Sentenced to community service at a small, countryside church, Adam,
a middle-aged neo-Nazi, is warmly welcomed by the cheerful vicar, Ivan.
Although Adam is crude, full of hostility, and clearly beyond
redemption, Ivan encourages him to choose a goal that will occupy his
time there. When Adam dismissively replies that he will bake an apple
pie, Ivan assigns him the task of nurturing the church's lone apple
tree.
If by the time this unassuming tree has been attacked by
crows, infested with maggots, and struck by lighting, you are not
reasonably certain it has become the battleground for a fiercely
irreverent struggle between good and evil, then you have not had the
pleasure of meeting an Anders Thomas Jensen film. With a supporting
bunch of characters that includes an Arab immigrant who routinely robs
gas stations and a chubby former tennis pro and sex addict, this glib
parable of religion and human nature plays out with wit and
sophistication.
Into Adam and Ivan (played with deadpan
perfection by Ulrich Thomsen and Mads Mikkelsen), Jensen deposits
competing philosophies. Ivan, whose absurd philosophical optimism would
have Voltaire falling out of his pew, interprets events like the devil
testing people. Adam shakes his unflappable faith by suggesting that
evil simply doesn't exist.
Adam's Apples is a wickedly dark comedy by one of cinema's most exciting directors.
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