From Denmark comes ‘’ME AND Charlie’’ — ‘’Me and Charlie’’ — a film from 1978 about isolated youth, written, directed and photographed by Henning Christiansen and Morten Arnfred. It is shown today at 17:00. as part of the ‘’Scandinavia: New Films’’ series at the Museum of Modern Art, and will be repeated on Thursday at 18.00.
So, Denmark too has its unhappy children: children who grow up in solid middle-class families are spoiled, dissatisfied, bored, sexually free, disillusioned and defeated by society. In this strange film, two young men, Charlie and Stephen, become friends. One is around 20 years old, has a good background, leaves school, is unemployed and talks about work but never does much about it. The other is a juvenile delinquent who lives in a juvenile home.
This is a unique film because the writer-director team never decides on the motivations of the characters. Charlie, the teenager, is considered a free spirit, symbolizing today’s youth. No one can tell him what to do; He represents freedom and free will. But in reality he is an unpleasant young man, nothing more than a street kid and a petty thief with no one to recommend him. The song sung over the ending tells us that he is an admirable person. But if Charlie is taken as a symbol of all that is good in today’s youth, as a representative of all that is not good in the bourgeois way of life, then the future looks bleak.
