Ever since I was a child ,HC Andersen 's tales would exert a fascination on me ,even though they were not always "and they lived happily ever after"kind. But there was a Christian side to them which would bring solace ("little mermaid" "little match girl" " a story from the sands" )
"Unge Andersen " is anti-hollywoodian biography ; it focuses on a small part of his life and is given a sometimes anti-realistic treatment ;for instance one of his future characters (little Tuk) appears in the movie , perhaps to show teacher Meisling at his more sadistic .
This loose piece of biography (frames of minds and streams of consciousness ,more like) depicts the life and times of the writer when he was sent to Meisler 's school by his "benefactor" Jonas Collins; to be seventeen in a class where the pupils are twelve is no picnic,and the scene in the schoolyard (and others when he's a laughing stock when he reads his plays or dramas) predates "the ugly duckling" (the wings are redundant , everybody past infancy knows the score )
The Meisling/Andersen is downright bewildering : the seventeen-year -old lad is absolutely ignorant ,clueless, in any subject(arithmetic, history,geography) but literature ; Meisling's attitude is not very clear :he seems to marvel at his pupil's knowledge about the great writers,but he confiscates all the stuff of his seedy bedroom ;and later on, when they meet again after the Xmas fete (during which HCA marvels at the sumptuous Xmas tree as much as his little
match girl would do ) , he simply says " you're mine" .He's so dumb he do not even understands his teacher's wife's advances .
No matter what the true story is like, the gloomy austere atmosphere shows a man who does not seem to stand reality and takes refuge in an imaginary world: the most successful scene is the tales -with a marvelous use of a shadow show- HCA tells a (real ,but as I wrote ,a future imaginary character) poor little boy ;you do not hear a single word, but the brat's face is beaming .
The widely-know part of his work,namely his tales (which as he was aging , were less and less fantasy), is almost absent : only the first lines of "the little mermaid " are heard towards the end .They say it was inspired by an impossible love with his benefactor Collin's daughter -and perhaps son.
Simon Dahl Thaulow is absolutely excellent ,dreaming,gauche, shy,considerate with little Tuk;on the other hand ,one can have done without the classic construction (an old man remembers ,and on with the flashbacks).
But definitely off the beaten track of biography and thus to be recommended.
