping borderline supernatural settings. feet in the surreal before diving in. Like the scene of a car hurtling through the darkness of an isolated road, there is a beauty to the experience that we plunge headlong into. This makes for a plunge into danger that requires patience and a willingness to surrender to the experience; Although it is not for all tastes, it is worth opening your mind.
Creators: Sara Isabella Jønsson Vedde, Nicolas Winding Refn
Stars: Angela Bundalovic, Andreas Lykke Jørgensen, Li Ii Zhang
This all begins with pigs, a recurring mud-dwelling motif in the series, united in their piercing shrieks that serve as punctuation for the strangulation murder we are only given glimpses of. He fades into the background during Miu's introduction before this murder as she is transported to a remote location, the first of several that feel more like hellish amalgamations of reality than anything else, but won't be the last we know of. the screaming sows. Interpretations of what these animals are intended to represent abound; her screams are often fused with scenes of sex, violence, and sometimes both. This is, after all, a Refn production, and when has he ever skimped on showing humanity's penchant for depravity? There's less of that here, building up in brief bursts of blood and brutality all the way up to a climactic fight that feels more like a death dance, but there's still a lot of mud to wade through. One could even read the series as if Refn was acting as some kind of outsider alien artist, looking down on the audience as identical to the bristles that devour whatever grotesque and violent new kaleidoscopic vision he presents us with.
She even appears on the show, saying nothing and just staring at the dark absurdity before her. This could easily be categorized with the dreaded descriptor "pretentious," but he maintains a lingering sense of humor that should put an end to such layoffs. For whatever remaining way her detractors might label Refn as an auteur whose head is in his own ass and up to the same old trick, the increasingly silly subversions that populate the story give it some refreshingly needed gallows humor. . When a contract killer shows up unexpectedly as everything starts to wind down and says, with a completely straight face, that he's more than just a killer but a "good listener too", the joke fits perfectly. It's all part of how Copenhagen Cowboy takes himself deadly seriously in dark moments, while in others not so much, an amusing tug-of-war woven throughout. As we begin to discover that there is more to Miu than meets the eye in that she can control the power of both life and death, the gravity of it all is interspersed with an almost gregarious vulgarity. The fact that anyone can stumble upon the series from other Netflix offerings is hilarious on its own. The only similarity one could humorously look for is that Miu has a bowl cut that makes her look like Will Byers from Stranger Things, though that's where the similarities end.
The presentation and the way he creates a more dreamlike rhythm is Refn at his best. There's a coldness to the way she conducts much of the series, with the camera literally circling through various scenes and often just zooming away from its center. What might feel unfocused ends up uncovering aspects of the story that might otherwise be overlooked, even as Refn still keeps the characters at arm's length. He rarely gets involved in close-ups, often letting conversations unfold from afar.
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