God tur!

If you haven’t seen the Oscar-winning animated short The Danish Poet, I really recommend you check it out. I first saw it a few days ago and am completely charmed. I realize now that I saw another film by this same person, My Grandfather Ironed the King’s Shirts, which was also pretty adorable and fun, because it’s about Norway also.

My friends and I couldn’t help but wonder if the Academy actually got some of the jokes … For example, whenever they show someone taking the ferry from Oslo to Copenhagen, there is a crowd of very funny drunk people getting on and off. This is absolutely typical of these ferries. For some reason, big groups of Norwegians or big groups of Danes like to travel back and forth between these two cities and get totally smashed on a big boat in the middle of the water. I can’t say that I understand what the fun is in this exactly, but, for those who take the ferry, stories about drunk Scandinavians are always part of a recounting of their adventures (or, I guess, their own drunken stories, if they choose to participate).

Anyway, here are my favorite quotes from the film:

“--Where do you go on holiday if you don’t have any money, and you don’t speak French?

--What about Norway? It’s cheap, and they’re practically Danish.”

“Casper was offered food and shelter, until the rain stopped. But, as often happens in Norway, the rain never really stopped.”

“-You must go to the funeral!

-Why?

-Because she was your relative!

-But she was Danish.

-When a relative dies, you go to the funeral, whether she was Danish or not.”

“Casper quickly became living proof that some poets are better off happy than sad.”