In A Better World
Susanne Bier
The story: Anton (Mikael Persbrandt) is a Swedish doctor who divides his time between working in a Sudanese refugee camp and living in Denmark. His 12-year-old son Elias (Markus Rygaard) is bullied at school and new boy Christian (William Johnk Nielsen) comes to his rescue. When Anton is later slapped by a stranger at a playground, Christian comes up with a terrible way to exact revenge.
The Best Foreign Language Film award is no more than a sideshow at the Oscars. But the category has often highlighted cinematic gems from around the world, including the devastating police state drama The Lives Of Others (2006) and the bleak humour of war in No Man’s Land (2001).
The Danish film In A Better World (2010), while not exactly in the same league, is still a worthy winner. It is a well-meaning film which asks moral questions about the way we live our lives.
Violence is everywhere in the film, from the barbaric acts perpetrated by a sadistic war lord in Sudan to bullying at school to a small incident at a playground, which quickly escalates to a random stranger slapping Anton around. The original Danish title is, in fact, The Revenge.
Anton, though, turns the other cheek at the playground and later tells his two sons and Christian: “You just can’t go around beating people up. That doesn’t help anything. What kind of world would we get? He’s a jerk. If I hit him, I’m a jerk too.”
The problem is, meekness is seen as weakness, particularly when the children have just learnt a different lesson: Elias stops getting bullied when Christian pulls a knife on the ring leader.
The film could easily have been didactic and preachy but Persbrandt’s Anton is not just a saintly do-gooder. Faced with the dilemma of whether or not to treat the war lord who storms into the medical compound with men and guns, Anton ultimately proves to be fallibly human.
Rygaard turns in a strong performance as the persecuted and easily influenced Elias, while Nielsen delivers the goods as the grieving and angry Christian.
There is plenty to mull over here and if anything, there is perhaps too much plot packed in, what with Anton’s crumbling marriage and Christian’s strained relationship with his father after his mother’s death.
But in the face of vigilante thrillers which barely bat an eyelid over the consequences of vengeance, In A Better World looks at the ugliness of violence squarely in the eye and asks how we should respond to it.
The lesson here is not an easy one to teach. It is an even harder one to learn.
(ST)