For a while, during my conversation with them at Maison Mercer at TIFF, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Lars Ranthe, who play a comedy duo in A Funny Man, sound like they’re channelling their characters, doing shtick just like the performers they’ve recreated on screen.[briefbreak]
Lie Kaas (who starred in the original Brothers) plays Dirch Passer, Denmark’s iconic comic, who spent most of his life wishing people would take him seriously. Ranthe plays Passer’s longtime stage partner Kjeld Petersen.
Asked how they prepared to play their real-life characters, Lie Kaas looks up as if startled. “Did we prepare?” he asks Ranthe. “Oh no,” Ranthe replies. “I just inhaled and exhaled.”
All lies. They talked to people close to Passer and Petersen and looked at archival films documenting the duo’s performances. The result is two pitch perfect performances in a film that spans the 50s, 60s and 70s.
Petersen’s death sent Passer into a five-year tailspin, during which he left the business. When he finally came back, he was as bummed as ever, working harder at what he loved least. In his final years, Passer did work that, according to the film, filled him with self-loathing,forcing him to do outrageous bits and dressing up in goofy costumes, which made him him feel even more demeaned.
On the subject of people’s human tendency to be dissatisfied with what they do best, Ranthe suggests that it might be a male thing. “It’s like a conquest,” he says with twinkle. “Once you’ve mastered a skill you want to move on to the next thing.”
Lie Kaas has a long-time friendship with Lars Von Trier, appearing in Von Trier’s Dogville: The Pilot, and jokes about Von Trier’s attempt to do something uncharacteristic.
“Thing is, Lars wants to be funny. That was the idea at Cannes this year,” he says, referring to Von Trier’s ill-advised comments about sympathizing with Hitler, “but it didn’t work.”
He says that Von Trier wasn’t as hard on him as he was on Björk while working on Dancer In The Dark. “Yeah,” he says raising his eyebrows, “Lars and insecure women – that’s a bad combination.”
