The Last Execution

This bleak Danish import imagines the last day of a real-life execution victim in 1853 Svendborg, Denmark. The observations of various townspeople--interspersed with the fifteen-year-old boy's own memories of poverty, rejection, loss, and finally rage--reveal the world that led the boy to his crime and his fate. Rich with symbolism, historical criticism, and contemporary resonance, this is an unflinching examination of capitol punishment.

This relentlessly bleak Danish import imagines the last day of a real-life execution victim, the last (in 1853) to suffer that fate in the town of Svendborg, Denmark. Various townspeople cross his path-the messenger who posts the execution notices for the public event, the priest charged with extracting a final confession, the carpenter who measures him for a coffin-and their unsettled observations are brief windows into the world that led the fifteen-year-old boy to his crime (murdering the sheriff's young son) and his fate. Each views the tragedy through the filter of his own self-interest: the baker gripes that the mayor won't let him raise the price of bread (starving the poor, he believes, would be a cheaper way to execute criminals), while the poet attempting to set the boy's final moments to verse hopes to find romance at the event. Alongside the boy's interspersed memories of poverty, rejection, flight, loss, and finally rage, these sections reveal a society in which his fate is unremarkable and all the more tragic for it. There are some odd anachronisms in the translation (an impatient character wishes the executioner would "cut to the chase"), but all in all, the spare, detached narration suits the subject. Rich with symbolism, historical criticism, and contemporary resonance, this is an unflinching portrait of the barbarism of execution and the collective apathy of observers that the practice inspires. claire e. gross