The Green Butchers (2004) Sometimes when you took I-25 thru El Paso after 3 Am, you caught the border at a time when the few patrollers were out taking a smoke or a piss in the desert (or maybe even out taking pot shots at hapless Mexicans with their otherwise un-used service revolvers). That’s a good thing, if you, like Graveyard Frank Trautman, have left your wallet in the back pocket of gray pair of Farrah slacks, currently on a dead man in a shallow grave in East St. Louis. (Long Story). But, reaching Chihuahua to find Miriam accompanied and the tequila watered down, Frank took a decided U-turn and was now, ID-less, and on a sling-shot back thru the eye of the gringo needle. Just before El Kilo, exhausted, and determined to finish the case of Negra Modelo on his passenger seat the hard way, Frank pulls the Impala over as far as he dares to get it off the road. He kills the engine and checks the ample trunk. He isn’t looking for more for supplies: a late model Chevy such as his easily had its boot popped and stuffed with the loser of last night’s cock, dog or gang fight when left unattended. Thankfully, the trunk was clear of all, save a portable DVD player which he had only a vague idea of acquiring in Slidell, Louisiana. And a copy of the Danish film, “De Gronne Slagtere” (The Green Butchers, available Spring 2005 on Columbia Tri-Star), which he didn’t remember acquiring at all. After much attention, director Anders Thomas Jensen, had previously won an Academy Award for the short, Valgaften (1998), a dark comedy about Danish politics. The Green Butchers, of course, is darker still. The title, though, is a ruse; “Sweaty” Svend and Bjarne aren’t new to meat at all. They a butcher’s assistants, ready to start on their own shop. Svend mortgages his house to do it; Bjarne decides to take his brain-dead twin brother (to which he is beneficiary) off life support. While Bjarne picks up a girl in the cemetery (think Camus, L’etranger), the electrician goes missing and, panicky “never been loved” Svend makes a slight adjustment to his marinade recipe. Suddenly, Svend finds the finds the audience he’s been looking for. The wit of the Green Butchers is constant, efficient, and dry and deadpan: Says Holger the Butcher about fate and the ironic sausage: “You get killed and then stuck up your own ass.” Or later, Svend; “I do not want to see any people!” Bjarne: “Then don’t go in the meat locker!” The film is not only genuinely, offbeat funny, but much more “thought-out” than anything similar (cf. Little Shop of Horrors, Corman 1960?). With a reflective back-story abutting outrageous turns of events, the film is exactly right between Marty (Mann, 1955) and Eating Raoul (Bartel, 1982). Everything is too-well photographed for its due; much better photographed than most else in the dark-cannibal-comedy genre. Even the corpses are exquisite, though mostly just-out-off-frame. Even better, Bjarne’s sub-plot leaves us to question cannibalism as an “why the hell not?”-issue. With a brother headed for organ harvesting, the film suggest practicality in Svend’s gory “Chickie Wickies.” Bottom line: unlike thousands of Hollywood flicks, you actually care about Sven and Bjarne. But you probably don’t care about Frank, who is flipping the DVD player shut as the sun ekes back out in the west and various lizards and birds chirp with the burning out moon. He takes an long piss behind what he thinks is a petrified tree, but is really the bucket seat to a 60s Corvette, then he is back on the road toward el monstruo del norte. Gordon Lightfoot, (Sundown) inhabits the radio. He just needs to fill a percoset prescription and then make his way across the Rio Grande with no identification. He may or may not find some locals squatting in the hills to join in or proffer advice. As long as they were there to contribute, like his green butchers, Frank tended not to question folks. Frank had been around a bit and whether huddled on the border or floating in the marinade, all he saw were people. And friends, family or society, Frank was happy with anyone not adding to complacent jackassery back up in Cally…