The 2011 winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film is as bleak as it gets. Susanne Bier’s “In a Better World” is perfectly designed, technically, artistically, and dramatically, to keep you at the edge of your seat. The film tells the story of two Danish families, whose lives become interconnected due to the friendship of their children. Christian—the young William Jøhnk Nielsen in a virtuoso performance—is a troubled preteen who moves to Denmark with his absent father after the death of his mother. Elias is a shy young boy who is constantly picked on at school. His parents are the caring Marianne, and Anton, a Swedish doctor who spends most of the year working in a refugee camp in North Africa.Taking us from the gruesome violence of a Sudanese refugee camp to the vicious nature of first world bullying and class relations, “In a Better World” is a powerful quasi-clinical study of the causes, consequences, and universality of human aggression. However, despite its flawless editing, the second half of the film drags a bit and feels thematically repetitive. The screenplay also fails to truly interlace its various storylines, which work fantastically on their own, but feel disjointed together. Despite its flaws, “In a Better World” is a fine example of the great quality of current Danish cinema.
Recommended (B+)
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