232. Danish/Irish director David Noel Bourke’s third feature film “Bakerman” (2016) (Denmark) based on his original story: An interesting tale of a quiet and introspective Dane facing career threats from his employer who is an immigrant, and unprovoked and unconnected vandalism from other immigrants, sparking off an unusual chain reaction

Bakerman is an award-winning Danish film that has surprisingly not been picked up for screening by international festivals beyond western Europe and the American east coast. Few critics seem to have either seen the film or discussed it. Yet it is better than some of the films that do get screened at film festivals around the globe and get discussed.  It won the Best Foreign Film award at the Maryland International Film Festival and Best Actor award at New York’s Nordic International Film Festival, both in USA.

Director David Noel Bourke’s original script of Bakerman is quite engaging because it captures several feelings any economically fragile Dane would face in recent times.  Bourke presents a variant of the very subjects that the Belgian director brothers Dardenne or even the French director Stéphane Brizé usually work on. Bourke’s script injects a sinister psychological perspective to what the Dardenne brothers or Brizé would perhaps have preferred to skip while moulding their own scripts for their films.

Bakerman’s title character is Jens (Mikkel Vadsholt), an introverted middle-aged baker by profession. It might not be the best of careers in Denmark but Jens loves his work and is concerned about retaining the quality of his baked products. It is doubly interesting when the viewer realizes that he is just an employee and not the owner of the bakery.  Not many workers consider quality of the product they help produce to be important when they are not directly sharing the profits of the establishment or enjoying wide recognition for their inputs. Yet Jens is a quiet man worried about the drop in quality of the bakery’s products and chooses to voice it. The viewer begins to like Jens at this stage.

The introspective baker Jens (Mikkel Vadsholt) at home

In the film, when Jens asks his employer, an immigrant to Denmark who has acquired the bakery, for a salary raise because others in the bakery have been given one, he is rudely turned down with the argument that there are others who could replace him. One feels sorry for the good hard working Jens.

The viewer is slowly drawn closer to Jens, living alone in a house in the suburbs, waking up early before crack of dawn to have fresh baked bread and other baked products for customers in the morning. Compared to his colleague in the bakery, Jens is reticent but an observant gentle giant who referees football games.  However, women friends who drink with him in the pubs do not find him sexually attractive, while his male bakery colleague is successful on that front. The viewer begins to reassess Jens.

Jens alone by the sea, reflecting and planning

A wanton act of theft and another of vandalism by immigrants from a Muslim nation involving Jens’ car parked near Jens’ workplace sparks off a Batman-like transformation in the quiet baker. He travels in his modest “Batmobile” clearing lone immigrant drug peddlers off the streets, without a mask or a cape. On one such lone night vigilante trips, he rescues a Muslim immigrant girl being brutally beaten up on an empty street by her “brother.”  When Jens offers to drop the lady (Mozan) home, she explains in broken English that she has no place to stay. Our Batman takes her to his home and behaves like a gentleman towards her as Batman would.  The director Bourke intentionally makes the viewer more inquisitive about Jens with his contrasting actions: one a ruthless killer and the other a genuine good guy and a gentleman.

Mozan (Siir Tilif)  at the party hosted by Jens' sister

Bourke’s film grows in complexity as Jens is evidently not what he appears to be at the start of the film. The job insecurity and vandalism triggers off a set of a proactive deeds by him to set right "Jens’ world." Some of those actions reveal that quiet, boring people can be meticulous planners who can literally get away with murder.

Jens has a past not unlike that of Batman.  This is revealed by newspaper clippings secretly stored away in closed boxes, which explains his moody behaviour. Jens’ attitude towards religion suggests he is an atheist as he avoids attending his nephew’s confirmation, an important milestone for religious Christians.  These subtexts are important in the context of the film’s ending that clarifies that Jens’ vigilante-like behaviour against immigrants is not based on their religion but on their unprovoked, unacceptable actions.

Jens wearing  a superhero costume for a party
appears a frail human being searching for Mozan

Bourke’s film Bakerman is interesting on several fronts.  The main character Jens is revealed gradually, where the viewer is led to assess him and then reassess him continuously as the film progresses. It is a roller-coaster ride for the patient viewer right up to the end of the film to figure out the Danish Batman/Bakerman.  An example of Bourke’s remarkable ability is being able to compress a murder sequence to one without any scene of the actual murder itself by creative editing of shots.  More interestingly, Bakerman is a film that challenges the viewer’s judgements and luckily the dark, brooding, evil mid-section of the film gradually blends with the positive ending that Bourke provides us. 

Birds in flight, an appropriate metaphor
for the happy Jens at the end

Bakerman is not a perfect film (e.g., how could a woman who cannot speak Danish figure out the headline of a Danish newspaper clipping?) Yet, its strengths are the performance of Mikkel Vadsholt who brings out the complex yet vulnerable character of Jens and the ability of Bourke to reconstruct the script into a shorter film at several stages due to budgetary constraints that an independent filmmaker faces. Both Mikkel Vadsholt and director Bourke are talented individuals and one hopes that they contribute even further to good filmmaking in the future and be more widely accepted. 

P.S. Three films of the Dardenne brothers (Rosetta, The kid with the bike, and Two days, one night) and director Stéphane Brizé’sMeasure of a man were reviewed earlier on this blog. (Please click on the coloured titles of the films within this post-script to access the reviews.)

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219. Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s “The Square” (2017), based on his original story/script: A modern social satire on urban hypocrisy that will unsettle most viewers in different ways

 “The square is a sanctuary of trust and caring. Within it we all share equal rights and obligations” 

---Explanation written for an abstract art installation, a square ground in front of an upscale museum. The square is demarcated with white borders painted on the open cobbled space, on which pedestrians can walk

The year 2017 has thrown up three wonderful, thought-provoking films from three different countries, all receiving nominations for the Best Foreign Language film Oscar in 2018: On Body and Soul from Hungary, Loveless from Russia, and The Square from Sweden.  All three are weird movies, far removed from the style or content of a popular Hollywood blockbuster. Beyond the individual subjects of the three films, all three are tales originally conceived by their respective directors. The directors of such films need to get the status that one often gives to authors of novels, and not be restricted to the more obvious role of the director. Most of the commercial films are based on novels, plays or real events.  These are directors who deserve more respect and admiration from the public who goes to the movies. Few realize the distinction between directors who are truly originally creative and those who merely adapt existing works or build on incidents that have occurred somewhere.

The white glow of the square replaces
the conventional statue of a man on horseback
in front of the art gallery

Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s previous original screenplay and feature film Force Majeure (2014) had looked at a split-second instinctive reaction that jolts the tranquillity of a perfect nuclear family. It presented a situation that could have happened within the best of families. In Östlund’s next film The Square, the director’s carefully conceived original script is built around a white successful male named Christian. Though the film has no religious overtones—the viewers in Scandinavian countries and much of Europe will easily identify Christian as the average European,  financially secure, well-bred, courteous, politically correct and good looking. Now that’s perfect material for Östlund to use make the viewer look inwards within the familiar world of not-so-financially secure immigrants dotting the European demographic landscape. Östlund is a master of the unpredictable and makes very interesting tales/films out of unsettling yet believable situations.

"You have nothing" is the title lit up on the wall to describe
the abstract installation of heaps of gravel which gallery viewers
respectfully view from a distance

In The Square, the main characterChristian is convincingly is played by actor Danish actor Claes Bang who deservedly won the Best European actor award for his performance in this film. He is the chief executive of an upmarket art gallery with very interesting abstract installations.  One of the current installations is room full of small equal heaps of gravel placed at intervals with geometric precision. The amusing title of the abstract installation is “You have nothing.” People look at the installation with incredulous and yet respectful demeanour while gallery security are watchful that the visitors do not tamper with the heaps.  Much later in another sequence, we see the hall with the same installation being cleaned with vacuum cleaners and some of the soil from one of the heaps being inadvertently sucked into the machine. The cleaner adjusts the heap to resemble the original. No words spoken.  It is for the viewer to understand the jibe of Östlund. Östlund watchers could recall the final sequence of Force Majeure where once again no word is spoken but the silence communicates more than words.

The controversial scene from a video clip to promote the gallery
and the controversy relates to the race of the girl

The Square is a film that would strike a chord with Europeans who have accepted immigrants into their society.  These immigrants beg for alms from rich Europeans such as Christian. In a preoccupied moment, he ignores the plea for alms. In a thankful, happy frame of mind the good “Christian” offers a meal to the needy woman in a fast-food restaurant.  But then note the script of Östlund: the immigrant dictates to her benefactor what specific meal she want to have and Christian obliges.

The film is a critique of the well-meaning people of Europe. On a busy street full of pedestrians, Christian comes to the aid of a passerby who screams for help unlike many others who do not. That well-meaning man is robbed.

Aftermath of an unplanned sexual encounter: Anne (Elisabeth Moss)
confronts Christian (Claes Bang)

Not many films have scenes of unplanned sexual encounters where the male uses condoms. Christian uses one and Östlund spins off an unpredictable yet responsible and thought provoking post-coital conversation on who should be disposing it without consequences, when the woman wants to keep/dispose it.

The film has more unusual Östlund situations:  a well-to-do female Caucasian journalist who lives with a grown-up chimpanzee as a pet.  A formal fundraising dinner has an actor who terrorizes the invitees acting as a baboon and even trying to rape a scared woman invitee in public view.  People who often rush to help the needy do not rush to stop the show which has exceeded its limits.  A clever, well-meaning scheme by Christian to get the robber who stole his wallet, cufflinks and mobile phone to return the articles anonymously without the robber identifying himself/herself  or getting into trouble with the law, spins off a new collateral controversy involving an innocent, immigrant kid. A split-second decision not to review a promotional video for his art gallery cascades into controversy that costs Christian his comfortable, high-paid job again because Christian is not averse to  accepting responsibility for a video he did not make but had merely hurriedly approved.

Christian (Claes Bang) explains one of the installations in his gallery
that helps visitors to choose a route to view exhibits.
Evidently more people visiting his gallery tend to trust others.

The Square can make you laugh. Then it will make you squirm. That’s the power of Östlund. Christian in The Square may be the well-meaning Caucasian male in Europe today. It could be you, if you put yourself in Christian’s shoes. On Body and Soul from Hungary, Lovelessfrom Russia, and The Square from Sweden are examples of superb scripts and mature cinema, superior to most films made elsewhere in 2017. Holywood is waking up to this Swedish director and remakes of his films are likely to be made in USA.

P.S. The film The Square won the Golden Palm for the best feature film in competition and the Vulcain Prize for its Production Design at the Cannes Film Festival; and swept the European Film Awards winning the Best European film, best comedy film, best director, best actor, best screenwriter and best production design awards. Ruben Östlund’s previous feature film Force Majeure (2014) has been reviewed earlier on this blog. The 2017 films On Body and Soul from Hungary and Loveless from Russia have been reviewed earlier on this blog. (Click on the name of the film in this post script to access that review.) The Square is one of the top 10 films of 2017 for the author.

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193. Icelandic director Grímur Hákonarson’s film “Hrútar” (Rams) (2015), based on his own original screenplay: Unusual tale of sibling hatred and bonding

Rams is an unusual tale, remarkably told. Rams are male sheep and the entire film is appropriately about two dour male, hairy, unshaven Icelandic brothers.

The two male characters, Gummi and Kiddi, are quite old and not married. They are not gay; they are not womanizers either. They are both passionate sheep farmers, who live on different homesteads, separated by a road and fences. It is indeed a strange tale to surface from a matriarchal country, one of the only two such countries in Europe, the other being Albania.

The tale, created by director Grímur Hákonarson, is centred on the two brothers who have not talked to each other for 40 years but communicate with each other by sending written messages carried by a dutiful sheep dog. As you watch the film unspool, you wonder about what could have led to the grim, silent antipathy of one brother towards another. When the movie ends, you are never the wiser. But what one realizes at that point is that this information really does not matter; the film is actually about bonding and over-rides hatred. It is this that makes the film remarkable.

The hatred of Cain..

...changes under trying circumstances alone.

Viewers learn from bits of information that percolates. as the film progresses, that the deceased parents of the two brothers had made two interesting decisions.  As most rational fathers would have done, the father bequeathed his son Gummi the sheep he owned, because Gummi was obviously the more dependable and better of his two sons in behaviour. 

Now, since Iceland is matriarchal, the mother of the two sons gets Gummi to promise that he would let his undependable, wild and irresponsible younger brother Kiddi to farm sheep as well. 

The reflection is more about sheep
than about broken relationships within the family

When the film begins both brothers are farming the best sheep in the neighbourhood and are proud of their work. When one brother’s ram wins the competition for the best ram, the other brother comes in second. They do know the intricacies of sheep farming and are superior to the other sheep farmers in their vicinity. They don’t have wives or children to bother about—their only world is sheep farming. There is no clue provided within the film of the unknown events 40 years past that led to the break in aural communication between the two brothers.

Hatred among siblings is unusually common around us if we care to be observant.  Often this hatred is expressed through resounding “silence.” Even when they hate each other, there is often a sibling bonding under the surface. When one sibling in the movie is found by another drunk and freezing in the cold, he is scooped up mechanically by a scooping truck operated by the other sibling and dumped in front of a hospital without the sober brother getting off the truck—actions that show both the contradictory feelings of an intense disdain as well as care for the health of the other sibling, in a remarkable sequence where no words are spoken. On another occasion, one sibling fires bullets at the other’s house, smashing window panes. One hears the gunfire and the breaking of the glass but no words!

Iconic shot of two rams--when the film Rams is about two hairy, stubborn men

The strange reality is that such animosity is not uncommon among siblings but ultimately blood is thicker than water.  The words spoken in the film by one of the warring brothers underscore this oxymoronic situation “No sheep. Just the two of us.” The final words spoken in the film “It will be all right” have tended to confuse some viewers but if the movie is viewed attentively there is no ambiguity. Perhaps the ambiguity stems from the fact that the words are spoken by a sibling painted earlier in the film as being wild and undependable. The ending of the film is not the film’s weakness; it is its strength.

The message of the film goes beyond sibling rivalry. Neighbouring countries go on long intense senseless wars for similar unfathomable disputes and yet many inhabitants of these warring nations like those of the other nation on personal terms. The message of Rams is not odd, it’s real. Only the Cain and Abel tale often goes beyond siblings, in a modern, wider perspective.

Nature and landscape of Iceland is a bleak backdop for the grim tale

Grímur Hákonarson’s Rams has very little spoken dialogue, often those are words spoken by tertiary characters whose dialogues flesh out details about the primary duo. The elements of the film Rams that “speak” are the cinematography and the sounds of nature. When icy winds blow in Rams, the viewer shivers. It is little wonder that cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen (who was also responsible for the single-take 2015 German feature film Victoria) won the Camerimage award for this film. (One suspects that certain locations used in Rams were common with the 2015 Icelandic film Rúnar Rúnarsson’s Sparrows.) Director Hákonarson’s choice of music by Atli Örvarsson is another element of the film that raises its quality above the ordinary.

P.S. Rams is one of the author’s best 10 films of 2015. The film won the top award in the 2015 Cannes film festival’s Un Certain Regard section, and major film awards at the Thessaloniki (Greece), Hamptons (USA), Ljubljana (Slovenia), Palic (Serbia), Transilvania (Romania), Valladolid (Spain), and Zurich (Switzerland)  film festivals. It also won the Silver Frog award at the Camerimage festival in Poland for its cinematography.

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177. Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s “Force Majeure” (Turist) (2014), based on his original story/script: Cowardice (and heroism) of an ideal father figure in a modern family

What is force majeure? Force majeure — or vis major — meaning "superior force,” is also known as cas fortuit or casus fortuitus or a "chance occurrence, unavoidable accident.” Director Ruben Östlund’s film uses this legal term Force Majeure as the title of his film, released in some countries under the less meaningful, alternate title Tourist. The term force majeure is used to describe an unusual situation that prevents one or both parties under a contract from fulfilling their obligations. In practice, most force majeure clauses do not excuse a party's non-performance entirely, but only suspends it for the duration of the force majeure. Some understanding of the legal term will enhance a viewer’s appreciation of this remarkable film.

Tomas with his cellphone--an item that matters in the "Lord Jim" moment

Why then is Force Majeure, the film, worthy of being termed as a remarkable one?

First, director Östlund conceived and scripted the film all by himself.  Few directors are able to do this. Ingmar Bergman and Naomi Kawase, are prominent among the select band of directors who often did/do this. American director Damien Chazelle accomplished a similar feat with the Oscar-winning Whiplashin 2014. Most viewers do not differentiate a film adapting another work from another medium from a film that is the director’s own original conceptualization. Most viewers do not differentiate directors standing on the shoulders of very competent and gifted co-scriptwriters from those directors who sculpt original films based on their own imagination and acumen. Östlund is one of the latter breed. He is able to conceive and develop a tale of a small, young Swedish family enjoying a brief costly vacation in the Alps into a complex, compressed  tale of 5 days of conflict, self realization, and ultimate reconciliation, of not one but two sets of families that could have taken years, if not decades, in real time for other families.

Developing the script from the ideal tourist family on holiday
to present a complex tale of 5 days of conflict and resolution

Second, Östlund in Force Majeure deals with cowardice of principled “heroes” of society. The famous novelist Polish novelist Joseph Conrad dealt with the precise subject in his novel Lord Jim, made into a lovely film in 1965 by Richard Brooks with Peter O’Toole in the leading role. O’Toole played a ship’s captain, who in a rare moment of cowardice jumps off his sinking ship into a lifeboat, not caring for the fate of his devout Muslim passengers for whom there were no lifeboats, when by tradition the captain ought to have been the last person to leave his sinking ship. In Force Majeure, Östlund is not discussing seafarers (though the script does include mention of a recent Estonian tragedy with similar trappings) but instead focuses on the bulwark of a good Swedish family—a hardworking, successful 30-something male called Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuehnke), with a devoted wife Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli), and their daughter Vera and son Harry. Director/scriptwriter Östlund creates a convincing ‘Lord Jim’ situation for his devoted family as they enjoy their second day of a 5-day holiday in a plush hotel cum ski resort in the French segment of the Alps mountain range. The US director Brooks adapting Conrad’s tale had a beautiful line in his film: “It only takes a split second to make a coward a hero or to turn a hero into a coward.” There is a huge difference between an American director and a Scandinavian one—the latter is less obsessed with words and more with visuals, sound and silence. The cowardice (and heroism) is more to be perceived than heard in the Swedish film.

Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuehnke) accepting his cowardice

Third, Östlund uses the scenario to make an indirect commentary on male heads of families and their ability to care for the members of the family, in contrast to women like Ebba whose maternal instinct to care for the family at a moment of insecurity comes to the fore. In Force Majeure, the interesting script deals with two male heads of families Tomas and Mats, and a contrasting mother (Charlotte) they meet at the hotel , who like Ebba, is a mother of two but unlike Ebba wants her free time, in which she is not distracted by her responsibilities to her husband or children. (Interestingly the script, as in Kieselowski’s masterpiece Dekalog, where a strange silent individual transects most tales, in Force Majeure too, a silent hotel cleaning staff watches the various developments between the couples with interest).  All three, Tomas, Mats, and Charlotte admit their lapses, big or small, directly and indirectly, at various stages of the film in being a responsible part of their respective family units. Charlotte indirectly admits her guilt by deferring to converse further on the observations of Ebba on the subject.

Even half asleep, the ringing phone is more important for Tomas
(the male bread winner) than all else

Fourth, Östlund uses unusual methods of filmmaking that will upset the purist. Sometimes, in Force Majeure, the speaker’s head is out of the frame; the camera is more interested in the listeners rather than the speaker. In a particular scene, the speaker, Ebba, walks around and sits with her back to the camera, and the viewer gets to see only the listeners. The Swedish director is breaking the cinematic conventions deliberately. Then there are static exterior shots that end each day, or punctuate “acts” in the film as in a play.

Static camera captures a mirror shot of all four members of the family
brushing their teeth

Fifth, Östlund uses the ‘Summer’ segment of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in a manner reminiscent of the curtain falling on a proscenium stage at the end of each act. While one is befuddled by the choice of the Summer segment, the effect is indeed staggering.  Most of the film does not depend on the music of Vivaldi as much as it does on the use of sound of ropeways or of creaking wooden floorboards.  The sound management in the Swedish film is top notch.

Finally, Östlund uses the time-tested Edward Albee technique of the play/film Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by pitting the major husband and wife duos’ problem on another couple to extend the arguments of the film. And like Albee’s play there is certain resolution of the conflicts. Even the strong Ebba towards the end of the film shows the shades of a Don Quixote tilting at windmills, while Charlotte appears more composed and practical in comparison to her. As the film progresses, Tomas has occasion to redeem himself as a hero to his kids soon after admitting his folly to his family.  The best part is arguably the final innocuous conversation between son and father (Harry and Tomas). Harry asks Tomas “Do you smoke, Papa?” on seeing his father smoke for the first time and the father replies “Yes, I do.” Tomas is finally honest and Harry appreciates it. That honest answer puts much of what has preceded in perspective and provides a final example of the director/scriptwriter’s maturity evident in Force Majeure. The very child that earlier asked its parents to leave the hotel room, now looks up at his father with trust.

One parent who never cared about his own kids carry another's kid,
while Harry learns from his father Tomas
about his father's smoking habit for the first time

Force Majeure is not in the same league as certain important and fascinating movies of 2014 such as Leviathan, Still the Water, and Winter Sleep.Force Majeure is nevertheless a remarkable work that will make any astute viewer to sit up and admire the fresh approach to cinematography, the excellent casting, and a thought provoking original script where saving one’s cell phone (the link to your job and office) is perhaps instinctively more important than saving members of your family.

P.S. Force Majeure won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. The films mentioned in the above review Lord Jim, Dekalog, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Leviathan, Still the Water, and WinterSleep have all been reviewed earlier on this blog.

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161. Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s Danish film “Jagten” (The Hunt) (2012): The hunted is always the loser

Denmark has two interesting filmmakers alive and actively making films: Thomas Vinterberg and Lars von Trier. They co-founded the Dogme 95 movement in film-making. This movement vowed to give importance to story, acting and theme and give least importance to special effects and technology. By and large, both gentlemen have tried their best to keep to that manifesto for a decade, while some of their works, especially those of von Trier in the recent past (such as Europa and Melancholia ), have relied heavily on technology. Vinterberg’s The Hunt made nearly two decades after founding the Dogme 95 movement, is an example of film-making that attempts to persevere with the original intent of Dogme 95, namely, relying considerably on story, acting and theme.

Lucas (Mikkelson): "More sinn'd against than sinning"

The story: What is the story of The Hunt? To very naive viewers of the film, it would be pedophilia. Yes, the film is indeed about a male kindergarten teacher Lucas (Mads Mikkelson) accused of inappropriate behavior with one his favorite female students.  Vinterberg’s movie goes beyond the alleged crime and really addresses an issue that over-arches the obvious. That question is: Will the average person who knows Lucas but hates persons who are sexual perverts, especially those who harm innocent children, be considered honorable by us (the viewers) in making knee-jerk judgments and like the characters in the Danish town depicted in the film, brand a good friend to be evil when there is insufficient legal proof of guilt. Vinterberg’s film goes further by asking the viewer that if a person is indeed convinced about a point of view aided by hysteria whipped up by tabloid journalism, how many of us are prepared to change our views even when all evidence reverses our initial opinion? Would or can our initial distrust ever be fully obliterated with time and by cold reason?

Vinterberg and his co-scriptwriter Tobias Lindholm have raised yet another issue to the viewer: can children be truly innocent as most of us assume them to be. And finally, Vinterberg and his co-scriptwriter present the modern male, stripped of the usual stereo-typed bravura masculinity, the gentle male who can be happy doing a traditional woman’s job of being a kindergarten teacher but yet not to be mistaken for a wimp as he is (as the filmmakers tell the viewers early in the film) also the first among his machismo male friends to jump into an icy pond to save a drowning friend. Vinterberg’s The Hunt is thus a thought-provoking movie with a powerful story that saves the real wallop for the epilogue.

The strength of the story would have been considerable for this critic had he not seen a black-and-white British film directed by Peter Glenville called Term of Trial(1962). That film had Lord Laurence Olivier playing a British schoolteacher who refused to participate in the World War and is thus frowned upon by society even though he is good at his work and is happily married to his attractive but difficult-to-please wife (played by Simone Signoret). Like Lucas in The Hunt, undone by unfounded accusations of inappropriate behavior by his female 5-year-old kindergarten student, in Term of Trial a precocious 16 year old female student (played by Sarah Miles)  accuses the British school teacher (played by Olivier) of rape when he had actually honorably declined her sexual offers. In both cases, the films study the mentality of society that has formed an opinion with their own prejudiced reasoning.  The British teacher must have done it, the public surmises, because he refused to enlist in the war and is therefore guilty even before the court pronounces him to be either guilty or innocent. Similarly, the Danish teacher in The Hunt, is likely to be guilty in the eyes of the majority in the Danish town because Lucas’ wife has left him, because Lucas has such a low self esteem that he opts to teach kindergarten children and because Lucas hugs his child accuser in public out of genuine appreciation of Klara's love for his dog. In both films, the separate female under-aged students are believed to have been wronged even though there is no proof such events occurred. In both films, the female students had a crush (of differing natures, because of their ages) on their respective well-meaning honorable teachers.

In The Hunt, the scriptwriters Vinterberg and Lindholm provide sufficient psychological reasons for the child having to make the statement she makes (her heart-shaped gift made by her being rebuffed by her teacher Lucas and the fleeting indecent images she glimpses on her brother’s smart phone). But a protective modern society believes a child cannot lie, when in reality a child can build imaginary and vivid stories that have no truth.

Vinterberg raises a pertinent question about society, which includes church-going Christians celebrating Christmas who have closed minds when it comes to prejudices that extend to refusing to sell groceries to a man who has not yet legally been proven guilty of the offence. Vinterberg is not very different from von Trier. who had raised similar comments of church-going Christians who are easily prejudiced often for frivolous reasons, in his film Breaking the Waves.

Vinterberg’s and Lindholm’s co-written script is impeccable. The society goes beyond those of the elders in The Hunt. The script has a lovely line ”It is always assumed that the children tell the truth.” The script proves that even children, like the adults in the film, believe in what others say. Klara’s schoolmates pick up imaginary details from her story about Lucas and spread lies that we, the viewers, are told are figments of a fertile imagination. The “hunted” cannot escape.

The acting: Director Vinterberg’s next biggest achievement is the lead performance he elicited from Mads Mikkelson playing the role of Lucas, which was credible and low key, with spurts of violent behavior. It was a performance that richly deserved the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012.

Klara (Anna Wedderkopp) -- an amazing performance from a child actor

While Mikkelson’s performance forms the bulwark of The Hunt, Vinterberg gets an equally stunning performance from the 5-year-old Klara, played by Annika Wedderkopp. Klara’s role is no easy one—she convincingly plays a kid with an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) with a fear of stepping on cracks on the road or lines marked for pedestrians without holding on to someone’s hand. Vinterberg’s handling of Annika is as remarkable as Oliver Reed’s direction of the Oscar nominated performance of the 16 year old Jack Wild as the Artful Dodger in Oliver!

Lucas (Mikkelson) confronts his friend Theo (Bo Larsen)
during Christmas service in the church

Then there is Vinterberg’s regular thespian Thomas Bo Larsen playing Klara’s father Theo who has never let Vinterberg down in each of his performances for the director.

The theme: Though Vinterberg does bring in the sequence of hunting wild animals in the film, the real thematic metaphor of the hunt is of the Danish kindergarten teacher being targeted by the townsfolk after a child’s statement, part innocent, part willful. Where Vinterberg and Lindholm succeed is inferring that in any hunt, the hunter is always the winner and the hunted the loser. (The final sequence of The Huntis comparable to the powerful final sequence of Term of Trial, cinematographically and metaphorically, where in both films the tragic honorable teachers even when they clear their name lose out to forces in society.) 

The hunter or the hunted?

What is remarkable is how Vinterberg and Lindholm were able to state this cinematic “killing of the hunted” in The Hunt even when Lucas, the hunted individual, had forgiven his tormentors without any trace of remorse like a true Christian after being poorly treated by his own buddies—one of whom he had saved from drowning instinctively while others looked on in relative comfort. The theme of the hunt is used to probe into the moral fabric of the Danish society which asserts its strong Protestant Christian values—a common thread for both Vinterberg and von Trier.

The Hunt is indeed a remarkable film of 2013 with a superb performance and a thought–provoking script that questions the viewer’s stand on reason and reasonable doubt.

P.S. The Hunt is on the author’s list of his top 10 films of 2013 though the film was originally released in 2012 and won three Cannes awards in 2012. It was nominated unsuccessfully for the best foreign film Oscar in 2013, losing eventually to the The Great Beauty.

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155. Danish film director Lars von Trier’s film in English “Breaking the Waves” (1996): An unusual, stunning, cinematic ode to all lovers, especially spouses

Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves is just amazing cinema.

It is essentially a film about the relationship of a newly married couple Bess (Emily Watson) and Jan (Stellan Skarsgard). It is an unusual film as it never really bothers to explain to the viewer how this couple met or decided to get married. For the director von Trier and his co-scriptwriter Peter Asmussen, those are not details of importance. For the director and his co-scriptwriter the film is all about the post-marriage events—not what led to the marriage. Even Bess’ sister-in-law Dodo (Katrin Cartlidge) who, we learn as the film unfolds, is the closest person to Bess and lives in the same house, states early in the film following the marriage that she does not know Jan well and that she hopes Jan would take good care of Bess. The viewer soon realizes that Bess is still a virgin right up to her marriage and that Jan too is totally devoted to his bride although they obviously never had sex before marriage, unusual details considering that they are so devoted to each other in a contemporary Occidental scenario. Those are some of the few quaint but important elements of the past about the duo that the scriptwriters reveal.

The marriage

The marriage takes up “Chapter One: Marriage of Bess”, which begins with an intriguing still life shot that soon deceptively comes alive with a helicopter appearing in the sky. On the soundtrack, you hear Mott the Hoople belting out his 1973 rock song All the way from Memphis, which is about losing his guitar (in real life) while travelling to Memphis. Soon the song stops halfway. Much later in the chapter you see Bess impatiently waiting in her wedding gown to greet Jan, who has just arrived from his workplace on the helicopter. The way von Trier uses this chosen piece of music as an intermezzo for his narrative is different and interesting. The director expects the viewer to rewind the film in his mind to pick up the connections. It’s not just rock songs that von Trier employs for his chapter breaks’ soundtracks. For “Chapter Five: Doubt”, the director employs the lovely folk song Suzanne written and sung by Leonard Cohen in 1966 with the words

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she is half crazy
But that’s why you want to be there.

Long after the song fades away halfway, the movie presents the “half crazy” Bess trying to seduce Jan’s doctor in his apartment. Again the director expects the viewer to recall the phrases from the song heard a few minutes earlier in screen time to pick up the connections between the almost still life “chapter break” visual, the intermezzo song, and what follows as the narrative of the story within the chapter.

Post-marriage love

Breaking the Waves presents an unusual way to present a tale on screen.

First, while it is structured like a book complete with a prolog, chapters and an epilog, it extends the literary structure to references in contemporary rock and folk music, with lyrics that match the tale that follows within each chapter. Thus, when the chapter is over on the screen, the chapter title and the song add a second level of enjoyment /entertainment in an overt way. One could argue that all intelligent directors do the same when they deliberately choose a song or piece of music in a movie. However, unlike most other filmmakers, for von Trier the musical introduction is used as a precursor to what is to follow—unlike most other directors who would use the music synchronously with the visual tale. If one studies the structure of the film closely, the prolog of the film before Chapter One begins has Bess responding to the question of the elders of the church posed to her as to what Jan and his friends who are outsiders to the Scottish community have “brought of real value” with a simple answer: “Their music.” Those words do not make much sense to the viewer nor to the church with a bell tower and no bells in it make sense until the epilog of the film when the viewer hears glorious sound of the church bells ringing. The screenplay is well crafted. Somewhere in between the prolog and the epilog you see Jan and his colleagues are avid listeners of music on the oil rig. Somewhere in between Bess expresses her sorrow to see Jan depart for work by hitting an overhead crane with a metallic rod, and Jan responds by doing the same action and the sound communicates his love for his wife as no words could. That’s great cinema. You realize the importance of sound and music for the filmmaker in developing the film’s narrative.

Chapter break--rainbow and the church steeple

Second, the film is built around one word: “good.” An alert viewer will be surprised at how often that word is spoken in the film. And sometimes, the “good” aspects are highlighted by deliberately presenting the “bad” and calling it as such verbally. In the intermezzo of “Chapter Seven: Bess' Sacrifice” Pink Floyd sings

If you have been bad
Lord , I bet you have
and you have not been good..

The mesmerizing performance of Emily Watson includes the unforgettable “conversation” with God in a darkened church, with Watson employing her dramatic skills of creating the conversation by voice modulation and by underscoring the words “Now Bess, be a be a good girl.” The film develops a fascinating and sometimes thought provoking tale of what is good. It is an essay on being a good wife and conversely a good husband who is empathetic towards his spouse without thinking deeply of the consequences of his demands. In the epilog, the doctor who has been treating and guiding her post-marriage states at Bess’ inquest that her death was caused by being “good” rather than being psychotic or neurotic. While there are sufficient instances in the film to prove Bess is mentally unstable, the film goes beyond the medical condition to explore what is morally and spiritually considered good and, conversely, considered bad. Even Bess has an opinion of “good” in social terms when she says “I have always been stupid but I am good at this”

Post-accident love 

Third, the film is quintessentially a film about love in all its myriad forms. There is carnal love. There is exceptional devotional love for God. There is sacrificial love for one’s beloved, in this case the spouse. There is platonic love expressed by Bess’ sister-in-law for her. The key words of Bess in the film as spoken to her doctor are “Jan and me have a spiritual contact. I choose for myself. To give Jan his dreams.. I don’t make love with them; I make love with Jan. And I save him from dying.” Jan himself acknowledges “Love is a mighty power.”

Love for God: conversing with God  in a darkened church

Finally, the film is a debate on religion. The pious does seem to act in a way that results in a miracle after medical opinion is initially quite unsure of a positive outcome. It is a film about questioning the Church’s (is it Calvinist?) treatment of the dead who have obviously sinned while alive. Bess enters the packed Church midway into the film dressed as a prostitute and on hearing a part of the sermon shouts “How can you love a word? You cannot love words. You cannot be in love with words. You can love another human being. That’s perfection.” These are words that need to be put in context with the words of the priest at Bess’ wedding commending her love for God expressed by her selfless actions in keeping the same church clean over a long period. The script obviously parallels actions of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and to some extent, Joan of Arc. The movie thus questions aspects of religion as much as it affirms it. To be more precise it is Lars von Trier’s personal look at what constitutes “good” in religion and in marriage.

The modern Mary Magdalene

And when Lars von Trier deals with “good” subjects he is more than a good filmmaker. The bells toll.

Any analysis of Breaking the Waves will be incomplete without praise for Emily Watson’s performance. Though this was the first regular movie role for her, it is sad that she was nominated for an Oscar and that she did not eventually win it. This is a spectacular film performance from a good stage actress (most of them give great turns in cinema by a rule of thumb). Perhaps von Trier should be congratulated on his casting skills and directorial skills in eliciting flawless performances from the entire cast. Lars von Trier can put some viewers off in some of his films but this one is a winner all the way. It could, despite its nudity and adult theme, even serve as a text for students of theology to mull over while discussing love, marriage and being “good” in the sight of God as much as a medical case of analyzing neurosis/psychosis.

The film won the Cannes film festival’s Grand Prize of the Jury in 1996 and the European film awards for best film and best actress, awards that stand out among some 43 awards won by the film worldwide.

P.S. The movie is one of the author’s top 100 films.

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112. Danish director Susanne Bier’s “Hævnen” (In a Better World) (2010): The importance of parents revisited in the contemporary world scenario

“Surprisingly endearing and thought-provoking” is what I consider Susanne Bier’s Hævnen (In a Better World) to be. To appreciate this Bier offering adequately, it might be useful to note that the lady belongs to “Dogme 95” group—a group of prominent Danish filmmakers who vowed in 1995 to make films utilizing traditional values of story, acting, and theme, excluding special effects or technology. Some prominent members of this group include directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg.


Some directors leave you cold when you see a particular movie they made. The first film of Ms Bier that I had seen—an earlier work called After the Wedding--left me rather unimpressed. The film had dealt with orphans in India and a father-daughter relationship in Europe that was at best interesting but not convincing enough to make me sit up and take note of either the lady behind the camera or of the scriptwriter. It remains for me a convoluted, predictable and unconvincing movie.

Now, why do I describe In a Better World to be a “surprisingly, endearing film?”  I do not consider Susanne Bier’s preceding work After the Wedding to be either significant or to be a work of a promising director. Therefore, it was a pleasant surprise for me that in the very next film In a Better World, Ms. Bier has so much more to offer for the viewer in every department of filmmaking that you begin to wonder if it is indeed the very same team of Bier and scriptwriter Anders Thomas Jensen behind the film you are watching. I am not surprised the film In a Better World won the Golden Globe for the best Foreign Film and the best director Silver Peacock at the Indian International Film Festival in Goa. This film deserved those honours, even if the film is simplistic enough to fall in line with the Dogme 95 values.

It is amusing to note that the Bier-Jensen team actually has reworked on the very same theme offered in After the Wedding only to remodel it afresh in In a Better World. Both films offer thought provoking comparisons of parallel relationships on two continents (this time Europe vs Africa, replacing Europe vs Asia/India in the earlier film). Instead of dealing with the father-daughter interactions of the earlier film, the Bier-Jensen team devolves the interactions to two sets of fragile father-son relationships. The other less-important parent in both films hover in the background and are never fleshed out by Jensen. You would expect the cocktail not to work when it is shaken as it was in the earlier film, but it somehow works wonders when the cocktail is stirred, rather than shaken, by the duo in the second film. While the main parent-child relationship is discussed threadbare in the European context in both the films, the viewer is also provided a connected inter-continental relationship of love and philanthropic social work involving one of the European parents in the first equation.

I have been trying to figure out for over a month why I liked Bier’s In a Better World so much when I was left nonplussed by After the Wedding. One possible reason is that I could easily identify myself with the incredibly real characters of the two 10-year old or so schoolboys and the peer pressure to agree to do certain morally wrong actions because you value more the friendships that you develop in school than ethics that you have adopted during your upbringing. Another possible reason I liked the film was the Gandhian parent who taught his children to develop moral strength rather than give in to bullies. A third reason was the underscoring of the effect of the absence of a mother on a growing child. A fourth possible reason I loved the film was the suggestion that seeds of terrorism can be easily be sown in the minds of youngsters when parents are separating or divorcing. A fifth likely reason was the awesome screen presence of the actor Mikael Presbrandt as the Gandhian father and a surgeon, who spends time in Africa providing medical care for victims of civil strife in an unspecified country, putting his Hippocratic oath above all other values and his conscience—at least for some time.

In a Better World lifts up a simple tale of two schoolboys, essentially having good moral values, who are both missing their respective mothers, deteriorate into modern terrorists or young vigilantes. The power of the film does not lie in the story line—it is undeniably a simple, predictable one. The power of the film lies in default by what the film suggests to the viewer by presenting the simple tale. Do “caring” parents really care for their children? Are the parents there during critical moments when they are needed the most?

One of the reasons for In a Better World to work magic was the Bier/Jensen effort to concentrate a lot more on the thoughts and actions of the growing-up children more than the adults in the film. There are so many sequences in the film that remind one of the 2003 Russian masterpiece Andrei Zvyagintsev’s The Return (dangers of heights, troubled youngsters who find solace in retreating to dangerous and isolated places, the father-son relationship). In the earlier Bier/Jensen film, the focus was on the adults and the lack of a complete childhood. However, the adult characters in In a Better World are equally developed even though the African segment is unbelievably predictable and clichéd, even though similar African warlords have dotted the African map in recent decades.

The Bier/Jensen treatise on relationships works this time around because it connects relationships with seeds that sow terrorism. The treatise worked even more because it seemed to promote Gandhian values. It works because it underscores the importance of parenting over philanthropic social work. The movie seems to scream “Look after the emotional needs of your family before you go out to help others in distant lands.” When a child needs his father most of all to talk, the father is too involved and tired by his well-meaning actions in a physically distant world. These are real scenarios today, and that is the key to the success of this film. All the elements of the film are real and that is what makes the film connect with the viewer. Perhaps Jensen ought to be complimented for his wonderful screenplay. The film has an optimistic ending though the English title suggests an element of doubt and presents a pessimistic nuance. The film does leave the audience yearning for a "better world" for all youngsters growing up today in this complex but interconnected global village.

Susanne Bier, as the director, needs to be complimented for the superb convincing performances she has elicited first from Mikael Persbrandt, as the surgeon and father of the one of the boys, and then the two boys Elias (Markus Rygaard) and Christian (William Nielsen) that recall similar performances of young actors in certain films of François Truffaut and Louis Malle. Bier needs to be eqully complimented for her choice of locations that add to the veracity of the tale.



For viewers who value cinema that concentrate on “story, acting and theme” as the Dogme 95 group projects, In a Better World is a great film to watch and enjoy. The film having won the Golden Globe is now in the Oscar race, once again competing against the remarkable Mexican/Spanish film Biutiful. (And do the two films have a common link? Yes, both deal with parenting! And both have mesmerizing performances by the respective lead actors.) If the viewer goes solely by traditional filmmaking that the Dogme group propounds, then the Bier film would pip the Mexican/Spanish film to win the foreign film Oscar. However, if you step out of the Dogme world, Biutiful deserves the Oscar.

In a Better World, apart from the accolades mentioned above, also won the Grand jury award at the Rome International Film Festival, the Thessaloniki film festival's audience award, Best male actor for Mikael Presbrandt at the Tallinn Tarta Black Nights festival, Best Director and Best Screenplay at the Sevilla Film festival.



P.S. The Mexican/Spanish film Biutiful and the Russian film The Return have been reviewed on this blog earlier.

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