a family struggling with its demons

Arte, Thursday, November 29 at 8:55 pm, series

While anchoring his series in the political sphere, Adam Price, in Borgen, staged the accession of a woman to power in Danish society. How to reconcile private and professional life, how to combine the choice of integrity and the compromises of governance? "You can not have everything, you have to make choices and pay the price, commented Adam Price during his visit to the Séries Mania festival, in 2017, in Paris. And the price will necessarily be your family. " Thus the harmonious couple formed by Premier Birgitte Nyborg with her husband was disintegrating at the end of season 1. Doubling the solitude of the power of the escheat of the heart.

For his new creation, In the name of the Father, the Danish screenwriter is again relying on a family story.

"I am a man, I have a son, I have a brother, and I had a father, which explains why, this time, I wanted to address the male side of a family, the father-to-father relationship. son, explained Adam Price. I wanted to show our terrifying habit of destroying those we love most: our children. How to protect them at best, without locking them behind a wall of love or expectations? We want the best for them and often end up, by failing to understand them, by hurting them. Why ? This is the theme of this series, through a questioning on different forms of belief. "

An unconscious heritage

The opening scene ofIn the name of the Father sees two young boys having fun on a beach. Their game, strange at first glance, will soon be mirrored with an unconscious heritage. Because weighs on them the weight of the ten generations of pastors who founded the identity of the family, a tradition weaving expectations and desires towards them that they incarnate even in their leisures. One, August, a small camera in his hand, lies down in a coffin hole, and films his eldest, Christian, standing above him. The latter, shirtless and collar Lutheran pastor on the neck, quotes the scriptures as he covers his brother sand swayed with his beach shovel. Until the little recumbent has enough and runs away without waiting for the end of the ceremony.

Johannes Krogh appears as steeped in religious belief as political sense

When the next scene brings these two brothers together twenty years later, the game has given way to an existential crisis. At least in the eldest, Christian, who, after having solidly trained in pastoral work, turned his back on theology, became engaged in free enterprise, and sneered with anger at his father. His brother, August, badumes the burden of the family inheritance that the Krogh embrace the ecclesial career from father to son for more than two hundred and fifty years: although not without doubts, he is became a pastor like his father, Johannes Krogh. The latter is brilliantly interpreted by Lars Mikkelsen (Borgen, Sherlock, House of Cards), who was awarded, on 19 November in New York, the International Emmy Award for Best Male Performance for his role in this series.

Bipolarity and alcoholism

Is it really the faith that led the two sons of Johannes Krogh to move towards theological studies? Is it the same faith that leads Johannes Krogh to want to be elected bishop of Copenhagen? This father, charismatic and authoritarian, brilliant orator and great sinner (in fight against his demons, whose bipolarity and alcoholism), suffers from not being able to follow his inclination for drawing and painting. But has he not repeated to his sons the same exigency of sacrificing his tastes to religion? And, above all, to a lineage he does not want to see go out? Influential member of the Lutheran Church, paterfamilias demanding, Johannes Krogh appears as steeped in religious belief as political sense, moved alternately by authentic mystical desires and violent impulses of domination or depression.

"It is this humanity, this human fact full of contradictions that I wanted to exploreconcludes Adam Price. More than faith or religion, it is our beliefs, our quest for an answer, whatever it may be, that interest me. We all, whether religious or lay, have a personal belief system. We are made up of elements, fused together, made of faith, superstition, spirituality, an ounce of Buddhism, research in personal development. The series is born of this curiosity, of this dull waiting, of this great spiritual quest that we can not define or apprehend. "