Lasse Lyskjær Noer’s directing and writing debut is also a masterpiece drama comedy about the concept of death and grief. The now Oscar Nominated short is a wonderful meditation on processing the death of a loved one as Lyskjær Noer observes how we all go through different rituals in order to process death and protect ourselves from pain. “Sometimes people cry, sometimes people even laugh,” a mortician explains as he’s escorting Karl to see his wife Karen in her final resting place.
For Karl, it’s his surprising fixation on a malfunctioning fluorescent light fixture that hovers near his wife’s coffin. During a last visit to see her remains and how she’d look during the funeral, Karl expresses considerable reluctance and retreats to the bathroom. There he meets Torben who forms a relationship with, and Torben somehow convinces Karl to go with him to say goodbye to his wife, as well as help him come to terms with her passing.
Suffice to say nothing in “Knight of Fortune” goes exactly as I was expecting. Lasse Lyskjær Noer is prone to spending less time on death and more time on the idiosyncrasies and odd quirks that follow the death process. Both men give subtle and memorable performances, especially as the script brings us through twists and turns in the narrative that are both very funny, but also so heartbreaking in the grand scheme of it all.
Director-Writer Lyskjær Noer takes on the subject material with such maturity and entertaining intellect that I could have sat through two hours of watching these men process their own feelings on losing probably the only people in their lives.