Susanne Bier’s Oscar-Winning ‘In a Better World’

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Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Susanne Bier’s “In a Better World” was a surprising winner at the Academy Awards when Best Foreign Language Film was announced, leading many to wonder what could have beaten the critically-acclaimed “Dogtooth” or “Biutiful,” which clearly had a lot of love considering its Best Actor nomination. “In a Better World” must have been pretty great, right? Yes and no. It’s a better film than a few of the Academy’s recent decisions (“Departures” comes to mind), but also nowhere near as complete a film as a number of alternate choices. This category is still a mess, as proven by the win for this interesting but ultimately a bit too shallow examination of revenge and parenthood.

Don’t get me wrong. “In a Better World” is a good film. Bier is a talented director, as proven by the excellent “Brothers” (which was remade with Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal) and even the underrated “Things We Lost in the Fire.” She has a particular gift with actors, drawing complex, emotional performances from her cast. She does so again here with excellent work from the great Mikael Persbrandt (“Everlasting Moments”), Ulrich Thomsen (“Brothers”), and Trine Dyrholm (“Troubled Water”) along with child actors Markus Rygaard and William Johnk Nielsen.

In a Better World
Photo credit: Sony Pictures Classics

But it’s not a great film. The script by Bier and regular collaborator Anders Thomas Jensen is a bit muddled as it tries to draw lines from Africa to London to Sweden to Denmark and gets a bit lost along the way. I’ve been fascinated by different responses to “In a Better World.” A noted critic went as far as to call it repugnant while another thinks it’s the best commentary on revenge since “Munich.” Neither is true. It’s a quality film that somehow still feels more unfocused than it needed to be. I admire it almost purely for its performances and wish the story had the power to match what the actors are bringing to it.

Said story focuses primarily on two children – the headstrong and possibly sociopathic Christian (Nielsen) and the awkward and shy Elias (Rygaard). Christian just lost his mother and he has moved to a small town in Denmark from London with his distant father Claus (Thomsen) after her death. At school, Christian becomes partnered with the bullied Elias, a young man who has clearly taken abuse for some time. Elias’ family life has crumbled as his father Anton (Persbrandt) and mother Marianne (Dyrholm) seem on the verge of a divorce and are living apart. Anton spends weeks in Africa serving as a doctor at a Sudanese refugee camp where he sees the kind of true horror most of us cannot even imagine.

In a Better World
Photo credit: Sony Pictures Classics

After a bullying incident angers the increasingly-hostile Christian, he commits a vicious assault and becomes partners in lying with Elias when the cops and school professionals start asking questions. Not long after, Christian and Elias are witness to another assault involving Anton and the desire for revenge boils up again. Meanwhile, the parents of the two children seem virtually absent. Claus has no idea how to talk to his son and feels that he blames him for his mother’s death while Anton is on another continent. One could easily read “In a Better World” as a commentary on the importance of active parenting. If Claus and Anton were there for their boys more consistently, the drama of the final act would never take place.

Bier works wonders with her young actors, drawing believable, genuine performances from her two young male stars along with great ones from their parents, especially Persbrandt and Dyrholm. But her script wanders, meanders, and eventually finds its way to somewhere kind of predictable and a bit too neatly wrapped up for a story as complex as this one. What exactly is she trying to say with the final act? Should we engage in the natural human instinct for revenge against someone as purely evil as Anton meets in Africa? Should we fight back against bullies given the fact that Christian and Elias’ first action actually seems to create peace at school? Do we just need to hug our sons more often? There is a very fine line between presenting a gray area thematically from which to spurn viewer conversation and unfocused writing.

Ultimately, even if I think the film is flawed, it’s intriguing enough thematically and features enough strong acting that viewers should take a look. It fits somewhere in the middle of the history of Oscar winners in this deeply-flawed category, somewhere well above “Departures” and somewhere well below “All About My Mother.” It’s pretty good as long as you don’t go into expecting its Oscar win to indicate perfection.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com