Not so long ago, two filmmakers had a chat. Josefine Exner was talking with Sebastian Gerdes. Exner was telling him that her “mum was earning way more than my dad.”
She had always looked at her parents and regarded them as “so modern and such a feminist couple.” It turned out, though, that her father wasn’t altogether happy about being always in his wife’s shadow.
From this early conversation sprang the idea for a film about men in general in Denmark. Lots of others were in the same situation as Exner’s dad. Their story is told in The Nicest Men on Earth, a premiere March 23 in Nordic Dox at CPH:DOX.
Denmark has consistently been ranked as the best country in the world to be a woman. But what does that mean for the men? They’re being outperformed at school, out earned in the workplace. To put it bluntly, they no longer wear the trousers. In fact, some feel the men aren’t necessary at all. Danish women can get along absolutely fine without them. Others regard them as the “sweetest, nicest” people because, as Gerdes puts it, they have “voluntarily given up the space for women to take over.”
Exner compares Denmark to Barbie Land. The Danish men are all like Ken.
Gerdes and Exner are now a couple and have just had a child who is just over a fortnight old. (They call him the “sweetest baby in the world.”) Back when they first hatched the movie, they weren’t yet romantically involved. Exner had simply told Gerdes that she wanted to make a film about men and was keen to hear his opinion.
This is a very gentle and humorous documentary. Anyone looking for a battle of the sexes or for reflections on “incel” culture, Andrew Tate and toxic masculinity should head elsewhere.
The way the filmmakers describe their own relationship, they seem to exist in perfect harmony. “We decided early on that we wanted to earn the same on the film. We earned exactly the same.”
They also share the childcare. (Midway through the interview with Business Doc Europe, Gerdes briefly disappears as he is the one on nappy duty).
“We try to make it as equal as possible,” Exner says of the relationship. Thanks to making the documentary, they had “already talked about all the difficult stuff before becoming a couple,” and so that helped.
“Also, all the interviews, we did some research of our own on what to do and what not to while raising a family,” Gerdes adds.
Another advantage for him was that he got to know his parents in law in advance – as they feature prominently in the documentary.
The documentary isn’t just about gender. In its own wry way, it is also looking at the relationship between Aarhus, Denmark’s “second” city, and Copenhagen, the capital. The men in Aarhus have a double burden. Not only are they worried about earning less than the women. They also have an obvious second city syndrome inferiority complex about their home town. Their football team always seems to lose in matches against FC Copenhagen. Their transport system is pretty good – but not as good as that in Copenhagen. They have decent museums – but they’re not as impressive as those in Copenhagen.
The two directors live in Copenhagen but are from Aarhus – and so have a foot in both worlds. When they still lived there in their home town, they noticed that “people talk a lot about Copenhagen.” Now that they’re in Copenhagen, they have quickly realised that nobody there talks about Aarhus at all.
“It’s like it [Aarhus] doesn’t even exist,” says Gerdes. “They [the people in Copenhagen] only talk about Berlin and New York.”
A problem about Danish men being so nice is that they’re in danger of becoming a little bit dull. Ask Exner if she finds nice men attractive and she insists that she does, at least as long as they are not too self-effacing.
“If we want to make new ideal masculinity role models, then we need to give confidence to these nice men,” Exner suggests. “These men are the ones that are going to give space for a woman like me to have a career. We can share having children and having a career – and also this is obviously the most attractive partner you can have…but if a nice man doesn’t have confidence, then maybe he won’t be that attractive. It’s not about having a big car or earning a lot of money. It’s all about confidence.”
“I’ve struggled for a long time with being too nice,” Gerdes admits. “I think for me, when I grew older, I grew out of this…I think being honest about these kinds of things has helped me a lot.”
The men represented in the documentary are predominantly white, middle-class and well educated. It’s not the most diverse cross-section of masculine archetypes.
“You’re absolutely right,” Gerdes acknowledges when asked about the narrowness of the film’s gaze on men. One issue, though, was that men from other backgrounds were very wary about appearing on camera.
“This film is showing how it is to be unemployed and take care of kids. We had a lot of difficulty of having any dad want to be in the film actually,” Exner acknowledges. That’s one of the main reasons why she pressganged her own parents into appearing.
“In some cultures and minorities, this shame about not being the person who earns the most is bigger,” Gerdes notes.
Some of the protagonists were followed for three years. That allowed the directors to “pinpoint situations” that would carry the storyline forward. For example, the film ends with a scene in a train station where one character (leaving Aarhus for Copenhagen) says a tearful goodbye to another.
“The reason why we chose that ending is that couple, when we see them for the first time, they are reading Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. In the end of that book, Nora leaves Torvald,” says Gerdes. “We thought that would be a nice tip of the hat to that story and a great reference.”
“And we love this very romantic film music and we love train scenes,” his partner adds.
The Nicest Men on Earth was produced through Made In Copenhagen. However, it remains very much a film “made in Aarhus.” The directors confide that they had “the very world premiere in Aarhus” in advance of the Copenhagen premiere.
The film is supported by New Danish Screen, with consultant Christina Ramsø Thomsen, DR editor Anders Bruus, and Den Vestdanske Filmpulje (the West Danish Film Fund), represented by Steen Risom and Kirsten Bonnén Rask.
The two directors would like their film to be a starting point for far franker discussion about gender roles in other societies. They even float the idea that different versions of the documentary could be made in different countries even if the men there aren’t quite as nice as the ones in Denmark.
