Doctors Without Borders

In A Better World

** out of ****

Directed by: Susanne Bier

Starring: Mikael Persbrandt, Trine Dyrholm, William Nielsen, Markus Rygaard, and Ulrich Thomsen

Running time: 113 minutes

It’s of no coincidence that the two prominent adult figures from In a Better World, the newest recipient of the Foreign Language Film Oscar, are both doctors.

Anton, portrayed by Swedish actor Mikael Persbrandt, works in a village in sub-Saharan Africa and tends to the malnourished, disease-ridden inhabitants one at a time – unless a critical injury cues him for surgery or a nearby warlord demands his services. Thousands of miles away in idyllic Denmark, his estranged wife, Marianne (Trine Dyrholm), busies herself in a clean, controlled, sterilized hospital.

However, the two cannot cure a haunting scenario involving their teenage son, Elias (Markus Rygaard), at the local school. An easy target for bullies, Elias is starting to stand up for himself after befriending an elusive new student, Christian (William Nielsen), who has just moved to the township from London with his father. Christian is troubled by his mother’s death from cancer, and takes out his manifested aggression on the tough cronies that push Elias around.

Elias is harmless and Christian is harmful, but instead of exacerbating the disjointed aspects of this relationship, director Susanne Bier (After the Wedding) brings these polar opposites together. The film’s eerily disturbing second half revolves around the thickening bond between the two boys as they contemplate to pull off a horrendous act of retribution against a violent mechanic.

Christian is hyper-masculine, detached from his late mother and tempted to strike back and exercise a raw, forceful power. His empathy has vanished and he routinely tries to prove his own merit. Elias is undeniably attracted to this strength, as it is one that he cannot encapsulate from his commonly absent father.

Bier, who has an affinity with faces, draws some very expressive, tender performances from her cast. Nielsen is especially hypnotic and intense as the off-kilter Christian, but due to the director’s pretensions, his character’s emotional arc is not entirely realized.

So, what point is the director trying to accomplish by assigning these medical occupations amidst such volatile emotional carnage? And why the strange, fragmented title? Bier could be hinting at the notion that, well, in a better world, such doctors can be the saviours we need. But an unstable human nature – the one that plagues the teenage boys in the film – bleakly communicates to the audience that this world is only a utopia.

But while Bier’s morality play often tries to draw parallels between first-world upper-class relationships and third-world upheavals by focusing on the nature of violence and corruption in both places, these comparisons ultimately don't work. The social tensions in Africa develop organically, while the provocative actions by Elias and Christian are forced and contrived.

The two sides don’t work: watching the two boys conjure up a dangerous stunt that would fly in Anton’s village setting unfortunately doesn’t flow with the direction of the story in Denmark. Perhaps the script could have used its own doctor: the two segments, separated by space, would have worked better on their own rather than as a byproduct of an overextended thematic reach.