| Overall Grade: |
A |
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| Story: |
A |
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| Acting: |
A+ |
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| Direction: |
A |
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| Visuals: |
A- |
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You Can't Go Home Again
by Webster (movies profile)
Feb 8, 2008
12
of
12 people found this review helpful
Jacob, doing humanitarian work at an Indian children's refuge, (the erstwhile "Casino Royale" villain, Mads Mikkelsen) doesn't know what to think when his superior tells him that a prospective benefactor ( Rolf Lassgard in a heart wrenching performance as Jorgen) requires Jacob to return, after twenty years, to Denmark so that the refuge can receive a huge donation. So as much as Jacob dislikes the idea, and at this point we know not why, he returns to Denmark in Susanne Bier's remarkable, emotionally charged, sometimes even overwrought "After the Wedding."
Bier has composed this film in much the same way as a Verismo opera: scenes of confrontation, scenes of enlightenment, scenes of disclosure are piled one on top of the other as the film slithers insinuatingly towards its tragic yet redemptive denouement.
All of the main characters: Jacob, Jorgen, Jorgen's wife Helene (Sidse Babett Knudsen in a mature, sexy performance) and Helene and Jorgen's daughter, Anna (Stine Fischer Christiansen: young, fresh, committed) are transformed, turned around and pointed in another direction psychically and physically by film's end due to the catastrophic upheavals that they endure during the course of this amazing film. Bier is dealing with Melodrama here, with a capital "M." Melodrama done up right: not as a joke but as serious and humane as the Master's of this genre: Almodovar and Douglas Sirk ("Written on the Wind") to name a couple.
Don't come to Bier's world of "After the Wedding" expecting to be lulled into anything resembling a calm, quiet mood...you will genuinely be unsettled. Do come to "After the Wedding," in many ways similar to the similarly themed, "The Celebration," expecting to squirm in your seat, to have your guts wrenched with the terrific bravura acting of this ensemble of actors, to cry your eyes out at scenes of transcendentally beauty and truth. This film will make you cry like a baby, and you will do it without embarrassment or rancor, but it is strictly, unequivocally for adults. |
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