Men and Chicken

Why did the chick­en cross the road? Prob­a­bly to escape the twist­ed fate it would find in Anders Thomas Jensen grotesque sci-fi fable, a film that would most def­i­nite­ly give PETA mem­bers a heart attack. Upon dis­cov­er­ing they were adopt­ed, broth­ers Elias (Mads Mikkelsen) and Gabriel (David Den­cik) trav­el to a remote island where, rumour has it, their bio­log­i­cal father lives in an aban­doned sana­to­ri­um. When they arrive, they find out their real dad is dead – he’s just decom­pos­ing in bed upstairs. Yet liv­ing in the sana­to­ri­um are three broth­ers they nev­er knew they had.

Elias and Gabriel try to get on with their new­found fam­i­ly, but it’s a total­ly sor­did affair. Franz (Søren Mal­ing) assails vis­i­tors with stuffed birds, Josef (Nico­las Bro) is a klep­to with an affin­i­ty for wheels of cheese, and Gre­gor (Niko­laj Lie Kaas) uses the chick­ens that roam the prop­er­ty for prac­tice until he can ​“find some girls.” Mikkelsen deliv­ers a qui­et­ly com­ic turn as a chron­ic mas­tur­ba­tor, a far cry from his dap­per Han­ni­bal Lecter. How­ev­er, Men and Chick­en owes it all to an admirably com­mit­ted ensem­ble. Jensen has clear­ly built a team of col­lab­o­ra­tors who trust in his dark humour. And for all its ugly plot points, it’s fre­quent­ly hysterical.

To his cred­it, Jensen treats his per­vert­ed play­ers with com­pas­sion. When a hor­ri­fy­ing fam­i­ly secret sur­faces, the broth­ers don’t reel from shock but sim­ply return to their same old ado­les­cent antics. The film’s ten­den­cy to make light of even the dark­est sit­u­a­tions reveals an inter­est in human emo­tion, not hor­ror. Despite its big heart, the film’s mes­sage about the impor­tance of fam­i­ly feels a bit insin­cere. There’s a lot to like in Men and Chick­ens, but its sac­cha­rine final act doesn’t quite work, espe­cial­ly when com­ing on the back of so much enjoy­ably per­verse slap­stick, bes­tial­i­ty and dis­turb­ing fam­i­ly histories.