After the Wedding

J and I always hope for some vicarious travel so we chose a Danish film this week. We do get some Danish crime on T V that gives an idea of life in Scandinavian but not enough to satisfy the would-be traveler. ‘After the Wedding’ is an unforgettable drama from Danish film maker Susanne Bier. And pictorially Denmark comes out reasonably well.

To begin the film gives the cinema-seat-traveller some great glimpse of the teaming masses in India. Jocob Peterson (Mads Mikkelsen) is a Danish aid worker in Indian. He is persuaded to return home to Denmark to meet with an aid benefactor Jorgan (Rolf Lassgard) who is only going to ha over the aid cheque in person..

In a sentence you could say the film was not about Jocob but Jorgan who tires to arrange everyone’s lives. Mads plays his character in a rather grim way. Perhaps he always acts like this but he has a great reluctance to smile. Very occasionally gives us a glimpse of a smile that lights up his face. Jorgan has manipulated Jocob’s return and his time in Denmark to bring him face to face with a past he has tired to forget.

I found the camera work a great irritation. The camera closes into someone’s face and enlarges their eye and perhaps the side of their nose or their mouth. We don’t need to see the enlarge pores or the larger than life eye in its wrinkled socket. In day-to-day life we don’t jam our faces so close to others that we get these views and I found it distracting. Jorgan lives in a Baronial mansion that houses the usual trophy heads on the walls and the camera zooms into the dead eyes of a buffalo or deer and delivers them to us hugely magnified – very off-putting.

The threads of this mystery are woven and tightened by Jorgan until finally the clothe and its flaws are revealed to us. It is an unusual story and the ending not in least predictable.

Even with enlarged eyes popping on and off the screen there are some very memorable moments and some shorts scenes that are likely to become mental flash backs in the days after viewing the movie. The characters do evolve and it’s a film about everyone learning something that causes them to re-evaluate who they are and where they in life.

It’s worth seeing. You may like the eyes and feel they are giving an opening to the internal struggles of the owner. I think any internal struggle the trophy heads may have had has long since gone.