Ooooh, a commune, what fun! It will be just like college except instead of peers, there will be drifters … and instead of fun there will be responsibility. But hey, I’m an introvert; the only time I like to share a screen with more than two is when the lights are off and talking is a no-no. Your results may differ.
Are there still communes? Do we just call them “cults” now? How common were these things? And how long did it take for the average one to self-destruct? Unlike many questions I pose, I have absolutely no interest in exploring the answers to these, so I’ll just make up my own where appropriate. I don’t actually have anything against communes … for people-who-are-not-me, at least.
Danish professor Erik (Ulrich Thomsen) inherits a house too large for his nuclear family. Fourteen-year-old daughter Freja (Martha Sofie Wallstrøm Hansen – you have four names including one with a slashed o? That’s just cheating) digs the place because it’s great for a game of sardines (or the 1970s Danish equivalent). Newscaster wife Anna (Trine Dyrholm) has a better idea than Erik’s desire to sell: let’s make a commune. To give me solace with the film, I’ve interpreted her desire here as wanting to make a housemate of an old flame, but couching her unspoken inner coup within a menagerie of various new live-in friends. I was puzzled from start to finish with the question of where all these people lived (including Erik and Anna) before they joined The Commune.
Aside from the six-year-old with a heart condition –who exists almost entirely to give The Commune something to be communal about – none of the other people in the house matter. This story is all about Erik and Anna and Erik’s new friend Emma (Helene Reingaard Neumann). Emma is a student of Erik’s. They leap from awkward to sexual partners in the time it takes to swallow a Danish.
I have to stop here because, after doing some research, this relationship disturbs me on four levels:
1) Most obvious, and one I didn’t have to research: I don’t care if it was the summer of love at Love University in a love science lab class entitled Love Making 101 — a professor having a sexual relationship with their student is a bad idea. Really, really bad. There are not exceptions to this rule.
2) Ulrich Thomsen is 53, Helene Reingaard Neumann is 29; this makes him old enough to be her father.
3) Helene Reingaard Neumann is the wife of director Thomas Vinterberg. What’s that? Thomas Vinterberg directed this picture?! What a coincidence. Hence, Vinterberg directed his wife as the other women between a 50+ year-old-man and his 50+ year-old-wife.
4) Thomas Vinterberg is 47. He is also old enough to be the father of Helene Reingaard Neumann.
Look, I’m no prude. I think American Puritanical attitudes towards sex have, in part, shaped the awful political landscape we live in. We have an entire ruling political party that needs to get laid instead of worrying about who else is having sex. And perhaps only #1 of the four points above merits cause for action by itself, but taken together? Ewwwwwwwwww.
The Commune is all about what to do now that there are two women in Erik’s life. It is about this moment in the film in which we discover Erik has a temper so bad that he will actually pass out from yelling. I have no idea how that piece of business is tolerated; to me, that’s a deal breaker not just as a partner, but a housemate. You Danes are a curious lot.
I get the distinct impression that Thomas Vinterberg had an axe to grind here, and I bet it was personal. I say this because most people think of communes either as “hippie crap” or just a throwback to a different era, but 
Vinterberg’s film turns from delightful to bitter in a heartbeat, and pretty much stays there. Was he forced to a commune as a child and resented it? Is this a way of getting back at his parents? Yeah, I know Vinterberg has that fellow Dane Lars von Trier thing goin’ on where a film ain’t a film unless people leave the theater questioning life, but this seems somehow personal, especially as the dour plot doesn’t quite match the players. Another topic in need of research … somebody else to research, that is.
This film had plenty of joy to offer in Act I and it all evaporated long before it finished. When The Commune found the fun, this was a thumbs up. Can’t have that, now can we?
A Danish tale of unfaithful dread
Husband Erik goes out of his head
Surrounded by voices
And so many choices
Next time, take the bear claw instead
Not Rated, 111 Minutes
D: Thomas Vinterberg
W: Tobias Lindholm, Thomas Vinterberg
Genre: One too many
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: “Damn that hippie crap!”
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Children of divorces
