Mads Mikkelsen dares to go there

As we all know, despite their near-universal demonstrable lack of any other talent than repeating words that other people have written for them, actors seem to regard it as their God-given duty to tell us what we should be thinking. For the most part, celebrities should simply be ignored. These are, after all, people who are not only quite obviously not very smart or well-educated, but they live in the kind of opulent isolation from the world and its problems that would make even Louis XIV gasp with envy.

Besides which, their stated opinions, from Gwyneth Paltrow’s steamed vagina to Mark Ruffalo’s 9/11 Trutherism, are almost universally so very, very silly. Not only silly but astonishingly, stultifyingly, conventional: these are people who live in mortal terror of saying anything that they’re not already sure all their peers already agree with.

So, when a Hollywood A-lister dares say something not approved of by Lefty Opinion-Central, it’s at least interesting. Not to say shocking to their media camp-followers. The Guardian detects a disturbing whiff of heresy from Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen.

Yeah, the climate is changing, but to what degree are we a part of it, and to what degree are we not and what to do about that is a big question. I mean the science is divided. Right now it seems like it’s not, but it is divided.

Shocking! The Guardian sternly reminds him not to stray from the path.

Nature might not care about us, but there is the growing sense with every doom-laden report on rising temperatures that we should be giving more of a damn about nature. Indeed, one of the strangely poignant aspects of the film is the sense that the gleaming, forbidding landscape Mikkelsen is forced to trudge across might not be there for much longer. Yet, when I put this to him, he is not only keen to underline that Arctic is not a political film, but seems uncertain about the climate-change movement altogether?

I’m not a sceptic in the sense that I do think it’s changing, he says. But I also know for a fact that it has been changing for always. So there are different graphs showing different things, and we have to find common ground and figure out what we can do and what is the smartest thing to do. (One solution he says, is investment in nuclear energy, but nobody wants to have a talk about that.)

The icy wastes of the Arctic the title and setting of Mikkelsen’s latest film is a positive paradise in comparison to the frigid, hostile wasteland of modern progressivism. Mikkelsen seems all-too-aware of the pain that uttering such heresy threatens to bring down on him and his career.

Speaking to Mikkelsen, you sense a tension between the desire to speak plainly and concern over the controversy that might cause. Discussing the sexual allegations made against the head of Zentropa, the Danish studio responsible for many of the Dogme films, as well as The Hunt, we touch on the wider #MeToo movement against sexual harassment in cinema. He is at pains to note that there has obviously been a very, very disturbing culture, and thank God it’s being addressed, but also says that he is reluctant to go there. Is he worried about slipping up?

Not slip up  I’m saying, one word wrong and you’re a dead person, he says, before citing the fate of Matt Damon, who was criticised in 2017 for suggesting that sexual abuse allegations should be treated on a spectrum of behaviour and bemoaning a culture of outrage. For Mikkelsen, Damon is the most politically correct person in history. He said something quite common sense and he got fucking slaughtered. So this is not a healthy discussion any more.

theguardian

Celebrity or not, Mikkelsen is at least right, there. This is no longer a culture which encourages healthy debate. Like the commissars of the Soviet Union, many a dutifully woke lefty is finding that saying the wrong thing, even decades ago, will be gleefully exploited by the grim inquisitors of right-on leftism.