The synopsis on Terribly Happy‘s Amazon page suggests that it’s a black comedy. I know I take a risk in disputing that categorization, but on the other hand I actually understand some of the dialogue behind the subtitles (which are excellently translated, by the by), and I say no, it’s not a comedy. It’s a cross between a western and a noir.

The style of this Danish film is pretty close to a western. It has the look both of traditional westerns and the Italian variety, and the opening is archetypal horse opera (without the horses). The new marshal (Robert Hansen, played by Jakob Cedergren) arrives in town (the subtitle people insist on translating lensman as marshal. It’s more like constable, but I understand their reasons). He is tall and lean and sad-faced, like Will Kane from High Noon. He harbors a secret, a bad thing he did that got him reassigned from Copenhagen to this moribund community in the midst of the flat fields and bogs of southern Jutland. The locals don’t cotton to him from the start. “We have our own ways of handling things,” they tell him. “If we have a problem, it goes out to the Bog.”

But the form of the film is Film Noir. From the very beginning, Robert is faced with a series of dilemmas, choices in how to deal with various infractions of the law, and he almost always takes the line of least resistance in handling them. This leads, seemingly inevitably (but not really; the filmmakers pull a couple fast ones) to increasingly horrific mistakes. Most of these mistakes center on the Buhl family, a living domestic nightmare. Ingerlise Buhl (Lene Maria Christensen) is an attractive, seductive woman who complains frequently of being beaten by her husband (thuggish urban cowboy Jørgen, played by Kim Bodnia), but is never willing to follow through with a formal complaint. Local gossip says that when their little girl Dorthe (Mathilda Maack) walks the streets with her doll carriage, Jørgen is beating Ingerlise—but Robert never actually sees or hears it happen.

And that’s before it starts getting bad.

Some people think that noir film is amoral, but I think the secret of the best noir is that it’s hyper-moral. No sin goes unpunished. What noir films lack is grace. The god of noir is a jealous god (in an ironic touch, a large needlepoint hangs over the door in a crime scene, with the verse, “Gud Er Kjærlighet” [God is Love]).

A particularly interesting element of Terribly Happy is the local pastor, played by Henrik Lykkegaard. It’s not a big part—his longest speech is a homily at a funeral, possibly the worst funeral sermon in human history. What interests me is that the man seems to have no gospel in his inventory. He is part of the local system, a system based on an eye for an eye. Robert’s sins may be covered up and overlooked, but the only salvation left to him in the end is to find as comfortable a personal hell as possible.

Or maybe it is a comedy, and I just didn’t get it.

Interesting movie. Not for kids.