One can’t help wondering whether, some quarter-century ago, Carsten Brandt had the slightest inkling of the epic dimension the project he was then starting to conceive – The Gentle Pain – would take on in the subsequent decades. For it became epic in just about every sense of the word: the film is very long; it tells a multi-layered story characterised as much by its digressions as by its main narrative thread, which concerns a filmmaker’s attempts to make sense of the life of Thorkild Hansen, a Danish traveller/historian/writer internationally probably best known for his non-fiction novel Processen mod Hamsun (1978); and it took a long time to finish – and then sat on a shelf due to legal battles galore.
What is now finally revealed is a monument of modern(ist) cinema: a work that as much charts one man’s journey into his soul as a voyage of discovery into another artist’s mind.
Film details
Productieland
Denmark
Jaar
2019
Festivaleditie
IFFR 2019
Lengte
280'
Medium/Formaat
DCP
Taal
Arabic, Danish, English, French, Italian, Swedish
Première status
World premiere
Director
Carsten Brandt
Screenplay
Carsten Brandt
Editing
Sigudur Sverrir Pálsson
Principal cast
Laure Calamy, Ewa Fröling, Caspar Phillipson, Michelle Sarah Guetta, Rut Cronström, Erik Thors, Kasper Leisner