Danish director Susanne Bier has signed the Dogme pledge of purity in film-making and here she sticks to the rules, intermittently anyway. The camera-work is just about all hand-held and the lighting "natural" which means most of the interior shots are suffuced in a yellow glow. She also has a liking for very close-up shots of people's faces at random moments which can be disorientating, but overall this is not an excessively dogmatic Dogme film.
The story is really a bit of mainstream soap, with an improbable plot, characters who are more caricatures, reliance on co-incidence and plenty of sentimentality. However the understated and powerful acting by all the principals makes what is rather a silly story work. The story might be silly but there is not a wasted moment in the film. The scenes in the Mumbai orphanage are meant to contrast with the high life in Copenhagen, and they do Bier is anxious we get the point. The co-incidences seem over the top at first but then we suspect their may be more to it. Jacob the protagonist seems heroic and selfless to begin with, but later it seems he is somewhat of an under-achiever as a hero. The caricatures become more characters than we thought.
Mads Mikkelsen is a superb actor who would be my choice to play a Danish Christ and as Jacob, the orphanage manager and supplicant for funds, he does everything right here, transcending the material. He gets good support from Rolf Lassgard as Jørgen the putative philanthropist a full-throated performance, and from Sidse Babette Knudsen as Helene, Jorgen's wife and old flame of Jacob. This isn't "Hamlet" but you feel this troupe could make a fair fist of it. (Come to think of it a Danish "Hamlet" would be quite a cultural experience). There's still something soapy about the whole thing, though, and I think Bier was lucky to get a nomination for the 2007 best foreign film Oscar right up there with "Water" and "Laberinto del Fauno". But it's quite watchable and the acting justifies the price of admission.
The story is really a bit of mainstream soap, with an improbable plot, characters who are more caricatures, reliance on co-incidence and plenty of sentimentality. However the understated and powerful acting by all the principals makes what is rather a silly story work. The story might be silly but there is not a wasted moment in the film. The scenes in the Mumbai orphanage are meant to contrast with the high life in Copenhagen, and they do Bier is anxious we get the point. The co-incidences seem over the top at first but then we suspect their may be more to it. Jacob the protagonist seems heroic and selfless to begin with, but later it seems he is somewhat of an under-achiever as a hero. The caricatures become more characters than we thought.
Mads Mikkelsen is a superb actor who would be my choice to play a Danish Christ and as Jacob, the orphanage manager and supplicant for funds, he does everything right here, transcending the material. He gets good support from Rolf Lassgard as Jørgen the putative philanthropist a full-throated performance, and from Sidse Babette Knudsen as Helene, Jorgen's wife and old flame of Jacob. This isn't "Hamlet" but you feel this troupe could make a fair fist of it. (Come to think of it a Danish "Hamlet" would be quite a cultural experience). There's still something soapy about the whole thing, though, and I think Bier was lucky to get a nomination for the 2007 best foreign film Oscar right up there with "Water" and "Laberinto del Fauno". But it's quite watchable and the acting justifies the price of admission.