Friday, April 15, 2011

In a Better World (***3/4)

This was the winner of the Foreign Language Film Oscar, and it’s better than the Best Picture winner, The King’s Speech. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the latter, but it settles for being a well-told drama without ever surprising the viewer in any way. Danish writer-director Susanne Bier likes to tell harder stories, of people caught between conflicting loyalties. She is best known for her features Brothers (faithfully remade as an American film in 2009) and After the Wedding. Those films and this one (all written in collaboration with Anders Thomas Jensen) have the common element of a male main character who has returned from overseas. Anton (Mikael Persbrandt) is that character here, a doctor who spends much of his time away from home, treating victims of violence in a refugee camp in Africa. He is separated from his wife, with whom he has a young son.

The parallel story concerns Christian, a taciturn boy who has just returned to Denmark from London following the death of his mother. Christian takes the side of a boy who’s been bullied and helps him take revenge upon his tormenter. Yet at the same time we applaud this as justice, the anger from which it stems is unsettling. The story of the boy and of the man both intersect and parallel each other, though it takes a bit of time to see how. The obvious point, though, is that whether it’s in civilized, modern Denmark or a country ruled by warlords, the dark heart of man lies only a bit beneath the surface. It is only because most people in places like Denmark submit to the rule of law that keeps the one sort of place from becoming the other. Returning to Africa, Christian must operate on a different set of values.

In the end, Bier veers from this theme and more toward those of family and loss, which is less difficult. In the way it is also about these things, it becomes more broadly accessible. One might quibble with the tidiness in which this plot unfolds, but for the most part her and Jensen’s script is a model of good storytelling. In a better world, there would be a larger place for thoughtful films like those of Bier.

IMDB link

viewed 4/20/11 at Ritz Five and reviewed 5/10/11

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