She has no real interest in that milieu or the desperate people who populate it. Africa is merely an exotic prop to serve Bier’s theme. The parallel-between the violence that lies underneath the harmonious, comfortable surface in Denmark and an African world where fear, poverty, and carnage is the norm-is all too schematic. The small-scale bullying and violence in Denmark are mirrored in Anton’s dealings with a monstrous, one-eyed warlord in Africa who slices open pregnant young women for no reason other than a bet on the sex of the unborn. However, he’s a risky boy to emulate Christian courts danger by repeatedly climbing a silo tower accompanied by Elias-angrily staring down at the people walking below. Christian carries a knife and becomes Elias’ protector and role model. ![]() The film’s central relationships are not the superficially rendered ones between Anton and Marianne and Christian and Claus (none of the adults are given much dimension), but the one that develops between a dependent Elias and a frightening, raging Christian. Christian is anguished over the death and seething with hostility-much of it aimed at his emotionally ineffectual father, who Christian feels wanted his mother to die. The other family consists of Claus (Ulrich Thomsen) and Christian (William Jøhnk Nielsen)-a father and son who have recently moved back to Denmark from London after Christian’s mother died of cancer. Anton and Marianne are alienated from one another their sweet, braces-wearing son Elias (Markus Rygaard) is called “rat-face” and mercilessly bullied at school. The link between the two worlds is Anton (Mikael Persbrandt), a low-key, humane, and pacifistic doctor who does volunteer work in the African refugee camp we see at the beginning of the film, and returns for intervals to Denmark to his striking-looking wife Marianne (Trine Dyrholm), a doctor at a town hospital. The scenes in Africa are interspersed with the film’s dominant narrative about two troubled families in Denmark. In a Better World begins with scenes in an impoverished refugee camp in an unnamed African state, and then cuts to a serene town-of big skies, blue lakes, and affluent homes-in Denmark. ![]() Susanne Bier, the Danish director of the 2010 Foreign Language winner In a Better World, is clearly no Bergman or Truffaut, but her well-crafted, commercial films, like After the Wedding (2006), have garnered positive reviews. Leonard Quart: In a Better World Leonard Quart ▪ April 8, 2011įILMS THAT win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film range from deserving works by masters like Fellini ( Amarcord), Truffaut ( Day for Night), and Bergman ( Fanny and Alexander) to unknown, critically unheralded works like 2009 Oscar winner Departures, by Japanese director Yōjirō Takita.
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