How the hell do you explain what”Copenhagen cowboy“is it at all? Definitely an LSD-infused mindfuck like no other!
When we were allowed to see the six episodes of the first season in cinemas at the world premiere in Venice, the “Drive” director Nicolas Winding Refn who was present advised the audience to lie down, put their feet on the back of the front row. put and stay still during the performance to be loud”The festival organizer present next to him suddenly became very quiet (and also a bit pale).
No sooner said than done: in the next five hours there was a wave round of applause – and that was probably mainly due to the fact that we all just couldn’t believe what the hell we were seeing on screen right now…
A human good luck charm
The first two to three episodes of Copenhagen Cowboy, mostly set in a brothel run by an Albanian bodybuilder thug and wannabe crooner, are already out bizarre and macabre to the point of no more but at least you can still get a fairly comprehensible understanding of what’s really going on:
The superstitious half-sister of the operator bought young Miu (Angela Bundalovic) – not as a forced prostitute like the other girls, but as a talisman. Miu is a kind of human lucky penny who, among other things, has to help her new owner to get pregnant despite her advanced age.
And so, for better or for worse, Miu has to watch as her mistress copulates with her beer-bellied husband Sven. Otherwise, Sven would rather rape the prostitutes on the floor below, for which he is regularly beaten up as punishment. Then he growls and squeaks like a pig (and we don’t mean fake human growls, but real ones, just like a freshly slaughtered animal).
Anyway, pigs play a big part in “Copenhagen Cowboy”. The tall blonde serial killer with the black gloves prefers to strangle his victims in the halls of a pig farm – and the owner of a Chinese restaurant keeps a few domestic pigs simply because she can make the corpses disappear from the growling omnivores that the members of a Asian gang dump her regularly.
That looks damn cool
As usual, Nicolas Winding Refn stages the whole thing in a highly artificial way – everything is exaggerated and bathed in his beloved red tones. In terms of storytelling speed, the “Too Old To Die Young” creator speeds up much more in the first three episodes than he did in his Amazon Prime series, which was almost provocatively slowed down.
Because the pregnancy does not go as planned, other plans are finally made for Miu: she once saw on a TV show how people in the Middle Ages were cooked in a vessel until even their brains began to boil, said the vengeful owner who has already been deeply regrets her human purchase. But since she counted without Miu…
The craziest shit of the year!
… because halfway through the first season everything is thrown overboard: after the first three episodes already hinted at a mythical dimension, but ultimately remained “down to earth” in an infinitely twisted way, the mindfuck madness, which not only affects the optic nerves but also abuses the ears, really gets going in episodes 4 – 6!
As the plot comes to a screeching halt, in the second two and a half hours of his fantasy noir, Nicolas Winding Refn designs a mythologically charged Copenhagen in which Miu, who always wears a blue jogging suit, not only acts as expert on metaphysical martial arts turns out, but suddenly too Vampires with a very powerful penis complex play a central role.
For three episodes, Nicolas Winding Refn continues to crank up the mythological bullshit bingo, which is absurd and ironic, but at the same time presented with an absolutely serious pathos, as he really blows off steam with his style-flute-on-substance staging, which is half of quotes film history. Even “hyperstylized” as a description would still be a merciless understatement.
Like in a trance
The narration rate tends to zero. Put your cell phone and other possible distractions as far away as possible. It’s a wild exercise in style that fans will celebrate mercilessly, while random viewers who watched at least the first three episodes with amused dismay will slowly say goodbye to “Copenhagen Cowboy” from episode 4 onwards.
And just when you think even a Nicolas Winding Refn can no longer rely on the neon misty madness, a certain game developer superstar suggests in a mini cameo that you should definitely visit the giants. But that’s a story for next year – when the mythical war really breaks out in the second season of “Copenhagen Cowboy”.
understood?