I saw "AFR" last week in an inner city Copenhagen cinema with a few friends, all hoping to be provoked, inspired and certainly entertained. Well, we were all somewhat entertained by the absurdity of seeing the danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen portrayed absolutely fictionally vague in his grasp of political ideologies, as well as the pathetically desperate attempt at trying to cut him down to a very human size in the shape of a love-desperate closet homosexual, which allows us to both patronize and in the end sympathize with him. Somewhat entertaining. Ultimately failing at carrying the weight of the task the director attempts to undertake.
Obviously the disclosure of the personal life of important political figures are somewhat interesting, but I'm utterly befuddled with why one would attempt at trying to raise such thought-provoking issues and absolutely vital questions concerning the current danish and international state of politics and the media, and in the end chose to go so exploitative and low-brow about it. What was supposed to be a movie about how tight the borders around such things as freedom of speech, sexuality, ideology, and so on, ended up being a rather hurried satirical tale told from a tongue tied at all times where it attempts to preach its personal definition of tolerance. If this is the consequence of the thinking that spawned such a feeble screenplay, then the thought process behind such writing is on all levels incredibly uninteresting in the context of the discussions that the movie tries to ignite.
Granted, vulgar attempts at intellectualism aside, the movie is not entirely without merits, and one thing worth noting is the interesting use of editing interviews and manipulating words of various political figures portrayed in news footage. Such a practice is one known to be used by the popular media, and it's absolutely interesting to be witnessing this strategic instrument used to fabricate truths quite unlike those with whom we're accustomed to seeing the danish prime minister spun into.
Technically, (without myself being a diploma-holding dramaturge) the pace of the movie seemed very rushed, not in the sense that there wasn't a decent build up. It just felt like the character development was so forced, and lacked subtlety to a tenth, which severely hurt the believability of the story that emerges from the premise. The acting was artificial at times, and though its was apparent to the audience that the format was documentary, many of the actors and actresses was obviously encouraged to try to "act" naturally. Something that made it extremely difficult to maintain a suspended disbelief.
In short, this film was entertaining, but it failed at all attempts to raise any serious questions. Once the audience has become satisfied with mundane, such as "what if the prime minister was homosexual", then that's what the debate would be about. I give the movie 5 out of 10, and mostly because of the skilled, though unremarkable editing, and because of the element of sensationalism that the movie brings to the table.
