Stars: Mikael Persbrandt, Trine Dyrholm, Ulrich Thomsen, William Johnk Juels Nielsen, Markus Rygaard, Kim Bodnia
Director: Susanne Bier
Oscar History: 1 nod/1 win (Best Foreign Language Film*-Denmark)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars
Most films focus on the moments in our lives that Hallmark creates a card for-birth, love, marriage, illness, friendship, aging, holidays, death-the landmark moments that everyone acknowledges carries some inherent weight. In a Better World is certainly filled with moments that define us as a person, but with the exception of its first ten minutes, it's not on the moments that the world acknowledges as being worth noting. Instead, it focuses on the moments that truly define us-the quiet, desperate decisions we make, the risks we take and whether they pay off or not, and the way we cling to whatever seems strongest when we are at our most weak.(Spoilers throughout) The film takes place in two different countries, both in Denmark and in Sudan. The Sudanese storyline is following one man, a doctor named Anton (Persbrandt), who is treating the victims of a warlord, and finds himself constantly at a distance from his estranged wife in Denmark (he had an affair with another woman), played by Dyrholm, and his two sons, the eldest of which is named Elias (Rygaard) and is bullied at school for his awkward appearance.
Elias's bullying catches the eye of a newcomer to his school, Christian (Nielsen), whose mother has recently passed away from cancer, and whose father (Thomsen) doesn't know how to deal with his son, who seems to blame his father for his mother's death and is constantly pushing him away. Instead of reaching out emotionally, the father finds the distance better suits their relationship, and though he makes half-hearted (or perhaps fully-hearted attempts, I'm not sure, but in this case I'm going to pass a little judgment and state that he should have tried harder) attempts to connect with his son, he is far more likely to just let it be and hope that time will heal all wounds.
Elias and Christian at first seem like a solid fit, and Elias's parents in particular are glad that their son finally has a friend, but things turn ugly when the boys confront a fellow student who had been bullying both of them, and Christian beats him with a bike pump and pulls a knife on him. It's an interesting dilemma for anyone who is watching, as you see the savage intent that Christian is throwing at this other boy, and as an American viewer, you instantly think "Damien!" and assume that the boy is named ironically, and we will be in for some sort of psychotic killer. Bier, on the other hand, doesn't let us off so easily, as while it is clear that Christian is disturbed, and handling his grief very poorly, Bier doesn't let you simply cast your blame on the boy, or the parents, or society, with a great ease.
Instead, she shows how being oblivious can affect us far more than anything we say or do or act upon, and in this way, she focuses on the quiet decisions we make. When Anton is slapped by another man and brushes it off, the boys, and Christian in particular, takes it as an enormous slight, and start plotting a revenge on the man, planning on blowing up his van as retribution. Christian finds bomb blueprints on the internet, and when Elias rejects the idea, Christian abandons him, and Elias decides that his life without friends was worse than the trouble that he is about to encounter. This observation, that Elias would stay in a situation that he doesn't want to be a part of and with someone that he increasingly is ill-at-ease with, just to avoid going back to having no friends, says more about "bully culture" and human nature than perhaps anything I've seen in the many "anti-bullying" campaigns I've seen in the past year.
The bombing, of course, doesn't go off as planned, and Elias is nearly killed in the bombing, which causes his mother, in a ballistic rage, to tell Christian that Elias is dead, which causes Christian to attempt suicide, only to be saved by Anton, who is the only one who knows where Christian's favorite place is aside from Elias. As you can tell from that run-on sentence, it's a fast-paced final third, and in my opinion seems a bit too conventional for the difficult story that Bier was telling in the first 90 minutes of the film. The boys receive little to no punishment, and in a plot resolution that I find hard to believe, Christian pulls a complete 180 and forgives his father, and seems to have changed his ways completely.
As you may be able to tell, I loved the first part and disliked the conclusion of this movie, and here's why: the film so readily is willing to ask difficult questions like "how well do you know your children," "what really makes us angry," and "who is truly responsible when a child fails." But it doesn't feel it necessarily to hypothesize answers. The film also has some compelling, if completely ancillary and unnecessary sequences in the Sudan. The goal of these scenes is probably to mirror something that all of us as adults become angry over (a man who savagely murders young women) as compared to the slight that the boys seem to feel has halted their world (the slapping of their father). However, this point is a bit too subtle to notice until after the film, and that's likely only if you're writing a 1000-word review of the movie.
So, in the end, I found this film a mixed bag. The questions and the first three-quarters were so good (and the actors, particularly Dyrholm, are all top notch), that it almost makes up for the easy and cheap resolution in the final thirty minutes. Almost.
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