In A Better World [HD]

Crafted with Intelligence and Sensitivity
Can revenge ever be justified or does violence simply lead to an ever-widening cycle of more violence? Should we use reason to confront an opponent or does turning the other cheek only make the problem worse? There are no easy answers in Suzanne Bier's In a Better World, winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film at the 2011 Oscars. It is a thought-provoking film about several subjects: bullying and how best to respond, parents who are too involved with their own problems to reach out to their children, and how the seeds of anger need to be addressed before they are acted out.

Written by Anders Thomas Jensen, In a Better World, whose Danish title is translated as "Revenge", begins on a dusty landscape in an unnamed African country as young children run after the car of Anton (Mikael Persbrandt), a volunteer doctor at a refugee camp. Violence rears its ugly head almost immediately as we see a young pregnant woman wheeled into the camp, the victim of mutilation by a tribal...

the most powerful film I've seen in years (I say this after every Bier film)
I saw "In a Better World" --- this year's winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film --- in a theater with a dozen people.

This was in cosmopolitan New York.

The evening show on a weekday night.

Depressing.

Even more depressing when you consider that the director --- Susanne Bier --- is also the director of After the Wedding, an exceptional movie that was nominated for Best Foreign Film in 2007. (It lost to the German entry, "The Lives of Others.")

I don't rank film directors by the awards they get --- when I say that Ms. Bier is one of the greatest filmmakers on the planet, it's because that's what I really think. My reasons? Her movies are strong melodramas. Her actors are not beautiful in the way movie stars are beautiful --- no Botox, no surgery. The dialogue in her movies doesn't show off a screenwriter's cleverness. She doesn't telegraph the emotions she wants you to feel...

Sincerity and earnestness produce a very good film...
There is no denying the message brought out in `In a Better World'. Susanne Bier (god, I love her) has a way of working with situations and actors to create such visceral chemistry. I've seen all of her works, and while `In a Better World' is far from her strongest (just watch `After the Wedding' and tell me it isn't one of the single greatest cinematic achievements of the past decade...I dare you) it still carries her trademark aura.

`In a Better World' explores a different theme for Bier. Here she tackles violence, its root and the steady escalation of untreated anger. It is within this theme, and the overall construction of its elements, that the film falters for me. While I find it more compelling than the lauded `A History of Violence', it doesn't quite capture the unsettling realities of violence that any one of Michael Haneke's masterpieces has done (especially `Cache'). Instead, `In a Better World' is a little too calculated for its own good. I actually loved...

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