In a better world

In a better world is a Danish movie that won the foreign language oscar this year. I saw it yesterday night in Aquarious cinema at Palo Alto.

I liked the movie. It is a realist movie. Realist movie to me is a genre where fiction is used to depict a real life situation. The difficult thing or the fine line is to walk the extreme cases, because real life sometimes can be very extreme and some of the real incidents are so shocking that one just shudders to even think about them. In a realist movie, generally it is this extreme case is portrayed or the exaggerated vision is depicted, but the challenge is to do it in a convincing manner.

For some reason, sometime ago, i had stopped watching realist like movies. My reason was that they always left me depressed and saddened by the state of the world. So, i decided to break my silence with in a better world. And i liked it a lot. There are very few movies when i have actually had a physical reaction to an on-screen situation. There was a time in the movie when my hands were up in the air, just by pure dis-belief or they were stretched out in front begging to please stop whatever was happening on the screen. In a better world is able to bring out that kind of emotion. But one good thing is that it has a reasonable happy ending, something that makes it easy to bear after the movie has ended.

The movie revolves around a family, the father is a doctor who goes to Africa to treat refugees there. The elder son is being bullied at school and he has a new friend whose mother just died and he is going through an anger/denial stage. Under the story line, In a better world raises a few very important questions -

1. What is the meaning of courage ? If a person slaps you for no reason, what is the courageous act in response? And what kind of example are you setting up for your children.

2. An evil person needs help, should you help him ? The reason for not helping is very clear,the reason for helping - May be, the help changes his heart, may be he sees the suffering and understands. What is the morality here?

3. Revenge, what is the cost of it ? Everybody wants revenge, but do people have idea on what is the cost of revenge ?


The subtle references to above question happen throughout the movie. And the overall shadow is that how to do parenting in above scenarios. What kind of examples do we need to set so that the young can see and learn. As in a usual foreign lang movie, the acting here is top notch, especially by those young boys. The background score is less but very impactful whenever present.

Come on Indian cinema, pleas wake up from your fantasy world and start making realist cinema.