Susanne Bier: After the Wedding (2006)

[Chris Knipp]

Susanne Bier: After the Wedding (2006)

In Bombay and Copenhagen, the feel of an ancient tale

Review by Chris Knipp

The Danish director Susanne Bier's After the Wedding (Efter brylluppet) is a gloriously operatic overflow of emotional events and life challenges -- things like adultery, death, and moral choice are in our face all the time. She plunges us into the action vividly by starting with scenes in the streets of Bombay where a European man and Indian children are distributing food to the poor from a truck. Later we're in an orphanage, and the man is hugging a sweet little boy named Pramod (Neeral Mulchandani) and teaching a class of more boys. Casino Royale villain Mads Mikkelsen, Denmark's most visible film star, is the European do-gooder here, and he's the "eye" (though not weeping blood this time) through which we see most of this action.

It seemed in her previous film (Brothers) Bier was sometimes trying to talk about things she knew too little about (guerrilla fighting; post-traumatic stress syndrome). Though the emotions and the lifestyles are on a grand scale in After the Wedding and the opening scenes are exotic, there's no problem of inauthenticity this time.

Jacob -- that's the man's name -- is told by the Indian secretary of the orphanage, Mrs. Shaw (Meenal Patel) that he must go to Copenhagen. A rich man there has offered to donate essential funds, but won't do it unless Jacob comes in person. He doesn't want to go. Jacob is a reluctant, recalcitrant man. Later we learn he has led a profligate life. With his big cheekbones and exhausted eyes, Mikkelsen, no villain here, has the haggard look of someone who's burned away all his sins; there's not much left of him, but what's left is good, and pretty strong. He's become an admirable person, but he's not good at raising money for his causes.

The rich man turns out to be Jørgen (the wonderful Rolf Lassgård), a big suave bear of a man who puts Jacob in a splendid hotel suite overlooking the heart of the capital, and, paying little attention to a video about the orphanage, invites Jacob to his daughter's wedding the next day. A mansion and a park and an alley of flagpoles appear and in the crowd and the festivity it emerges that Jacob has an unexpected connection to the family Jørgen apparently didn't know about.

We accept this extraordinary coincidence and the immediate violence of the emotional events that follow because this is like an ancient tale, like Sir Gawain, this coming to a wedding and discovering the reformed prodigal saint knows the wife and has a link with the bride too. It all happens too fast not to be real. It has the old curse of nature and causality upon it.

There are further revelations that pose a moral dilemma for Jacob. Jørgen wants first of all to give him much more money that will allow him to do much more good in India -- to care, he says, for more little boys than there are in the whole of Denmark -- but this requires Jacob to remain in Copenhagen, and his joys are Pramod, the little boy he's raised from a baby in Bombay, teaching in the small orphanage and giving out food to poor children.

But that's not the only complication for Jacob. And Jørgen's family has one crisis after another now. Jørgen and his wife Helene (Sidse Babett Knudsen) have two little blond boys, twins, lively and happy. But a dark cloud hovers over the rich man's blessed life. Their older child, Anna (Stine Fischer Christensen), is the bride, and she's a fiery young person. All four of these actors are magnificent. The grandeur of the setting -- in the next life I want to live in a house like Jørgen's, which is huge and impressive and cozy all at once and surrounded by a great park with deer and grass; I'll take the blond twins too -- and the excess of the emotions, are both balanced, almost chastened, by much use of hand-held camera, a little like the old Dogme style, shaky and with intense and shifting close-ups that make things seem unplanned and chaotic. The jumpy images are only a little annoying. It's impossible to be distracted. This is a real movie-movie: from the first scene its images and scenes draw you in, carry you away, and catch you up short. Bier surprises and engages and moves: there's never a dull moment. Everything about this film is bold, and it all works. Perhaps things happen too fast, but by telescoping events the filmmaker has managed to be both epic and intimate, as the old epics themselves often are, and the result is a splendid film that deserves to be seen and remembered.

[oscar jubis]

We both like this one. Here's my review, originally posted in the MIFF thread.

AFTER THE WEDDING (Denmark)

Jacob (Mads Mikkelsen) has been living modestly in Bombay for many years. He runs an orphanage in desperate need of funding. A potential benefactor named Jorgen (Rolf Lassgard) turns up in his native Copenhagen. Jacob hates to leave the kids and travel to the materialist first-world he disdains, but it must be done. Upon arrival, Jacob is picked up by Jorgen's future son-in-law and brought to a luxurious hotel. The next day he pitches the project to Jorgen, a confident and casually arrogant man who claims he is considering several options. Jorgen insists Jacob attend his daughter Anna's wedding the next day. Arriving late at the church, Jacob locks eyes with Helena (Sidse Babett Knudsen), Jacob's wife, and it's clear they share a past history. At the reception, Jorgen's toast casually reveals he is not Anna's biological father, which surprises no one but Jacob. Jorgen gradually emerges as a master of manipulation, a man with a grand scheme based on weighty reasons revealed methodically over the gripping two-hour duration.

With After the Wedding, director Sussane Bier continues to build her reputation as one of the pillars of modern Danish cinema. She specializes in films in which complex individuals face tragic situations within the context of family life. If you watched her previous two films (Open Hearts, Brothers), you know she's attracted to desperate characters experiencing strong emotions. At key moments, Bier gazes at their facial features with hand-held cameras as if conducting research through a microscope. There are some brief, abstract nature shots that serve as mere punctuation between scenes. Bier takes credit for the premise or story of her films, but the scripts are written in collaboration with Anders Thomas Jensen. They manage to take material that could easily generate a soap opera or black comedy and produce something fresh, deeply affecting, even insightful at times. Good writing is paramount, but a film like After the Wedding depends greatly on the actors. They are invariably superb. Mikkelsen, who played the compassionate doctor in Bier's Open Hearts, is an actor of great range_he played the villain in the recent Casino Royale. Lassgard, who looks like Lars von Trier's older brother, plays the most demanding role, the powerful and pitiful man who serves as the catalyst of this interesting story. After the Wedding was one of the five pictures nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars. IFC Films will distribute the film in the USA beginning on March 30th.

[Chris Knipp]

Your comment (which I had forgotten to consult--but I didn't read any reviews--didn't need too) draws on a knowledge of her Open Hearts, which I haven't seen, so it enlarges the scope of our discussion of Bier. Yes, "desperate characters experiencing strong emotions" indeed. This one is terrific.

[oscar jubis]

There are two other Sussane Bier films available on video that I haven't seen:
Pensionat Oskar aka Like It Never Was Before (dvd)
"The Runeberg family is an ordinary middle class family, with a house in a suburb, a car and three children. By vacationing in a rented house by the sea, the hope is that the tension and anxiety between Rune and Gunnel will disappear. However, instead of spending time with his family, Rune finds himself attracted to a young man, Petrus. Whatever happens next, Rune realizes, it will be like it never was before."
IMDb plot summary written by Mattias Thuresson

Freud Leaving Home (vhs only).
"In the Jewish family Cohen mother Rosha is having her 60th birthday and her three children come to celebrate with her. Angelique, aka Freud, still lives at home and uses her knowledge of psychology to make poisonous comments about the others. David is a homosexual and Deborah has married an orthodox Jew and lives in Israel. Rosha tells her children that she is terminally ill in cancer".
IMDb plot summary written by Mattias Thuresson

Bier's new film Things We Lost in the Fire starring Halle Berry and Benicio del Toro opens in September.

[Chris Knipp]

Are those two hard to get your hands on? Did not know about the new one, thanks.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Are those two hard to get your hands on?
Hmmm. My kids saw Halle at the cineplex on Sunset Place promoting her film Perfect Stranger. They tell me she travels with an entourage, so it probably would be hard for you to get your hands on her. Benicio is probably more approachable but he's rumored to have quite a temper.*

Did not know about the new one, thanks.
You're welcome. Here's a behind-the-scenes preview

*Sorry, couldn't resist. Like It Never Was Before (Pensionat Oskar) is available for rental at Netflix. The Freud Leaving Home vhs is available for purchase at Amazon for just under $6 + shipping.

[Chris Knipp]

Halle is not quite my type, and neither is Benicio. I think I may pass on the earlier Biers for now and watch for the new one. I live for the moment.

On second thought maybe I should get my hands on the Netflix one. In fact, so I don't forget why I wanted to watch it, I've put it at the top of my "queue."

[Chris Knipp]

I have Penssionat Oskar/Like It Never Was Before (1995) by Susanne Bier from Netflix; have not had a chance to watch it due to SFIFF 50. It's a lousy quality dvd. Looking at the preview of the Hollywood Bier production, I am very doubtful. She may have peaked with After the Wedding.