“In a Better World” just came to my neck of the woods though it’s been out a year and received high accolades for winning both the 2011 Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It beat out “Biutiful” with Javier Bardem twice among other strong nominees so that’s saying something.
I didn’t know much about “Better World” other than it was Danish, but it turned out to be quite a dramatic film, a bit more ominous considering the recent news out of Norway. It’s about two broken families who cross paths after their outcast sons become friends and get into trouble. In one family, the parents are on the verge of a divorce with the father spending long periods of time in Africa as a doctor in a refugee camp. Meanwhile their son is bullied and harassed at school. In the other family, the mother has just died, and the father and boy move to town, where the boy’s new to the school. Both of the boys going through turmoil become friends and start to act out in ways that pushes them to the edge of disaster.
The film switches between scenes in Africa, where the one father copes with the bloodshed in the camp (and his family separation), to scenes in Denmark, where the sad, troubled boys decide to make a bomb. It’s disturbing for sure, but fortunately these kids turn out to be not as sinister as the attackers in Columbine or Norway. The parents seem to hold sway and come together in the end.
The music at times seems a bit overwrought in “Better World,” but the cinematography and acting capture the isolation and angst. It’s quite sad for sure, more sad than disturbing than two movies out now (“Beautiful Boy” and “We Need to Talk About Kevin”) that deal with the aftermath of a teen’s mass killing spree. It’s just too eerie and horrifying to see either of those any time soon.
