You know what’s frustrating?? I’ll tell you what’s frustrating – seeing a film so remarkable and astonishing that you just CANNOT WAIT to tell EVERYONE YOU KNOW all about it, which in turn will cause them to go see it and support an astounding piece of work…. Only to discover that when you try to articulate your astonishment in written form, you find yourself utterly inarticulate. Unequal to the task of being eloquent about something that is so beyond eloquent that it is depressingly above your pay-grade. Ooooh, I am not worthy!
This is how I feel as I draft yet another pathetic attempt to do justice (or something that at least vaguely resembles justice) to the Danish film In A Better World, which was directed by Susanne Bier, and which won both the Oscar and Golden Globe for best foreign film.
Perhaps I’m getting tripped up in the “written word” part. Because if I’d walked out of the theater and bumped into you (as surely I would have, because I was so preoccupied by both its content and the elegance with which that content was expressed that I could barely function), I probably would have blurted out something like:
Holy shit. (respect-filled pause of reflection. then -- ) That movie was amazing. Amazing and glorious and gorgeous and so not the kind of shit that Hollywood would ever make. Why? Well for one thing, because it isn’t "clean" (ie contrived). You can’t follow the dots of the story from a to b to c. Love that! Though by the end of the film, the pattern makes utter sense and nothing is random nor gratuitous, it’s also not entirely linear…. Which is what also makes it not the kind of thing Hollywood would manufacture.
But WHAT THE FUCK IS IT ABOUT, you might be asking. So, for you plot-hungry Americans, I will tell you. (But just to be clear -- what it is “about” isn’t the same thing as “what happens.” And that is largely what makes it so un-Hollywood.) However… you’ll have to wait until Part II of this post comes out. ‘Cause right now I have to get back to flagellating myself for another pathetic attempt to artfully convey the essence of having been touched by this cinematic work of art.
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