The Idealist (2015)
I didn’t have much knowledge about the Thule-incident beforehand, so on a purely informational level on real historic events this was an interesting watch. I do think however it works less well as a movie.
The aim of this is clearly to be as factual as possible within the limitations of a feature length movie. There are plenty of documentary real footage throughout the movie as well as informational text in the beginning and end. This works well in telling the events in a factual manner and shows Brink’s journalistic work in a way that feels believable.
The topic of the movie is extremely relevant even today, because at the core it shows how Denmark have been doing shady deals with USA to get a strong ally in NATO. Which in some way is understandable given that we are small state and having the US military as protection during the Cold War is of course desirable. But the cost is lying to the people. And the same kind of things is going on today, with our government trying to cover up a decade long secret deal with the US military on various form of surveillance. You could make basically the same movie again with current events.
While that debate is interesting and important from a political point of view, I am not totally convinced this should be a feature film and not a documentary. I believe a movie about real events should do something different with its material that a documentary doesn’t serve. This movie does live up to its name by focusing on Poul Brink and picturing him as this idealist that really cares about the case, to some degree even more than the actual victims. But for me it felt mostly emotional flat. We see and understand his actions, but never really feel his passion or perseverance come off the screen.
Rating: 3.5