Review of Adam's Apples (2005) by Wayne S — 13 Jan 2012

Like a story by Flannery O'Connor, re-imagined as one of the Coen Bros. grim fables, this Danish film by Anders Thomas Jensen comes completely out of left field. A neo-Nazi skinhead, Adam (Ulrich Thomsen), is sent to a rural church which is also a half-way house, there to perform community service. The pastor, Ivan (Mads Mikkelsen), who seems like a combination of saint and idiot, assigns him to care for a fruitful apple tree on the property and, when summer is over and the apples are ripe, bake an apple pie. This is his project, and although Adam has no intention of doing any such thing, and offers the good pastor no cooperation, there is something afoot here that he cannot understand.

The preacher, Ivan, accepts every effrontery with a shrug and and excuse, "well, that just rude," even to the point of taking bloody beatings from his new resident. The church has a minuscule congregation including an overweight former tennis star who is a kleptomanic and a rapist, a Saudi terrorist who is robbing service stations to finance his collection of weapons, a pregnant alcoholic woman, and an aging concentration camp guard with a bad conscience.

The determined, if unrealistic optimism, of his mentor keeps Adam off guard, as he tries to figure out just what is going on. Meanwhile, Adam's apple tree is assaulted by ravenous crows, an infestation of worms, and ultimately an apocalyptic thunderstorm. In his room, beneath a picture of the Fuhrer, Adam reads the book of Job and determines to see if he can test the pastor to the extreme, to prove that God must in fact hate him, and in short order he seems to accomplish just that... but now it is Adam who will be tested as the first inklings of compassion come upon him like a virus.

A comedy as black as crows in an apple tree, "Adam's Apples" is an off-kilter morality play that never states the obvious. It would rather play with the viewers assumptions of life and meaning, action and consequence, mixing them all up in an over-heated farcical drama, until they produce a surprising and tasty result, a film as sweet and satisfying as a warm apple pie.