A Danish couple travel to Prague to arrange for the body of the husband’s dead father to be sent home. The husband (played by Mads Mikkelsen) seems distant and uncaring, we assume this to be because he never had a relationship with his estranged father and is finding it hard to come to terms with his demise. The reality is that his is distant and this is causing problems in his marriage.
What I had assumed, much like Revolutionary Road, was that Prague was going to be a story about how two people on the verge of a break up, would find in the exotic nature of a foreign city, the spark to re-ignite their passion for each other. Rather it seems that right from the start of the movie, nothing would ever go right for the husband, from the simple things to not being able to open a door, to not being able to order coffee, right through to finding out a wealth of stuff he didn’t want to know about his father.
Though Prague is depressing and certainly not a movie for the romantics out there, it is a compelling human drama and refreshing in the way that it deals honestly with our frail humanity. Life isn’t the bowl of roses that Hollywood generally serves up, and if anything Prague offers up a little warning that if we don’t constantly realise what we have in front of us, we might just wake up one day and find we have nothing.
Reviewed by: Jonathan Read.
Rating: M – Contains sex scenes and offensive language.
Release Date: December 3rd, 2008
Stars: Mads Mikkelsen, Stena Stengarde
Length (Minutes): 92
Media Format: DVD
Aspect Ratio: 1.78 : 1
Languages: Danish
Subtitles: English
Director: Madsen, Ole Christian
Studio: Aztec International
Year of Original Release: 2006
Nicely said! I had the same feeling form the movie as you had.