Dennis

I stumbled upon Dennis by accident. The 18 minute short film by Danish director Mads Matthiesen made it's way into the 2007 Sundance Festival, but I only discovered it by chance in 2009. It tells the story of this huge professional body-builder, Dennis, who is strongly attached to his mother and has his first date - at least in a long while - with a girl he saw at his gym. It's now freely available on youtube, so you can watch it right here:

Let's start from Mads Matthiesen himself. "I’ve only made films that I really feel for. I prefer to focus on the story and the characters – letting technique be secondary. So, you never know what other people will get out of them, or whether they will like what they see", he said. The first reaction after watching Dennis is almost instant compassion for this gentle giant, in each and every viewer. I think it's triggered by this huge unstoppable looking man, this imposing presence that fills every frame, being in such a powerful contrast with his inability to fit in, his social powerlessness. It's important to take into account that this is an internal process for him. The girls like him, more importantly Patricia likes him, but it's his own insecurity of being treated like nothing more than piece of meat, of not being good enough, that causes him to flee. He takes his time before getting home, and at this point you can't help but see a little schoolboy walking home with his bike.

A central piece in defining Dennis is his relationship with his parents. Yes, both of them. Even if his father is physically missing from their lives, his presence is always felt. Do the sons bear the sins of the fathers or not? Although undeservingly so - as always, in this case they do. The constant threat of one day turning into his alcoholic father is one of the key inhibiting factors in our hero's life. The father's menacing ghost is kept around the house by his mother, and mainly not because she's trying to control Dennis, but because she could never get over him. The mother still loves him and never ceased to, and is precisely this the reason she is so controlling and so attached to Dennis, way beyond a normal mother and son relationship. She projects two different types of love over Dennis, to the point of drowning him and inhibiting his development, like a gardener that waters his flowers too much.

In the end, I think that even if we all should feel sorry for Dennis, but at the same time we should also be glad for him. Although emotionally scarred, Dennis retains deep inside his soul the pureness and essence of a child. Few people manage to reach adulthood without losing their inner child and the goodness in their heart. Like the director says, "That’s what love is or ought to be – daring to stand by your own fragility.” And who is more fragile than a child?