ON THE SILVER SCREEN: TWO KIDS GROW UP THE HARD WAY IN OSCAR WINNER "IN A BETTER WORLD"

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By Brian Lafferty

 

April 8, 2011 (San Diego) – Up until the last ten to fifteen minutes I was ready to give In a Better World, 2011’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner, a mixed review. At the time I didn’t feel it was a bad movie but it wasn’t a good one, either.

 

But then something happened that transformed it from a mixed review to an unequivocally positive review. Something suddenly clicked. It was close as I could get to the feeling of a light bulb turning on above my head. As I wrote in my notes, “WAIT A SECOND? I just realized something. I think I looked at the movie all wrong.”

 

Directed by Susanne Bier (who helmed the original Brothers, later adapted by Jim Sheridan), In a Better World tells the story of two families in modern day Denmark. Young Christian (William Jøhnk Nielsen) loses his mother to cancer. His father (Mikael Persbrandt), a doctor, often travels to Africa for work. Meanwhile, he befriends ten year-old Elias (Markus Rygaard) who is tormented by bullies and whose parents are separated. The kids together endure the horrors of middle school, grief, familial instability, and mostly absent parents.

 

Throughout the movie I felt something was lacking. I discerned an emptiness in each scene. I saw incidents, plots, and solid characters but I couldn’t find a backdrop to place these events and characters in. There wasn’t a force that brought the characters together. This void, which I perceived for most of the film, undermined each scene.

 

In the end I was wrong. There is a force that brings the characters together. It’s the separation of Elias’ parents and the death of Christian’s mother, as well as his mostly absent father, that unite the boys. I missed the larger picture.

 

I mention this because the film can be easily viewed as unoriginal, barebones, and constantly empty. The stories may seem familiar. However, screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen isn’t concerned so much with plot. Instead, he focuses on the two boys and the cruel world they inhabit.

 

Jensen paints a sad, tragic, and realistic portrait of the boys’ twilight of their childhoods and their loss of innocence. He and director Bier capture with painful detail that period when one stops being a kid and goes on the fast track to adulthood.

 

I remember the twilight of my childhood as a time when the world suddenly seems tougher. I’m not saying my childhood was idyllic; I get leery of people who recall their childhood with great joy and nostalgia. I will say that before starting middle school, it was as if childhood shielded me from the realities of life. During the twilight of my childhood, this shield was lifted and I found myself looking at the world differently.

 

That is precisely the spirit that screenwriter Jensen and director Bier capture. They don’t get sentimental and they don’t overload on the harshness.

 

In a Better World is now playing at the Landmark Hillcrest.

 


A Sony Pictures Classics release. Directed by Susanne Bier. Produced by Sisse Graum Jørgensen. Written by Anders Thomas Jensen. Cinematography by Morten Søberg. Original music by Johan Söderqvist. With Mikael Persbrandt, Trine Dyrholm, Ulrich Thomsen, Markus Rygaard, and William Jøhnk Nielsen. In Danish, Swedish, and English with English subtitles. Rated R.

 


Brian can be reached at Brian@eastcountymagazine.org. You can follow him on Twitter: @BrianLaff.


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