In a Better World

Translations of foreign film titles are rarely felicitous, but few seem as ill-chosen as the English rechristening of this film. Properly, the Danish Hævnen would be rendered as "an act of vengeance," or simply "revenge," not only a far more appropriate name given the plot, but also a more personal one conveying the basic moral premise of individual responsibility and individual consequences. Before a viewer is provided the opportunity to make up his own mind, however, the English variant implies that responsibility is shifted from individuals to circumstances, to a malefic world at large. This impression is rectified by the film's events, but not without some of the characters evincing a few doubts of their own. And especially dubious are two twelve-year-old schoolmates, Christian (William Jøhnk Nielsen) and Elias (Markus Rygaard).

As is common in such friendships, Christian and Elias are bound together by each other's weaknesses. Christian is the newest student, obviously from a family of affluence as his last institution of learning was a London boarding school, but he is also, we learn early on, a victim of a great tragedy. Elias is a half-Swede whose father is conspicuously absent, although far from vanished. That Christian's father Claus (Ulrich Thomsen) chooses to move back to Denmark in the wake of his wife's final battle with brain cancer may strike the viewer as unusual, given that Christian probably has more family memories in his native land than abroad. That said, adjusting to a different environment remains one of the most proven methods of coping with loss (another method, working day and night with little concern for one's well-being, is the strategy adopted by Claus). This leaves Christian the time, resources, and lack of supervision he requires to wreak havoc upon the world that swallowed up his mother. His first step in avenging her is to defend Elias from a bully, a three-vignette sequence that yields a bloody nose, a brutal beating, the repeated intervention of the local police, and a weird and somewhat unconvincing truce. A more captious critic than I might object that the school bully, an Aryan thug by the name of Sofus, quits our view a little too quickly, having served only to solder together our two young protagonists. But the theme of bullying and vengeance is taken up anew with the appearance of Elias's father, Anton (Mikael Persbrandt).

The lone Swede amidst a passel of Hamlet's countrymen, Anton literally speaks his own language and is understood more or less completely. And while it is widely known that Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes have mutually intelligible tongues, the distinctions can (and, in our case, will) be used against the outsider. For a number of reasons, Anton emerges as the film's compass: he is the father of Elias and a smaller boy, Morten (whose name is tattooed above his heart); he is estranged from his wife (Trine Dyrholm), who cannot forget a past indiscretion; and, least importantly for our purposes even if, at first, quite the opposite may seem true, Anton spends half the year as a doctor in a never-identified African country (the local language and difficulties suggest Sudan). Africa in its most miserable regions has a tendency to render upper middle-class domestic disputes and coming-of-age stories woefully trivial, precisely the problem when the movie is not really about Africa, but about two boys in Denmark. Most lamentable about the half-dozen glimpses into a realm where few Europeans would be brave enough to test their moral fortitude is that the out-of-Africa quandaries eerily parallel the Scandinavian. As these scenes are discrete from the Danish episodes, the discerning viewer may secretly hope that Africa only exists in Anton's mind as a memory or wild dream of his conscience (alas, one vignette ensures us that this cannot be so). Predictably, therefore, Anton's healing of victims of hideous crimes, some of them the age of his own children, have drawn both the most praise and the most ire from critics, the latter of whom view the whole exercise as manipulative – but such an assertion misses the point. All cinema, even documentary, is manipulative: however nominally objective the director may be, you are simply never privy to the whole picture. This criticism is better directed at the non-diagetic music, which is most always cloying and which regrettably megaphones just when we need no reminder of the emotions we are supposed to feel at that very moment.

We have forgotten, in all this politically correct brouhaha, our unfledged heroes and their tribulations, but that's just as well. We know that the boys will embroil themselves in more than just a fistfight; we also know that they will lie both to one another and their parents as they deepen their hole with the keenest of spades. What we do not know and, indeed, herein lies the charm of such melodramatic machinations, is what if anything will be the consequences of their actions. That is to say, in a world that could and should be better, we are inclined to believe that people get away with much more than we could ever imagine. In a Better World clearly knows right from wrong (all too clearly, I fear, for many critics who likely gorge themselves on films they deem "morally ambiguous"), and what happens when the boys elect to avenge a perceived affront against one of their fathers concludes plausibly, if not necessarily as one might expect. This formula, if that is really the fairest term, has been previously employed by the director, with varied results. Bier's most famous film likewise urges the viewer to connect two very different worlds, yet does not end in atonement or even peace, but in a feeling that almost any emotion would be permissible, so wicked was the experience of one of the characters abroad (while this film, also about a Scandinavian doing wonderful things for the impoverished in a foreign country, is far more effective because the abroad is intrinsically tied to the plot). Nevertheless, as in all Bier productions, the acting is splendid (Dyrholm and Rygaard are particularly outstanding), and we are compelled to watch because these young boys are granted vivacity, fear, a sense of humor, purposefulness, and enough intelligence to be held accountable for their choices; at several junctures in the film, I distinctly felt I was observing sixteen- or seventeen-year-olds. So when Claus confesses something very controversial to his son, and gets punched and insulted for his efforts, we understand why Christian has little if no compunction for his misdeeds and why, for him, the world could not be any worse. And we pity him just as much as any little boy anywhere who has been deprived of that most basic children's need, parental love. We just hope he knows that adulthood might show him how many other deprivations exist on this earth. 

Terribly Happy

This film may initially strike us as little more than a compost of noir elements, yet we will be proven wrong. It begins with a cow legend, a half-beast, half-child tale of parturition with elements that once might have suggested a demonic presence and are now only translated by computerized minds as a provincial kind of sexism. Some cleansing acts are carried out and then we are assured: "Since that time there has been no trouble with cows or women." After this odd introduction we are subsequently informed that the story is based on true events. If this is so, gentle reader, let me be the first to cancel any future trips to southern Denmark. True enough, I don't really mean that last part (Denmark has always been for me a heaven on our brittle earth), so maybe I can simply eliminate a few select swampy patches on the Jutland map.  

Our protagonist is Robert (Jakob Cedergren), a handsome, lonesome, still youngish Copenhagen cop with a broad suggestible streak. Suggestibility implies a certain absence of self-confidence, common enough in someone attractive (perhaps his appearance has long since masked his foolishness; perhaps he has pursued his sensual privileges and neglected his mind). Nevertheless, we tend to think that his looks emerged well after adolescence, which explains why he has never really exited that period. In keeping with noir prototypes, Robert is introduced to us with a checkered past that no one, he least of all, wishes to talk about. His infraction will be clarified to some extent much later in the film, but his penance will be as a small-town bailiff. "Nothing really happens here," says his superior as he drives Robert to his temporary new home, "and if something does happen, you just report it to me." Robert gives that nervous nod endemic among people who tend to talk themselves into trouble and lets the comment sit. Importantly, the village in question also lies next to a hateful bog – a pit of sin in more than one sense – although one wonders whether any bog has ever enjoyed a glittering reputation.   

Ah yes, southern Denmark. As a long-time speaker of what may be termed rigsdansk (standard Danish), I am still astounded by the panoply of dialects in such a snug little place. Robert's shibboleth is the squeaky greeting "morning" (møjn), a noise which at one point even the cat seems to produce. And certainly, a conspiracy of noir circumstances seems to be afoot: suspicious locals on every corner stare at Robert as if he were a pink elephant; his bike is almost run over more than once by a determined truck; the stillness of the always-deserted streets screams western with, in good western tradition, Robert as both lawmaker and outlaw; and, of course, the appearance of the requisite femme fatale Ingerlise (Lene Maria Christensen). Ingerlise is walking and talking bad news; she is also, by Danish standards, not particularly fetching. Yet she is alluring in that way that some women have of being able to be completely enthralled by what a man is saying. Ingerlise seems to confirm our fears of genre compliance with a litany of femme fatale characteristics: the implication that she is undersexed; the further implication that she is misunderstood, if not reviled by the community (Ingerlise is from Åbenrå, and thus also an outsider) for her sensuality or other careless lusts; and the very direct declaration that her bloated boar of a husband Jørgen (Kim Bodnia) batters her whenever he thinks she deserves it. Scars suggest this might be a weekly event. Just when Robert, who is very intrigued despite his better judgment, asks for more information about a certain bicycle dealer who disappeared a few years back, Ingerlise overtly pauses then lets her bike tumble to the ground for Robert to retrieve (in romances past, this may have been a glove or handkerchief). We now know for certain that Robert will eventually possess Ingerlise, that the boar will eventually learn of their little escapade one way or another, and that all this could have been rather easily avoided if Robert weren't so predisposed to cutting corners.

Which brings us to another dirty little secret. It is no spoiler to reveal that Robert has a wife in Copenhagen, as well as a beloved daughter whom he hasn't seen in months. "And why haven't you," asks a perfectly logical Ingerlise, who also has a daughter in the eight-to-ten-year range. That would be because Robert's daughter believes her father to be in Australia, "the farthest possible country," and also very much a symbolic southernmost purgatory. As our film skids down some curious slopes, we cannot but notice Robert compensating for his own estranged family by seeking to aid another wife and child in need of a good father (one could even imagine Ingerlise's daughter's ubiquitous red jacket making Jørgen into more of a wolf than a boar). Jørgen, a natural-born bully, senses the fear and vulnerability in the newcomer and pushes him to the usual lengths of oneupmanship until one incredibly unfortunate (and improbable) night almost leads the men to join forces. Ingerlise finds every public meeting place possible to carry on their intensifying flirtation, and tongues wag because this is some of the juiciest scandal in, well, perhaps weeks now. The details and double-talk propel the players to the middle of the film and the turning point in everyone's existence. I can't remember the last time I ever saw anyone withdraw ignition keys from a moving car, but the thoughtful viewer might wish to consider the vehicle and its driver with similar empathy.

There is also a quack of a doctor who "barked up Ingerlise's tree" a while back, a store owner who has a special storage area for his long-fingered clients, and a priest who can be identified only by his frilly collar. In a town this small, however, the intervention of any one of the characters cannot be considered anything less than formulary. Terribly Happy plays as the best type of western, that is, the kind that forsakes the silly invincibility of isolation that informs most films of that genre for the ravenous despair of noir. And while the twanging nonsense of its soundtrack jangles the nerves and earns it a half to three-quarters demerit, the tone is correct: Robert has been shipped to a zone of amoral actions and players. It will become his task to determine whether these persons are immoral, which involves consistency, or whether they do actually propone an ad hoc understanding of human motives and words. If they are structurally evil, they can be judged and, in principle, reformed; on the other hand, should they be merely anarchic hoodlums ready for a scrap to the death at any given moment, then there is little Robert or anyone else can do for them. The worst part about this type of noir is not that you cannot know the truth, but that no one wishes you to know it; you are not an initiate into the global conspiracy, and this little village might as well be its own planet orbiting our greater realm. Even if its main inhabitant and actor might be a large pool of slime.

Open Hearts

We are, said a wise man a long time ago, nothing more than the sum of our choices. Freewill remains the constant in the universe that allows our lives to rotate with the planets or in counterpoise, but in each case with distinctive energy that some of us humble dreamers dare to call souls. What is strange about these two assertions is that people disassociate freewill from any type of faith because, they claim, faith involves submission, accepting one's destiny, and, most criminally, divesting oneself of any responsibility for one's decisions. Now I am all for freewill. I truly believe that with determination, persistence, and optimism (and, admittedly, some luck), just about anything can be achieved. One man can choose not to retaliate and inspire a whole multiethnic nation to walk the path of least resistance; one woman can devote her life to helping those whom the world wishes were never born; and a man who survived orphanages, war, P.O.W. camps, cancer, expatriation, and one of the most brutal and oppressive regimes in modern history can win the Nobel Prize for literature. In addition to their faith, all of these heroes – and it is much harder to be a hero when you choose not to resort to violence – share an indomitable will. A will to do what is morally right for the world, even if such a scenario costs them everything they hold dear. Of course, it is not the task of every person to enact mass reform, nor to lead millions onto the righteous path, nor to sacrifice himself for the greater good of mankind. No, to most of us hyperbole does not apply. Most of us have enough to deal with in the small ambit of our private life, a locus which can be just as tragic as a national catastrophe. Which brings us to this film about choice.

We are introduced to two couples at different stages of their development. The first, young and freshly engaged, are Cecilie (Sonja Richter) and Joachim (Nikolaj Lie Kaas). Life began the day they met and has improved as they have grown together, sharing the tender smiles of those who understand fate as the reflection of our desires and the influence of something greater still. It is in the rays of this omnipotent sun that they bask, drunk on the sweetness of things, in love so wonderful and profound that we suspect that it cannot last for the entirety of a motion picture. Indeed, they stay enamored and cooing until Joachim gets out of a parked car and is promptly run down by a motorist who never saw him. That motorist is Marie (Paprika Steen), and her collision with Joachim can be attributed to an argument she was having at the wheel with her hellcat teenage daughter Stine. 

Marie is half of the second couple in our love trapezoid with her surgeon husband, Niels (Mads Mikkelsen). Now in their mid- to late thirties, Niels and Marie lead a steady bourgeois life with three children and a comfortable home in one of Copenhagen's more privileged quarters; in other words, this idyllic structure is as likely to crumble as the blissful, energetic, and impecunious world of Cecilie and Joachim. And fate's wicked game has already assumed its course: upon learning how Joachim ended up in his hospital's intensive care unit, Niels feels a certain affection towards Cecilie, who is much younger and lovelier than his loyal wife. He begins, as men are supposed to do when they court, with small gifts of his time and money. Once the extent of Joachim's injury has been fully ascertained, however, Niels feels obliged to replace the lost happiness that Cecilie might never find again and let her love blossom anew – or some other excuse for what he lacks in his marriage. After all, it was Niels's wife and daughter who took away Cecilie's love, so wouldn't all be fair in the solar system if he could restore some of her trust in human bonds? Not to mention that Joachim, given the severity of his injury, has nothing but the nastiest words for the person he once loved.

Without making light of the talent on hand, as well as the sublime threads that intertwine at just the right moments, the plot as described above could have been culled from any ordinary soap opera and kicked out to its melodramatic limits. Yet the four actors weave their emotions slowly, hesitatingly, as if unsure what the next scene will bring and cognizant that what they say might be later held against them. What we witness is the finest form of semi-improvisation possible in cinematic form, and one rarely employed in the inevitable plots of inevitable commercial films with inevitable revenues. Open hearts, a rather poor pun on Niels's profession and the amenability of his heart and that of Cecilie's to overcome societal obstacles and attempt a life together, has a certain appeal yet does not translate the original Danish, Elsker dig for evigt ("Love you forever"). The simplicity of that last phrase and the decision to pronounce it sincerely to another human being, that may be the hardest choice of all.

The Celebration

Once upon a time in a small Nordic country of terrible beauty there lived a prince named Christian (Ulrich Thomsen). He was young, handsome, and intelligent and the future for him and his twin sister Linda seemed as bright as the Danish summer sky. He had two other siblings, Helen (Paprika Steen), who was a bit younger, and Michael (Thomas Bo Larsen), the baby. But as much as their parents loved all four children, nothing could compare to the affection that their father, the beloved patriarch Helge (Henning Moritzen), showed the twins. He personally would take them into his study or into the largest bathroom of their country mansion and bathe them one by one. Since their father was equally affectionate to both twins, he couldn't bear the thought of favoritism, and would actually draw lots to see which one would be bathed first. Sometimes their mother Elsa (Birthe Neumann), who was infinitely deferential to the wishes of their father, would walk by the bathroom or the study and find her family members together and leave the room with nary a word. Linda so resembled her mother! The same long hair that in Spanish has a girl’s name, melena, the same piercing blue eyes! You could have practically mistaken one for the other! And when father and mother, who were among Denmark’s very social and financial elite, decided to add to their family, it happened that there was less time for the twins, now at school and less in touch with their ever-busy parents.

One of the world’s most beautiful countries, Denmark is also one of its most civilized. Its retirement age is lower than in other highly industrialized nations, and basic health care and schooling are practically free throughout a lifetime. Taxes are rather excessive, true enough, but how else can Denmark live up to its famous adage as “the country where few are rich and even fewer are poor”? So as Helge prepares to step down from his lifelong commitment to wealth, achievement, and prestige, it is only fitting that his family hold a party to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of this great man’s birth. Only the most important family members and friends are invited, although with such success, there are often a large number of candidates from which to choose. The whole endeavor is to take place on an early summer's day at the aforementioned mansion, which has a hotel-like feel to it. Perhaps this is a more recent acquisition? After all, Helge is an elder at one of the Masonic lodges that wield so much influence in Scandinavia, who knows what deceased count or baron's barks once echoed in these halls? “I might even get the lodge to consider you for membership,” whispers Helge in an aside to Michael, a budding chef who studied in Switzerland but who wasn’t actually invited to this year’s event because of extramarital behavior at last year’s event. There was such an event last year as well? For Helge’s fifty-ninth birthday? But what’s so special about that? This year must be more important. Christian has made the trek all the way from Paris for this so it cannot be just another birthday party. What happened between these two events? Ah yes, Linda, dearest Linda, decided that her privileged life could not go on.

How strange, then, to witness the merriment on the faces of the guests and hosts as they all pour into the foyer of this grand house, which with every passing second seems less real and more like a sham. It’s as if Linda never existed! As one would expect, it is Christian who feels the loss more than anyone else. Christian, who has been alive exactly as long as she has, conceived by their father in their mother’s womb, then cared for so tenderly by their parents despite the demands of success and society. So parallel have their lives been. And yet Christian cannot be bothered to take a flight in from the City of Lights to Copenhagen, arguably the most sumptuous and breathtaking city on earth, for Linda’s funeral a few weeks before the big birthday bash! How then is one to react to Christian when he appears, sullen and devoid of energy, and cannot bring his introverted self to get frisky with one of the many servers, a lovely girl named Pia (Trine Dyrholm) who has always had a thing for (and once briefly with) him, much less hobnob with the big shots? How then is one to react when Christian downs a few cocktails and then announces a toast in honor of his deceased sibling? Everyone seems quite relieved at this development, and impressed that Christian would have the foresight to have written two speeches and allow his beloved father, the patriarch, to choose which envelope to open. Just like, it is mentioned, his father once drew lots.

Christian does in fact address the matter of his late sister, but his focus quickly drifts to the patriarch. After all, who is paying for this shindig? To whom does Christian owe his career as a successful restaurateur? His father, of course! He should be eternally grateful for all the privileges that his father’s name and wealth have showered upon him and consider how many people, even in a civilized place like Northern Europe, never gain access to such opportunities. And what better way to talk about his father than to mention the affection of which Christian and his late sister were the exclusive beneficiaries as children! Once Helen and Michael came along, there were no more baths and frolicking, and you can see how this lack of parental tenderness has affected them. Michael is now a surly and underachieving adulterer who bellows at his unloved wife and children. Helen smokes continuously, leaps from the arms of one foreigner into the arms of another (she even has the audacity to bring her latest exotic conquest, a handsome African-American, to the party), and avoids conflict instead of trying to resolve it. No, Linda and Christian were the lucky ones, and now Linda is gone forever. But Christian will try as hard as he can to make sure people understand why she left. The result is one of the finest films ever made, in any language and at any time, and worth every second of its slow but believable derailment.

Adam's Apples

Whether you like it or not, we are all believers. We believe that the sun will rise every morning; that we can leave our houses safely and return with just as little incident; that the person lying next to us really does love us more than all the other people she has ever lain next to; that most of our decisions throughout a privileged lifetime have been correct. Some of us, of course, believe in more than that, but that remains incontrovertibly a matter of spiritual disposition. What separates a person of faith from those who worship earthly pleasures and, ultimately, money and hedonism, is a taste for what has been called righteousness but which we will address in less comparative terms as redemption. Pain may make the most of us, but at some point in a future we cannot hope to understand much less imagine, our pain will be given a caption and a deed. We will see the wrongness of our ways and know why we erred; yet we will also catch a glimpse of what we did right, what we loved for the sake of loving alone, and what we lost. Our iceberg will calve from this frigid continent and melt in warmer waters to reveal something about ourselves that we seem to have known all along. If this sounds like a load of malarkey, you will feel welcome in Northern Europe, a place of unending beauty and equally relentless skepticism. I would not dare crown the region – encompassing Austria, the Baltics, Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Western Russia – the most civilized on our planet because such declarations smack of chauvinism. Nevertheless, nowhere else can you find such enlightened secularism, commitment to modern ways of living and thinking, and a love for beauty bereft of its religious connotations. There is something very commendable about this lifestyle, yet our admiration is tempered by our curiosity: are such assumptions not the typical vanities of youth? Is it possible that the most advanced part of the world is at the same time the most childish? A rather original take on this conundrum is featured in this strange film.          

The setup will seem familiar: a halfway house run by Ivan (Mads Mikkelsen), a priest who does not believe that man is evil. His current boarders include Khalid (Ali Kazim), a Saudi Robin Hood of sorts and Gunnar (Nicolas Bro), an obese former tennis pro still mourning an out call that cost him his career. But the epicenter of the film and his newest rehabilitation project is Adam (Ulrich Thomsen), a chain-smoking neo-Nazi who lugs around a picture of his Führer and hates everyone and everything. Ivan decides that Adam needs a goal for his eleven weeks there. "Pick anything," he says, thoroughly convinced that there lurks something productive inside of Adam that craves fulfillment. Adam espies an apple tree flooded with blackbirds and suggests a pie from the fruit whose mortal taste brought death into the world and all our woe. Now we have all seen at least a dozen such vehicles: the goody two-shoes priest; the hardened criminal (making him a sympathizer of the most despicable regime in recent memory was a bit too easy); the Easterner who will be the target of this same racist; and the fat, harmless, insecure clown who loves his cat and plans on drinking and eating his way into Valhalla. Throw in Sarah (Paprika Steen), a damsel in distress, and a wise-cracking physician (Ole Thestrup) and the cast for a soppy, feel-good story is complete. Over time, and with knowing looks, Adam will discover man's true goodness in the form of this benevolent priest and his selfless commitment to reforming the wayward. He or Gunnar will fall in love with Sarah, and in the end it will be Khalid hugging him and wishing him a happy rest of his life, now that life has been expanded to include love, caring, and openmindedness. Despite the fact that you or I could write this script in our sleep, such stories do have a certain human humidity (to use the phrasing of this author) that many people still cherish. They will always be made and they will always yield a happy ending and smiles all around.

But here's where our expectations are pleasantly upended. The comic juxtaposition of Ivan and Adam, good versus evil in its most primitive form, is belied by a series of revelations about Ivan's life: his mother died at childbirth; he was sexually abused as a child and raised by his grandmother and sister, the latter of whom turned out to be wildly promiscuous and recently died; his wife committed suicide and his son Christoffer is a paraplegic in a persistent vegetative state. To make matters worse, Ivan has a brain tumor "the size of a volleyball," a fact that, according to his physician, makes him block out the truth. "When one gets too close to the truth," the doctor, a firm man of science, avers, Ivan begins to "bleed from his ear." If this weren't a fairy tale with a plethora of allegorical detail, one might question the medical authenticity of such a prognosis. But since we are dealing with the fantastic in the guise of the ordinary, this piece holds together with everything else we know. Adam has found the weakness of his enemy and exploits it more than once in brutal fashion. Yet he is not the only malevolent soul on church property: both Khalid and Gunnar display many of the traits that got them into trouble in the first place, except we have little empathy for their actions because although savable, they are inherently unhinged (most evident in Khalid's massacre of the blackbirds to protect Adam's fruit). What is even more deranged than the inmates' behavior is Ivan's voiced approval of their initiative and mores. When Adam threatens and swears at Khalid for not wanting to help him pick apples, Ivan tells him that "this is the type of attitude that will get us a pie." Khalid's bird shooting is hailed as a stroke of genius, as are Gunnar's revolting habits and his insistence on plying everyone with drink and food. The death of another inmate called Poul, however, an eighty-six-year-old former Nazi collaborator whom Adam immediately admires, is where Ivan shows his true colors, and those colors are the colors of the Lamb. Adam cannot understand why, despite Ivan's litany of suffering, the priest could forgive someone as admittedly evil as Poul. Adam would never do that, even if forgiveness were something he could begin to grasp. Then there is the matter of that Bible in Adam's room that keeps falling open to the same page regardless of how many times one drops it. And here, perhaps, we get the one predictable twist in a film full of high jinks and hooliganism, but it is the right thing to do and carried out with some creativeness. After all, Ivan, for better and worse, only wants to do the right thing and nothing more.