Copenhagen Cowboy: Another hypnotic fever dream from Nicolas Winding Refn

Miu, the protagonist of the recently released Danish-language Netflix series Copenhagen Cowboy (directed by Nicolas Winding Refn), has recently been hired by a brothel’s madam as the establishment’s ‘good-luck charm’. Miu (played by Angela Bundalovic) may or may not have a supernatural past, and her pluck and curiosity set her apart from the herd. Miu’s travails through the Copenhagen underworld form the crux of this strange, dreamlike new series from the director of Drive and Only God Forgives.

Predictably, Refn’s new series has drawn extreme reactions from critics: some love it while others absolutely hate its guts, and have written the most scathing pieces. One reviewer warned that spoilers were in the offing, before noting that “never mind, this is the only way you’ll actually finish the show”.

To be honest, I loved every minute of Copenhagen Cowboy. In an era where green-screen superheroes rule the roost and audiences sometimes go years without seeing anything truly distinct at a visual level, here’s a show where almost every frame is thoughtfully and meticulously framed. There’s beauty and curiosity and wonder peeking around every corner, and while Refn isn’t as heavily invested in the idea of morality as he once was, you’re not complaining.

A family of vampires secretly rubbing shoulders with the Danish underworld? A kindly spirit flitting in and out of these people’s lives with little to no footprint? Yes please! This is Refn doubling down on the themes and styles that have made him such a divisive figure in the film world, and I’m here for it.

The key elements of Refn’s cinema

Born in 1970, Nicolas Winding Refn first made waves as a 26-year-old in 1996, with Pusher, the first of the eponymous Danish-language trilogy that explored the Copenhagen underworld. The first film starred Kim Bodnia, currently best known for his role as Konstantin in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s TV series Killing Eve. The second and third movies came out in 2004 and 2005, respectively—with the former introducing Mads Mikkelsen to Western audiences. Together the three movies earned Refn a bit of a cult following, not to mention a great deal of critical attention.

In Hollywood, Refn’s reputation is built on the back of the three English-language films he has made over the last decade—Drive (2011), Only God Forgives (2013) and The Neon Demon (2016), the first two starring Ryan Gosling. Now, one might think that a filmmaker like Refn would have ‘diluted’ his style in order to appeal to a more mainstream Hollywood audience, who would have walked into the theatre expecting a Ryan Gosling movie. However, just the opposite happened: Refn’s English-language films are even more aggressively idiosyncratic than the Pusher films.

The first tell-tale sign of a Refn film is… well, all the neon. All of the aforementioned three films are awash in neon lights, blue and orange and yellow and pink. His characters acquire neon haloes at crucial moments, and certain neon illuminations work as ‘tells’ for the audience, alluding to a character’s emotional state in that moment. The reason behind this is that Refn is colour blind—he cannot see mid-colours, only saturated or high-contrast ones. Take Only God Forgives, for example. In this Thai co-production, Ryan Gosling plays Julian Thompson, an American gangster in Bangkok whose mother Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas) is the actual mob boss. A complex, allusive, blood-soaked morality play, Only God Forgives is the story of Julian and Crystal’s encounter with a larger-than-life cop called Chang (VithayaPansringarm) who believes himself to be….God, or something as powerful or all-seeing as God.

The much-hyped fight scene between Julian and Chang reinforces the point about Chang’s divinity. Even as the film’s frenetic EDM soundtrack pulsates in the background, we are shown images of an idol that young boxers in the arena are seen worshipping—when these youngsters see Chang, they shift allegiances instantly and bow before him instead.

Additionally, the much younger Julian is not so much defeated as annihilated. He isn’t able to land even a single blow on Chang, and gets beaten to a pulp in the process, even as his mother arrives on the scene to see her son’s grievous injuries. God giveth and God taketh away—this is another key element of Refn’s cinema, this high degree of allusiveness and underlying proto-religious themes.

The film is also marked by quite a few amputation scenes, people getting their arms chopped off by Chang’s sword. This is a doff of the hat to Alejandro Jodorowsky, who had shot similar amputation scenes in his film El Topo (1970). In an interview with the New York Times that appeared around the time of the film’s release, Refn acknowledged the Chilean-French director’s influence on Only God Forgives.

“I had been seeing Jodorowsky the last couple years in Paris and we’d become quite close. Before we’d have dinner, we’d always have a tarot reading and talk about what it means. I feel that as a filmmaker, he’s the last of the great giants of an era that’s coming to a close. A year ago, he baptized me as his spiritual son and I wanted to reward that gesture.”

Because of these allusive gestures and the general air of meandering, Refn’s films often draw extreme reactions from fans and critics alike. Those who love him do so with a fiery passion while the critics are every bit as scathing in their reviews. After Only God Forgives hit the UK theatres, the Guardian published two different reviews of the film—one of these was a zero-star review while the other was a five-star review. That really says it all, doesn’t it?

Refn likes taciturn protagonists—Julian has a total of 17 lines in Only God Forgives. Mads Mikkelsen’s protagonist One-Eye from Valhalla Rising is mute. Ryan Gosling’s character, The Driver, from Drive, is similarly a man of few words. These ‘strong and silent’ types are generally unmoored towards the beginning of the film, searching for direction amidst their ongoing, full-blown existential crises.

During an old interview, Refn opened up about his protagonists—what makes them tick, what drives them to take the difficult, often life-altering decisions we see them taking.

“I’ve always liked characters that because of the circumstances, have to transform themselves, and in the end, it’s inevitable that what they end up becoming is what they were meant to be. Take, for example, Pusher II, which is a movie about a son [played by Mads Mikkelsen] who all his life wants his father’s love, but realizes he needs to kill him to free the sins of the father from him. What plants the seed for him is realizing he has his own child, and the responsibility of that suddenly forces him to takeaction. And it’s a happy ending, even though it’s a dark ending, but for the character, it is what he was meant to become. It’s almost like he achieved his true meaning.”

Back to the basics

Copenhagen Cowboy is the first Danish-language story Refn has told since the third Pusher film, released way back in 2005. Like his other recent-ish series, Too Old To Die Young on Amazon Prime Video, this one pushes the conventions of ‘prestige TV’ as well. The story’s magical trappings (mentions of blood-drinking, sorcery and so on) are mostly on the back-burner for much of the six-hour runtime—but that doesn’t make them any less effective.

Most characters on display receive the Refn close-up, a psychological tool much like the Kubrick close-up, which communicated the peak of madness/neurosis to the audience. These are largely regular people, who see a life of crime as just another shade of tediousness, so complacent are they in their middle-aged exhaustion. The ‘magic’ introduced by Miu in their world comes across almost as a trifle, so worn out are these people thanks to their unflattering world.

Cliff Martinez duly supplies another synthpop-heavy soundtrack for the show, just like he has done for so many other Refn films. Martinez-Refn should now be acknowledged as one of the great director-composer pairings of this era; you do not need more than ten seconds or so to guess the composer, so immediately identifiable is the soundtrack.

Love him or hate him, there’s no doubt in my mind that Nicolas Winding Refn is a bona fide original, one of the pre-eminent filmmakers of his generation. And Copenhagen Cowboy is further proof of his powers, and the fact that he seems to be entering a deliciously rich new phase in his career.

Aditya Mani Jha is a Delhi-based independent writer and journalist, currently working on a book of essays on Indian comics and graphic novels.

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