FILM REVIEW: IN A BETTER WORLD

Claus (Ulrich Thomsen) and Christian (William Jøhnk Nielsen) In a Better World.

Something is rotten in Denmark, Africa, Hollywood, etc.

By Don Simpson

Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier’s (Brothers; After the Wedding) seemingly apolitical diatribe on the cycle of violence and retribution in our post 9/11 society -- a narrative trope that seems to be becoming increasingly prevalent nowadays -- took home the Best Foreign Language Film of the Year Oscar at the 83rd Academy Awards I can see why.

Christian's (William Jøhnk Nielsen) mother recently died after losing a battle with cancer. After the funeral, Christian relocates with his father, Claus (Ulrich Thomsen), from England to Denmark. Christian detests quitters and he believes that his father quit caring about his mother thus causing her death. Christian’s deeply suppressed grief begins to reach its boiling point when he notices a bully picking on Elias (Markus Rygaard), a meek and scrawny boy at school. (The bully, whose abuse is tinged with anti-Swedish bigotry, says Elias' sharp facial features makes him resemble a rat.) Christian does not like bullies and despite his young age he has already established a philosophy about how to deal with them: hit them hard enough the first time and they will never bully you again. It does not help matters that Claus is clueless -- primarily because he spends a majority of the film absent from the screen and from Christian's life.

Christian’s coldly rational and self-justifying propensity for violence plays in opposition to the pacifist philosophy of Elias’ father, Anton (Mikael Persbrandt). Anton, a humanitarian doctor in an unnamed African country, is confronted daily with ethical dilemmas concerning a brutish local warlord -- Big Man (Odiege Matthew) -- who enjoys slicing and dicing the young women of the village. Facing the unconscionably primitive violence of Africa with a near-comical stoicism, Anton even steps up to provide medical treatment for Big Man, much to the dismay of his clinic's staff and local villagers.

During a visit home to Denmark, Anton gets bitch-slapped by an adult bully -- at a playground, no less -- in front of Elias and Christian. Anton shrugs off the situation, playing it cool in front of Elias and Christian. Little does he know, the boys are embarrassed of his pacifism. We all know what Christian thinks about bullies (and it seems he has convinced the incredibly malleable Elias to think exactly as he does); he is convinced that Elias' father should have challenged the bully to a fight. In a feeble attempt to teach Elias and Christian that turning the other cheek is not wussy, Anton and the boys visit the bully at his place of business. Anton accepts a few more bitch-slaps from the brute, thinking that this will successfully prove that the bully is just a big dumb jerk, but the boys determine that Elias' father is a big dumb pansy.

So what do the boys do? Christian and a somewhat reluctant Elias decide to take revenge on the aged bully on their own (this after they were just recently scolded for a violent attack on the adolescent bully). Thanks to some instructions downloaded by Christian from the Internet, the boys build a few pipe bombs with gunpowder from discarded fireworks...and we all know that nothing good will come of this.

Anton and Elias' respective bullies in Denmark, Anton's failing marriage with Marianne (Trine Dyrholm) and the situation with Big Man in Africa, causes Anton's sublime sense of control and impeccably peaceful demeanor to shatter. Anton's pacifism is represented by Bier as shameless moral vanity while his ideals of justice and nonviolence are proven to be not only illogical, but unsuccessful as well. (Violent revenge, however, is not punished -- other than the physical trauma endured by Elias). Anton essentially handles the African and Danish town bullies identically -- refusing to inflict violence against them with his own hands, leaving others to do the dirty work -- so comparing the two scenarios sadly provides no additional insight into his character.

The placement of Anton in Africa is not merely a tactic for Bier to offer a stark visual contrast between the warm African golds with cold Danish blues and greens; Bier does this in order to pit the irrationally idyllic values of the affluent/liberal/white western world against the uncivilized mayhem in the poor/tribal/black third world. Bier offers a menagerie of patronizing caricatures of Denmark's woefully naive upper class and their spoiled kids, as well as of bullies (all three of whom appear to be culled directly from Hollywood stereotypes).

Despite impressive acting performances all around and beautiful cinematography (Morten Søborg), Bier's confounding attempt to remain neutral in the discussion of certain moral issues (bullying, revenge, violence, parenting, etc.) ends up muddling the film's plot and purpose. Additionally, there is absolutely no sense of realism for the audience to latch on; every aspect of the narrative (absentee parents, dangerous information on the Internet, the Hippocratic oath, marital infidelity, masculinity, pacifism and the hunger for revenge) is handled as heavy-handedly and purposefully as the naming of the character Christian.


For a complimentary interview with Susanne Bier please click Bier.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: SUSANNE BIER

In a Better World director Susanne Bier.

Senseless and sensitivity

By John Esther

Another intense family drama by the director behind Open Hearts, Brothers, After the Wedding and Things We Lost in the Fire, the latest film by Susanne Bier, In a Better World, examines the various levels of tolerance some people will accept before retaliating.

Anton (Mikael Persbrandt) is a doctor working in an African desert camp where girls are often brought in after being cut open by a local warlord named Big Man (Odiege Matthew in a role he seems born to play).

Back home in Denmark, Anton's estranged wife, Marianne (Trine Dyrholm), is trying to raise their son, Elias (Markus Rygaard), a socially misfit kid who gets into a heap of trouble after befriending the new boy in town, Christian (William Jørgennsen), a bitter boy with a chip on his shoulder called Dad (Ulrich Thomsen).

When a plan of attack goes dreadfully awry -- although it could have been much worse -- it becomes clear that mother, father, husband, wife and son need to learn the value of forgiveness in a world riddled with revenge.

Days before In a Better World won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (Denmark) I met up with the Danish director in Beverly Hills. As she moved around on the slippery couch quite a bit, we talked about her latest film.

JEsther Entertainment: Why did you want to make this film, tell these stories?
Susanne Bier: Because I thought it was interesting. I thought the whole thing about revenge and forgiveness seemed like something which sort of creeps upon us in our vocabulary. It's about time to make a movie that dealt with those kinds of things.

JE: Do you think there is a greater thirst for revenge now than in the past? SB: There's a greater acceptance of revenge as a notion. If you look back the past five or six years the notion has become an accepted term.

JE: Worldwide? In particular places?
SB: In the Western World, yes. It's very hard for me to say what it's like in Asia.

JE: What kind of political intentions did you have behind making In a Better World?
SB: I don’t think I had political intentions. I had intentions dealing with ethic or moral issues. I very consciously did not deal with political things. This film deals with moral issues: the whole issue of revenge and forgiveness; the whole notion of violence and non-violence; and the whole ideal about being a decent human being and what that implies. I didn’t want to set it in a definite political context or religious context either. That way we could keep the universality of the moral issues.

JE: Do you think Anton has the right response in these situations, incidences where people are seeking revenge?
SB: I don’t think he has a correct or non-correct response. He's trying hard to remain stoic upon what he believes is right and, like all of us, at some point he has a breaking point. His breaking point is an interesting point because that's where you as an audience feel, "Oh great, we got rid of this guy. We don’t want Big Man to go around doing the sort of atrocities we know he's going to be doing. Once he's well he's going to go out and cut up stomachs of small pregnant girls." You don’t want him to be able to do that so there's a strange sense of relief at the same time you clearly realize Anton is feeling defeated.

JE: Big Man's death is a self-defense mechanism for the "girls of the future."
SB: You can say that. I'm not sure that's the correct mechanics, but you can say that.

JE: How do you deal with your thirsts for revenge? How do you negotiate that energy into something else?
SB: The way we feel offended in everyday life and the way we want to deal with feeling offended is usually pretty easy to deal with. Unless you've been exposed to real atrocities, it's hard to predict your capability to deal with them. As a general rule I do believe in forgiveness. All adult human beings know that the spiral of revenge is terribly tragic.

JE: A lot of your films deal with tragedy. Is there a reason why you are drawn to characters with intense internal conflicts that manifest themselves outward?
SB: My movies are dramatic movies. If you look at great dramas, they are pretty violent, pretty powerful. There's been a particularly European tradition of being withheld and sort of subdued by your scale of dramatic expression and I don’t really believe in that. I actually believe in telling the stories with a lot of emotion. You're probably much more capable of reaching an audience if you feel you've got an important story or if you feel you have something in your heart which you think is important to convey.

JE: Do you see your films as a response to the lack of intensity in European drama?
SB: You don’t make sort of intense movies because you think other movies are boring. You make movies because you think this particular story is right. When I get the criticism of my movies being incredibly dramatic, I kind of go, "Yes, great. Thank you," even if it's not meant that way. I actually happen to think it's great.

JE: I was not posing it as a criticism –
SB: No, I know you were not.

JE: Do people actually criticize your films for being too dramatic?
SB: Actually it's interesting here, because I'm Danish, my movies are sort of "art house." In Europe I'm so mainstream, that I'm not entirely accepted among certain movie circles in Europe. I'm quite pleased with that. I mean, if you think moviemaking is about talking to two people in a very sophisticated cinema, far away from everything, be my guest. I just don’t believe it. I actually believe in making accessible movies with real content.

JE: Now that you say that, when I was at Sundance in January (where In a Better World screened), I was sitting around with a few Scandinavian filmmakers and there was a surprisingly intense debate over your films.
SB: Yeah.

JE: What do you think about the film's Oscar nomination?
SB: I'm very happy. I'm very proud. I get to wear a long dress.

JE: Do you think the Oscars usually get it right with the winners?
SB: Nobody gets it right always. I do tend to like the Oscar movies.

JE: They are usually dramas.
SB: [Laughs]. Yeah. Sometimes certain comedic performances do not get appreciated because they are comedic performances. And those can be the most difficult to put out. So tell me about this Sundance Scandinavian discussion. I think that's very interesting.

JE: Some thought you were too commercial. They thought your Oscar nomination came through name recognition since you had done Things We Lost in the Fire (with Halle Berry) and Brothers was adapted into English (withTobey Maguire). Others did not see how being commercial was a bad thing. And how could your films be so commercial since they were so intense? There were fans for Sweden's Simple Simon, which did not make the cut.
SB: Okay.

JE: You are also one of the few female filmmakers consistently working. Do you see progress for women trying to make it in this business?
SB: It's probably a bit easier, but society still places a big emphasis on women having to choose between their careers and having children. Society should change that. It's a huge pressure on younger women.

JE: Lastly, what do you think of these interviews where you discuss yourself and your work? Does it serve the film? Should the work speak for itself?
SB: That's a very theoretical question. Yes, I would prefer for my work to speak for itself, but that's not the reality. The reality is that I need to generate interest. If you are serious about your work, this is just as an important part as shooting the film.

JE: Do you read interviews with other directors?
SB: Sometimes. In Europe, particularly, directors can be very pretentious. That doesn’t make me terribly keen to see a film. I'm very sensitive to the education of a particular project. If I read a director, and the director seems sincerely dedicated, it is going to make me interested.