I first saw the Danish Dogme 95 film Festen in 1998 when I was 30. You had to go to the cinema to see films in those days, when small boys ran barefoot on a conveyor belt to turn the reels, and it’s possible I watched its depiction of a family torn apart by violence, resentment, alcoholism and sexual abuse in horror while crunching popcorn, eating hotdogs and drinking a big bucket of Fanta ™ ®. No wonder I was sick on the old Danish woman next to me. Luckily, in Denmark, being vomited on by a stranger is considered good luck, and we began a torrid affair.
But I watched Festen again in my 50s and found it hilarious, laughing out loud at its grim affirmation of bleak inevitability. But the film hadn’t changed. So what had the world done to me in the intervening years to make my sense of humour so black? Or had all that bacon and pastry I ate in the 00s somehow made me more sensitive to the Danish sensibility? Similarly, once I drank only Yorkshire Tea for a week and briefly became both resentful and ingenious.
