‘After the Wedding’

There are oceans of tears, but somehow it works without seeming maudlin, thanks to the integrity of these performances.

By: Bob Brown
   Director /writer Susanne Bier and co-writer Anders Thomas Jensen delight in creating chaos out of ordinary domestic relationships. It’s as if they build beautiful dollhouses with exquisite furnishings, then they reach in and push the dolls around mercilessly, breaking furniture and hearts. When they’ve got that out of their system, they try gluing things back together.
   This five-hanky movie was an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film last year and would have been a worthy winner. It bears the familiar stamp of another recent work by Bier and Jensen, the searing drama Brothers (Brodre, 2004).
   In Brothers, while a soldier is captured and presumed lost in Afghanistan, his brother back in Denmark is comforting his sister-in-law. Things are unimaginably evil in the field, and emotionally charged when the soldier returns. Roles are reversed. Copious drinking and shouting ensue.
   After the Wedding similarly pits two men opposite each other. They might be alter egos. Jacob (Mads Mikkelsen) is trying to redeem himself as a teacher and all-around father figure in a cash-strapped Mumbai orphanage. The children adore him, but the place is falling apart. Begging for support is not his thing. Reluctantly, he agrees to travel to Denmark and solicit funds from a wealthy industrialist, Jorgen (Rolf Lassgard), who has insisted that petitioners meet him face-to-face.
   Jorgen’s lifestyle couldn’t be more different. He works in plush Copenhagen offices and lives on a baronial estate in the countryside, complete with its own deer herd. The man appears distracted when Jacob earnestly presents his case. Even videos cannot do justice to the plight of the Mumbaian children, Jacob says, living in dire poverty, dying of minor diseases, forced into prostitution. Jorgen is distracted. He would rather have lunch before committing himself. He’d like time to consider it among other requests. He invites Jacob to his home the next day, when his daughter Anna (Stine Fischer Christensen) is to wed one of her father’s up-and-coming employees, Christian (Christian Tafdrup).
   This is an overly familiar gesture, Jacob thinks, since he knows nothing about the family. But Jacob has nothing else to do. On arriving at the estate, he receives the first of several shocks that will turn life on its head. There’s electricity when Jorgen’s wife, Helene (Sidse Babett Knudsen), and Jacob are introduced, as if a light switch were flipped on. We realize they share a past of which Jorgen may be unaware. The awkwardness between Jacob and his would-be benefactor shifts to an even higher level.
   But there are more jolts to come. Bombshell after bombshell is dropped casually amid the elegant surroundings, the lavish wedding feast, the Louis XIV furniture, the silk draperies and verdant lawns. The voltage cranks up until the only outlets for all this emotional energy are, yes, shouting, and drinking, and tears, and hugs, and more shouting. Money for an orphanage in India seems further and further from the point.
   Or does it? Jacob’s thoughts keep drifting back to his kids, especially 8-year-old Pramod (Neeral Mulchandani), who looks to him as the ideal father he has never known. Torn between two worlds, a life he has left behind and one he has made for himself to expiate the sins of his youth, Jacob is like his biblical namesake. He wrestles, in a sense, with the angel of duty — duty to his orphaned children, to his unredeemed past, to the burdens of a future he had not foreseen.
   There are enough coincidental encounters and providential plot twists to fill a soap opera. Everything seems to boil up into a huge emotional deal, and several times it threatens to tip over into melodrama. What keeps that from happening is the actors’ control. The only Danish star who seems to have broken into Hollywood’s consciousness is the ruggedly handsome Mikkelsen (King Arthur, Casino Royale). His Jacob is believable as a guy who is more comfortable doling out corn meal in an Indian slum than he is sipping cocktails at a Danish wedding. The guy barely manages a smile, but he can throw a first-class tantrum when he thinks he’s being used.
   So can Lassgard, whose character Jorgen is often veering from imperious mogul to pathetic victim. Hugely generous one moment, he’s mean and controlling the next, or blubbering like a baby. Whisky is breakfast, lunch and dinner. The two men dance around each other, angling for what they want. In the middle are the women, Annette and Anna. Knudsen and Christensen show enormous range as their characters negotiate the treacherous shoals around the men in their lives. There are oceans of tears, but somehow it works without seeming maudlin. The integrity of these performances is the secret. Even young Mulchandani is such a winning little guy, you want to take him home.
   This movie is the complete package, from composer Johan Soderqvist’s brooding score to gorgeous visuals by a team of Scandinavian cinematographers. It’s upsetting and cathartic in all the ways that the best film experiences are.
Rated R for some language and a scene of sexuality. In English and Danish with subtitles.