In a Better World

 In a Better World

Directed by Susan Bier

Written by Anders Thomas Jensen

With Mikael Persbrandt, Markus Rygaard, Trine Dyrholm, Milliam Johnk

Neilson

When this year’s academy awards ceremony gave the Danish film IN A BETTER WORLD  the Best Foreign Film oscar, most people had never heard of it.  A pity.  But at long last this brilliant, compassionate, totally unique and poignant film about moral issues is being shown here.  Do not miss it.

In an unnamed Danish town two families intersect.  Both are outsiders; one from London and the other from Sweden.   In a Better World follows the tragic and literally explosive

events that befall the two families.  Violence and its aftereffects are the themes explored in this gripping film.

The story begins in an impoverished African refugee camp where the Swedish pacifist doctor Anton(Mikeal Persbrandt) runs a makeshift hospital deaing not only with malaria and parasites, but also the ravages of violence.  A local Warlord, Big Man, and his henchmen capture local pregnant women and bet on their unborn babies’ sexes.  To see who wins, they rip open the woman’s bellies to find out.  Anton, a kind and hardworking doctor, has to deal with the aftermath of this savagery.

 While Anton is away, his estranged wife Marriane(Trine Dyrholm), a doctor herself, and their docile son  Elias(Markus Rygaard) suffer in his absence.  12 year old Elias is relentlessly bullied at school because he is Swedish and has buck teeth and braces.  Elias accepts the sadistic bullying in a passive way.  In his mind, courageous people don’t fight back.

Sullen twelve year old Christian(William Johnk Nielsen) and his businessman father Claus(Ulrich Thomsen) have just moved to grandmother’s house  from London after the death of Christian’s mother.  Christian intercedes when Elias is being bullied and gets beaten up himself.  However he has a short fuse and savagely wreaks revenge on the bully.

Elias carries the same passive convictions as does his humanitarian father. But his new friend and ally Christian thinks that passivity is weak and unmanly.  He manages to get Elias to agree to his way of thinking.  Treat violence with violence.

There is so much more to this intelligent film. All characters are complex people,

and director Bier plumbs these complexities as we get to know each of them.  Issues of guilt, grief, love and hate are all a part of the story.

In A Better World deals with timely moral issues.  Is harsh, often violent, behavior the way to deal with savagery?  Or does it just feed the vicious cycle of brutality?  Both parents and children in In a Better World are involved in explosive crises.  Each has his own methods of reckoning with upheaval.

The acting in the film could not be better.   There is a startling intensity throughout, and all characters work together to make it all raw and believable.  ,

You will leave the theater wondering how to make sense of cruelty.  And there is enough  cruelty to go around in our world.  If a very evil person is in trouble, do you help him out

or do you let him suffer?  Do you punish violence with reprisals?  How can you depend on peaceful reasoning in an unreasonable world?   Clearly Bier is drawing parallels between violence in third world countries and our own ‘civilized’ societies. She ratchets up the tension and you are drawn into the tempest.  Revenge or Forgiveness? You decide.