Copenhagen Cowboy - Nicolas Winding Refn again made a strange series with grunting men
Miscellaneous / / April 05, 2023
Nothing is clear, but very beautiful. Fans of the director will love it.
For Nicolas Winding Refn, Copenhagen Cowboy was the second series. The first one was released on Amazon Video in 2019 and was called “Too Old to Die Young” – it seems that the director did not care what the audience expected of him. For 10 episodes, Refn changed the main characters, twisted and rolled the camera in every possible way, showed pensive people, demonstrated incest and the desert. At the same time, the pace of the story was as low as possible.
"Copenhagen Cowboy" is out on Netflix - it's shorter, faster, but Refn doesn't change himself. The new creation seems the strangest in his filmography.
Refn was responsible not only for directing, but also for the script, and composer Cliff Martinez wrote the original music (they collaborate with Drive). Starring Angela Bundalovich ("Rain") and little-known even in Denmark Andreas Lykke Jorgensen.
It is almost impossible to retell the plot of the series. The mysterious girl Miu, who has supernatural powers, is captured by a criminal gang. Wishing
take revenge to his abusers, Miu plunges into the criminal world of Copenhagen.Rejection of the plot and characters
In Too Old to Die Young, Refn mocked the usual approach to plot development: the main characters and their motivations were constantly changing, and the intersections of different stories were delayed.
Something similar happens in Copenhagen Cowboy, but in a more radical way. Refn doesn't tell a story so much as he focuses on the feel and the visuals. Any development of events is a priori perceived as unexpected - it is difficult to expect anything after 15 minutes of circling the camera through neon radiation.
Do not take the time and geography of the series seriously. It is not at all clear how long this or that event lasts. Copenhagen is just the name of a city. With the same success it could be reported that the heroes live in paris, Beijing or Washington.
The characters carry the same convention. It seems that after the first episode, the viewer knows more about the main character than after watching the entire series - instead of explanations, Refn throws riddles at the audience. The field for interpretation is gigantic, and interpretations are not designed for intellectual perception, but rather for intuitive. You can see in the main character a kind of good goddess, or you can treat her as an evil one. witch with mental disabilities.
Classic Refn
Nicolas Winding Refn continues to pray to his neon god. Any scene turns into a demonstration of lamps and lights, the characters are regularly painted in bright colors. Almost all events unfold at night, and dark rooms become the main background.
Like Too Old to Die Young, Copenhagen Cowboy has a lot of panoramic shots. If the heroine enters the room, then the cameras will definitely show the whole room, capturing every detail. Perhaps the main difference from the previous series is that such scenes are no longer too long. But even so, the pace of the story remains low. Refn enjoys the visuals and doesn't worry too much about whether the audience will get bored.
Refn's classic features are manifested not only in the visuals, but also in the spirit of the series. Ultra-violence, sexual overtones, forbidden desires - the characters live in a world without laws and rules. Once again, the director brings together different cultures, and in his films such encounters always end in conflict.
Esotericism and strange things
From the very first dialogues, it becomes obvious that the series will have a lot of psychics. Gradually, this line opens up and draws in everything else. The main character has abilities, but it is difficult to list or describe them - the viewer knows about their existence, but hardly understands.
Often in films, extrasensory manifestations are shown against the background of ordinary people and events for the sake of contrast. The Copenhagen Cowboy lives according to different laws: everything here is strange, and the fact that the heroine knows how to do something is perceived as the norm.
In the course of the series, strange and not always explainable moments constantly arise. A more or less general picture emerges only after watching all six episodes, but at first they are shocking. So, some heroes can grunt and even mew. Why some of the men are presented as pigs (not figuratively) is a question that each viewer must answer for himself. The absence of an answer does not mean that the person looked inattentively or did not understand something - Refn never guessed pseudo-intellectual riddles, his symbols do not always refer to the meaning, and pigs can be just pigs.
The slow pace of the story, the focus on the visuals, ultra-violence - "The Cowboy from Copenhagen" has absorbed everything that is loved (or hated) by Nicolas Winding Refn. Insanely beautiful shots may not tell anything about the characters and the world they live in, and strange things can happen without any explanation. Six episodes of beauty is a wonderful gift that Refn gave to his fans. However, any viewer who does not idolize the director should run away from Copenhagen Cowboy: the series can become torture.
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