05/04/2011
Review by David Anthony
The Academy Award winning Suzanne Bier film In A Better World (Haevnen) tackles multiple issues. It is a coming of age story and a discourse on the many levels of love.Mikael Persbrandt is Anton, a doctor dedicated to treating some of the world’s most defenceless patients, in an Eastern African refugee camp. The conditions of the camp vividly make the point of what his sacrifice means, giving us the measure of the man.
Trine Dyrholm is Marianne, Anton’s estranged wife back in Denmark. Their 10 year old son, Elias, is relentlessly bullied at school, in large part for being a Swede among Danes. Elias is befriended by Christian, a seemingly fearless youngster willing to act as his protector, but whose vengeful violence and inner anger exacts a terrible price.
The film introduces these scenarios: interethnic xenophobia in Scandinavia, notably antipathy between Swedes and Danes; the effects of loss via parental divorce, death and spousal separation upon offspring; coping with childhood and adolescent anger; the problem of school bullying and lastly, how to make a real difference in the world.
In a Better World’s concerns can be connected to the services provided by parenting. The parents of Elias, Marianne and Anton, and Christian’s his widower father, Claus (Ulrich Thomsen), are tasked with modeling how their children should behave, but the reality is that even as preteens the kids are also working out the kinds of lives they want to live as well and make their own decisions through trial and error, daily.
Unable to monitor all of their movements and associations, parents have to trust that the life lessons they have been teaching have been internalized by the children. Everything that happens in this film is reflected in the children, Elias and Christian. Of the two Elias is far more sympathetic, but we also feel Christian’s seething rage. In his own way he wishes to fight against injustice, but his is the way of Hammurabi.
Christian has no compunction about fighting fire with fire, regardless of its collateral damage. Elias has a conscience but also feels a sense of loyalty to his troubled friend. In time, the magnitude of Christian’s retributive impulses becomes manifest with nearly catastrophic consequences, minimized only by the selfless heroism of Elias.
In the course of the conflict that draws them alternately apart and together, several big ideas hang in the balance. What constitutes genuine courage? How can justice be achieved in what so often seems an unjust world? Should one turn the other cheek in the face of bullying? Are there circumstances when force may be justified?
The answers to these questions are not themselves given, nor perhaps should they be, for it is enough to raise them vividly and concretely, through the characters and situations presented. Director Bier does this, leaving it to us to make our personal judgments. At times emotion caused me to veer in Christian’s direction, recalling a time when bullying was a real issue in my pre-adolescence as a middle school pupil.
The ability to tap into that reservoir of residual anger that all of us carry around and then give us an opportunity to revisit it with a view toward healing the scars we still may bear constitutes only one of the virtues of In a Better World. It is worth a look.
For the KUSP Film Gang this is David Anthony