#46 We just watched this on Netflix streaming: After the Wedding

The Film: After the Wedding

 

 

The Danish people make some pretty good movies, especially Susan Bier. She just won the best foreign film Oscar for her latest movie (I haven’t seen it) and she actually might be what overly academic cinemaphiles call an “auteur”.

What’s funny is her movies might have trouble with the common American because they’re artistic, tender, low-budget, and often patient with their execution. I smirked at the comment on Wikipedia that her work is rejected in Denmark as being too commercial…right.

I only believe such a statement because their greatest export right now is Lars Von Trier, who is out of his mind. After the Wedding is surprisingly complex: A man travels from India to his home country to raise money for his orphanage and is invited to a wedding for unclear reasons. When he gets there he discovers that the mother of the bride is his ex-lover who left India and married a rich business man and, as they say, shit hits the fan.

 

 

 

Why to watch it: It is complex, but satisfying on a human level

Movies about martial affairs and death can be a bit melodramatic. Maybe if this was made in the USA I would consider it in this way? Maybe I’m pompous? Regardless, this movie is able to come off as very humanistic and passionate about human beings. No one is perfect. No one is really bad. Everyone is just trying to survive.

Mads Mikkelsen is also a ridiculously good actor — he needs to be more famous. He reminds me of Michael Shannon. Yes, he was in Casino Royale, but he was a cartoon character in that and deserves a really good American role. Wedding gave him a lot of chances to be hammy (as shown by his hammy co-star Rolf Lassgård). But unlike Rolf, Mikkelsen’s face can say a thousand words with his face. He’s got that really “handsome-but-fucking-crazy” thing going on.

Pay attention to this: Bier’s camera work

Her camera seems to be very “face obsessed” and, like all of her previous films, she still seems to be tainted by the Dogma 95 movement (a movement I think is rather ludicrous).

The movie is shot on video and looks like it, which annoys me, but it looks good enough. Moreover, she uses abrupt Gordardesque editing to great effect — cutting for the purpose of adding to the scene emotionally and not just for style.

Also, with faces like Mikkelsen, Stine Fischer Christensen (shown above), and Sidse Babett Knudsen, it makes sense that much of movie would take place in close ups.

-Collin