If it is healthy to laugh then it must extend your life by quite a bit when you laugh hysterically. If this is true then I would say that watching a DVD from the library is one of the best things you can do to extend your life.
I prescribe two dark comedies by the Danish writer and director Anders Thomas Jensen. They are dark, very dark and you will find yourself laughing when you’re not so sure you should, but in the end lightness prevails and you will be healthier for it.
Adam’s Apples was released in 2005. I saw it then at the Egyptian Theater on Capitol Hill. I could tell the audience was trying not to laugh, but as the film went on we had no choice and we were the better for it. There are several characters, most of them ex-convicts, in a halfway house but the two main characters are Adam, a neo-Nazi who has just been released from jail, and Ivan, the priest who Adam is released to. It’s a simple story, really. Ivan tells Adam that all he has to do is bake an apple pie from the tree in the courtyard of the church.
The Green Butchers (2003) stars some of the same actors including Mads Mikkelsen (Ivan of Adam’s Apples) as Svend. His nemesis and business partner is played by Nikolaj Lie Kaas who plays a double role as one of the partners, Bjarne, in a butcher shop and his own mentally diminished brother Eigil. Business in their new butcher shop is slow until an accident and their first catering job collide.
Bring facial tissue, but I am not recommending popcorn because of the choking hazard when you begin laughing hysterically.
~Tom the Librarian, Queen Anne Branch
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