Trust is not an option
‘Flame and Citron’ looks over its shoulder at the Nazi occupation of Denmark
By Jana J. Monji 08/13/2009
Even “good” wars are complicated. In director Ole Christian Madsen’s 2008 “Flame & Citron” (Flammen & Citronen), the loyalties and motivations of citizens in Denmark during the Nazi occupation become so murky that the two title characters aren’t sure who can be trusted.
Based on true events, this stylish movie about two celebrated heroes of the Danish underground resistance asks some disturbing moral questions about war and heroism.
The movie begins in 1940 with grainy black-and-white newsreel footage of the Nazis triumphantly entering Copenhagen. The narrator, Flame (Thure Lindhardt), intones: “Do you remember when they arrived? Do you remember April 9th? I think you do. Everybody does.
All of a sudden, they were everywhere. The Gestapo … the Wehrmacht, Abwehr, SS. All the German corps. German Nazis, Danish Nazis. They came out of the dark. They had been awaiting the day. Did you go outside and watch? What were you thinking?”
From there the movie switches to color, taking us to Copenhagen in May 1944. A man lights a cigarette. This is 23-year-old Bent Faurschou-Hviid, or Flame, so called because of his red hair. He is well-dressed and well armed. He goes to meet a slightly disheveled man sleeping in a car, the 33-year-old Jørgen Haagen Schmith (Mads Mikkelsen), known as Citron because he once worked in a Citroen factory. Citron begins as the driver and a family man but eventually will become an assassin. Flame, already a cold-blooded assassin, shoots a man in the head at close range in the first 10 minutes of the film.
While celebrating this successful assignment in a restaurant that Germans also frequent, Flame meets mysterious blonde fashion designer Ketty Selmer (Stine Stengade), who knows his real name.
Flame follows her to a hotel filled with Nazis to confront her and learns she knows much more. Flame is obviously attracted to her, but also puzzled by what she tells him. We know she’s trouble, but we also know that Flame will come back.
The Danish resistance didn’t originally target the German invaders, but focused on Danes who collaborated with the Nazis. At first helped by ambulance crews and police, Flame and Citron eventually begin to doubt their leaders. When their supervisor Aksel Winther (Peter Mygind) orders them to kill two German Abwehr officers and their secretary, Citron objects that the Liberation Council has banned the “liquidation” of Germans. Winther insists that these are orders from the British. Flame objects to killing a woman and asks why, if they are now killing high-ranking Germans, can’t he kill the Gestapo leader, Hoffman (Christian Berkel). The killings do not go as planned and the Nazi reprisal that follows brings a higher price on the heads of the resistance fighters — with the highest bounty on Flame — and a betrayal by an informer. Flame and Citron draw closer together as their suspicions distance them from their comrades and their loved ones.
Despite Flame’s sharp apparel and the stylish cinematography by Jørgen Johansson, there is nothing glamorous about this pair. The killings transform these men and they have moments of doubt, when they regret or can’t follow through on their planned killings. As Flame explains one of his failures, “I forgot that we are not killing people, but Nazis.” His lapses come back to haunt him and only at the end do we understand the meaning of the first sequences.
Director Madsen, who co-wrote the script with Lars K. Andersen, has commented in interviews that he considers Flame and Citron two exceptional men who did things that were both right and wrong. The movie’s tension is created in Flame and Citron’s attempts to unravel the truth and consider the morality of their actions.
“Flame & Citron” is not only the most expensive Danish film to date, but it has also set a record box office gross for a Danish production.
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