2010 Winner, In a Better World

In a Better World

Director: Susanne Bier

Distributed by:  Sony Pictures Classics

Released:  August 2010

Country:  Denmark

In a better world, I would have a job writing movie reviews based on screenings in my primo home studio and would be getting well paid for them.  Alas, in this world, I order the movies from the library, watch them when I have time away from everyone else, and then wonder if anyone ever reads the reviews.

So back to the real world.  2010's winner, In a Better World, is at its base a father/son movie (regardless of the bait-and-switch of the movie poster implying it’s a romance).  One father, Anton, is a doctor who travels back and forth between his home in Denmark and a refugee camp in war-torn Sudan.  His marriage and relationship to his son Elias have suffered from his do-goodery.  The other father, Claus, just lost his wife to cancer, and his son Christian blames him for it.  Elias and Christian end up in the same school and become friends.  Elias is naïve and adores his father; Christian is cynical and miserable.  Let’s just say that Christian is a bad influence.

Getting bullied

One day, in front of Elias and Christian, Anton breaks up a fight between two kids, physically separating them.  One of the kids' tough-guy father confronts Anton and ends up slapping him in the face.  Anton basically does the turn-the-other-cheek thing and refuses to retaliate.  Christian sees this as weakness; Elias is ashamed that his father may be a weenie. 

Anton is no wallflower—he’s risking his life every time he traipses off to Africa, even having a run-in with one of those Idi Amin-type warlords--and coming out on top.  But he’s like one of those sitcom fathers who tells his kid that when dealing with a bully, talking always works better than violence.  Isn’t that common sense?  The kids don’t see it that way and they have a different approach (hint, the Danish title for the film is actually “the Revenge.”)

The result of the non-violent approach

The relationship the boys have to their fathers and to each other is the heart of the film.  But I thought the movie would have worked a bit better on a less epic stage.  The photography in Africa was great to look at, but the scenes there were a bit superfluous to the main story, and whenever Anton was there I just felt things dragged a bit.  Also, the story’s resolution felt contrived and unsatisfying.  Honestly, the strained marriage thing between Anton and his wife was unnecessary.  Which was kind of how I felt about this film.  Not bad, really.  Just unnecessary.

 

The Title:  Hævnen, or The Revenge.  That’s a better title for the purposes of grabbing you; not sure why this was released with the blah title of In a Better World.

The Culture:  I really didn’t learn much about Danish culture; the scenes in Africa were probably more instructive.

Great Dane

Agenda Danger:  Turn the other cheek is a pretty decent message.  Just be sure to have an ice pack waiting at home to put on your black eye.

Best Picture that year:  The King’s Speech

Rating:  To me, not a great Danish film.  Danish cinema has a long history of mainstream success and this is Denmark’s third BFF award.  For my money, a better Danish film called The Hunt came two years later, losing to Italy’s The Great Beauty.  The Hunt tells the Kafkaesque story of a teacher accused of sexual imposition in a small town school.  In a better world, that movie would have won the Oscar rather than In a Better World.

2017 Winner, The Salesman

The Salesman

Director:  Asghar Farhadi

Distributed by:  Filmiran/Memento Films Distribution

Released:  May 2016

Country:  Iran

BERNARD: But sometimes, Willy, it’s better for a man just to walk away.

WILLY: Walk away?

BERNARD: That’s right.

WILLY: But if you can’t walk away?

BERNARD (after a slight pause): I guess that’s when it’s tough.  Good-by, Willy.

--from Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller

In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s tragic 1949 play, Willy Loman loves his sons, probably more than himself, but doesn’t know when to let their failures be their failures, and not his.  The Salesman, 2016’s Best Foreign Film winner, has its own Willy Loman character, a teacher and actor named Emad.  Like Willy, Emad will have a difficult time understanding that he can only control so much, and that as much as he may love his family, it is not always his place to protect them from their own difficulties.

Emad and Rana

Emad and his wife, Rana, live in an apartment building that is literally falling apart.  And when I say literally, I mean literally—one night they are forced to evacuate because it seems like the foundation has shifted and the whole structure may come down on them.  The couple have a friend named Babak who helps to set them up in a place where the former tenant had unexpectedly bailed, literally leaving everything behind her.  And when I say literally, I mean figuratively, because you can’t leave everything behind.  But this woman, it seems, left more than her material things in the apartment she abandoned, as Emad and Rana will soon learn.

Emad is a teacher of boys in a high school in Iran.  The kids think the world of him, like Robin Williams’ students do in Dead Poets Society.  They jokingly call him a “salesman,” because his other job is as an actor in a local theater, where his is starring as Willy Loman, with his wife as Willy’s wife Linda.  Emad and Rana clearly adore each other, and cheerfully are setting up themselves in their new place. 

Their relationship will get tested, though, when one day Rana, alone in the apartment, responds to the apartment bell by buzzing in her husband, leaving the door slightly ajar and going in for a shower.  Only it turns out it isn’t her husband at all, and the next thing you know, Emad is walking into the apartment to find blood on the shower floor and his wife nowhere to be seen.  He learns from neighbors that she was taken to the hospital, assaulted by the person Rana had let in.  Rana will eventually be okay, at least physically.

Hey Babak, maybe you coulda told us a hooker lived there!

This is where Emad has difficulty.  Rana doesn’t want to report the incident, and Emad does.  He feels like she should either report it so the police and handle it, or else drop it altogether.  This strains their relationship.  Emad does some investigating, and it becomes apparent that the former occupant was a prostitute.  Learning this also strains Emad’s friendship with Babak, whom he feels maybe could have mentioned that the previous tenant was a hooker.  Emad will struggle with this situation with agony:  He loves his wife and feels like he failed to protect her.  But like the guy he is portraying in Death of a Salesman, he must understand that the past is the past, and that his family has their own choices, and potentially mistakes, to make.

This is the second Best Foreign Film for Iran, both directed by Asghar Farhadi and starring Shahab Hosseini, who gives a wonderfully understated performance as Emad.  As in 2011’s A Separation, Farhadi allows the main turning point in the film to be muted, allowing the consequences to be the focus of the drama.  In that film, Hosseini’s character gently pushes a pregnant woman out of his apartment, and we only later see how life-altering this event will be.  In The Salesman, the assault happens off-camera, but the tension builds gradually afterward, as Emad deals with how his wife feels and his own need for vengeance.  Taraneh Alidoosti is excellent as Rana, more Biff than Linda in this story, having had to deal with a painful experience and needing to handle it on her own terms. 

What if you can't walk away?  I guess that's when it's tough

Farhadi has a knack for telling a simple story with simple characters, while raising complicated and thought-provoking questions.  In The Salesman, one of those complicated questions posed is when is it time to walk away?  Because if you can't, that is when it gets tough.

The Title: فروشنده‎ (in Persian), or Forušande.  Emad is the not a salesman by any meaning of the word, except that he plays Willy Loman in his neighborhood theater.  He is not the loser that Loman is, but like Loman, he acts irrationally, thinking he is helping his family.  The title of Miller’s play is itself a major spoiler—Emad’s fate is not in question, but his relationship with his wife is.

The culture:  As with A Separation, what struck me most with this film was its looking people on the other side of the world, seemingly so different from us as Americans, and putting them in situations that we can identify with.  Emad is a good man, and he is lucky to have such a partner as Rana, but his temper and his inability to check himself may lead to him losing her.

Agenda danger:  Famously, the director and actors boycotted the Academy Awards as a result of President Trump’s order temporarily blocking entry in the U.S. of Iranian citizens, as well as citizens of six other countries.  But this film has no political agenda or message.  It’s most controversial message is in pointing out the difficulty in communication between men and women, and in looking at when it is appropriate to forgive.

Best Picture that year:  La La Land.  Spotlight.

Rating:  Most early winners of the prize, from the 1940’s on, with the exception of some Japanese films, tended to be Italian, French, or otherwise European.  The Salesman, the second Iranian winner of the prize, is characteristic of American appreciation of film throughout the world (strangely though, India has never won the award).  What makes The Salesman so interesting is how American it is, right down to the Miller play that lends it its title.  Like what I consider to be the best Best Foreign Film winners, it provides a window into life in a place Americans may not be familiar with, and does so in a way relatable to folks who may have never lived more than a few miles from their birthplace.  Films like The Salesman are the reason more Americans should be willing to read subtitles when they go to the movies.