Mads Mikkelsen may be a cunning and intimidating presence to American audiences who know him from Casino Royale, Dr. Strange, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and TV’s Hannibal. But in his native Denmark, he’s proven himself a far more chameleonic artist, especially when partnering with director Anders Thomas Jensen.
In their six collaborations (not counting The Promised Land, which Jensen co-wrote), Mikkelsen has exhibited a fondness for crazy comedic characters, be it a masturbation-fixated mutant in Men & Chicken or a vengeance-seeking military vet in Riders of Justice. Those off-kilter instincts continue to be spot-in in The Last Viking, a black comedy in which the leading man plays an odd duck who believes he’s John Lennon—and is thrust on an odyssey to reunite with the rest of his (fake) Beatles bandmates.
Screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, Anders’ absurdist latest stars Mikkelsen as Manfred, a troubled adult with curly blonde hair that’s parted to the side and spectacles that can’t hide his eccentric autistic disposition. In his bedroom poring over a puzzle, Manfred is joined by his brother Anker (Jensen regular Nikolaj Lie Kaas), who’s on the run from what TV reports reveal is a bank robbery that ended in multiple deaths.
With sirens and helicopters audible outside, Anker asks Manfred to eat a key to a train station locker that contains the cash, and the swiftness with which he complies is hilariously surprising. Less amusing, however, is the look of dismay on Manfred’s face as Anker, seeing that he’s surrounded, repeatedly smashes his hand into a tiled kitchen table—a manifestation of his lifelong anger issues.
Fifteen years later, Anker emerges from the clink determined to recover his loot. Upon arriving home, though, he’s stonewalled by his brother, whom his sister Freja (Bodil Jørgensen) indicates is now known as John. Anker has no interest in using Manfred’s nom de guerre, but initially, he has bigger fish to fry, since Flemming (Nicolas Bro) arrives on his doorstep demanding the stolen money (or else), and John demonstrates his irrepressible habit of stealing other people’s dogs and claiming them as his own.
Having told his sibling to stash his ill-gotten gains at their mother’s old house, the two embark on a road trip to that rural abode. Yet before they arrive, Anker deliberately uses the name “Manfred” and, for his provocation, watches as John leaps out of the moving vehicle. When Anker does the same thing at the hospital, John lunges through an open window, landing on a Volkswagen multiple flights below. In the aftermath of this madness, John is diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder stemming from past trauma that, flashbacks illuminate, stems from their abusive father (Lars Ranthe).
As a child, John fancied himself a Viking and, for his make-believe, suffered schoolyard abuse that their dad blamed on Anker. In the present, Anker pays Dr. Lothar (Lars Brygmann) to spring John from psychiatric ward confinement, and the physician defends his patient’s Beatlemania, stating “Everyone’s entitled to their unique reality.” Moreover, he has an inspired idea: to shake John from his delusion, they should lean into it.
No sooner have they reached their homestead—which is now an Airbnb run by Margrethe (Sofie Gråbøl) and Werner (Søren Malling)—than Lothar shows up with Anton (Peter Düring) and Hamdan (Kardo Razzazi), the former a mute who thinks himself Ringo Starr, and the latter a multiple personality disorder-afflicted Swede who’s convinced he’s both Paul McCartney and George Harrison, not to mention (among others) Iron Man and Heimrich Himmler.
The Last Viking thereafter settles into a comfortably loopy groove, with Jensen’s story balancing John and company’s clumsy efforts to become a band—an endeavor complicated by the fact that Hamdan additionally imagines that he’s ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus—and Anker’s attempts to get his brother to point him toward the buried money.
Though Kaas’ Anker is the proceedings’ nominal protagonist, Mikkelsen’s weirdo is its goofy engine, prone at a moment’s notice to blurt out some nonchalant inappropriateness, as when he remarks about Margrethe and Werner, who’s facially disfigured, “How can you two be married when he’s so ugly and you’re so good-looking? Is that why you don’t have kids? Because he’s so ugly?”
Such ridiculousness is par for the course with John, much to the chagrin of Anker, who can’t even reference his sibling’s birthday without being told that, actually, all of those holidays were celebrated in Liverpool.
In a polo shirt and windbreaker that amplifies his awkwardness, John is an idiosyncratically strange bird, and yet neither actor nor director treats him as a cheap joke. On the contrary, Jensen confirms with The Last Viking that he’s exceedingly gifted at melding dark humor and violence with sincere sentimentality. No matter his action’s beatings, car crashes, and dismemberment, he’s a big softy, and he eventually casts Anker and John’s odyssey as a tale about how people are multifaceted and boast the ability to choose who they want to be, not to mention use guises to cope with deep hurt and grief.
For Mikkelsen and Kaas’ characters, remembering and forgetting can be confusing and damaging, and it’s only through confrontation of the truth, and acceptance of each other, that healing can begin.
Withdrawn and anxious, John is a lost and scared child in an adult’s body, and the furious Anker is a stunted adolescent trying to rage his pain away, and The Last Viking parallels their paths with a deftness that’s emblematic of its storytelling.
Jensen’s misfits are in search of approval, compassion, and camaraderie, and his narrative builds to a bonkers conclusion in which the sights of women being pummeled and body parts getting snipped coexist with tender instances of revelation and understanding. The film (which invites interpretations as a trans allegory) walks a careful line between earnestness and extremeness, and it concludes on a beautifully sweet note that’s apt to bring a tear to viewers’ eyes.
Bookended by an animated legend about a Viking chieftain who, in the wake of his son losing an arm, compels his subjects to follow suit and lop off their own arms—because “if everyone is broken, no one is broken”—The Last Viking is a big-hearted fable of self-actualization, tolerance, and togetherness. It’s proof that, while Mikkelsen may be a great boogeyman, he’s also one of cinema’s most daring and dexterous actors.
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