Susanne Bier's After the Wedding (2006) is a film that wants to be more than it is. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, After the Wedding (original title Efter brylluppet ) follows Jacob (Mads Mikkelsen), a Danish man who helps run an underfunded orphanage in India. Reluctantly, Jacob is sent back to Copenhagen in the hopes of securing a large donation from the wealthy businessman Jorgen (Rolf Lassgård) only to slowly realize that Jorgen has singled him out for a specific--and personal--reasons. Ultimately, it's a superficial movie that tries its best at playing deep, a film that never quite achieves the emotional impact for which it strives.
After the Wedding starts off being a movie about how Jacob can't stand rich people. When told that their teacher is going to be sent to the rich-in-comparison land of Denmark, the children at Jacob's orphanage note his distaste of the wealthy. One boy says to Jacob, "Is it because the houses are far apart and the people are far apart?" This is about as profound as the film ever gets.
When Jacob arrives in Copenhagen, the film shifts from being about the political to being about the personal. Jacob meets Jorgen, who at first seems to represent the sort of suave, detached rich man that Jacob despises. However, as the film lumbers forward Jorgen turns out to be a less sinister yet also a less interesting character in an almost lazily written transition. Jorgen is not the manipulative businessman looking for an easy way to buy some publicity, but, in fact, the husband of Jacob's ex-girlfriend, Helene (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and the man who raised Helene and Jacob's daughter (Stine Fischer Christensen), a child Jacob never knew existed until he attended her wedding at Jorgen's invitation. The film meditates on these messy familial relationships for a hot second before revealing what the audience has already guessed fifteen minutes ago, that Jorgen is actually dying and has called Jacob back to Denmark to take his place as the man of the family.
The main weakness of After the Wedding is its thin script that presents a variety of familiar (dare I say cliché) themes without fully delving into any of them in a way that elevates them from mere banality. For instance, the idea of a man meeting his daughter for the first time after 22 years, the agony of a father organizing his life in preparation for his own death, the tenuous rekindling of a romance with the one that got away, and the struggle to provide aid and resources for underprivileged children are all perfectly fine topics that get thrown together and promptly skirted over in this film.
Rather than taking the time to develop any of these themes with any sort of nuance or inventiveness, Bier simply plops them down into the movie and moves on to the next thing as if the audience is expected to have some sort of emotional reaction at just at the mention of these "serious" topics. Instead of communicating heart wrenching truths through the sort of strong writing that paves the way for arresting acting performances, Bier scrounges for emotion in a never ending stream of close-up shots of both human and (yikes) dead animal eyes. In a word, there's a lack of depth and artfulness to the screenplay and the film as a whole. It's a shame that Mads Mikkelsen's stoic stare isn't put to better use.
That's not to say that After the Wedding is a disaster. There are some charming moments that arise from Bier's use of parallels in the movie, for example. In one such moment, the camera lingers on Jacob's nervous habits, (wiping the scuffs from his dress shoes, shifting his feet, hand tapping) and then closes in on similar anxious tics expressed by his daughter, Anna, thus visually portraying their heredity. Moreover, another parallel occurs when the camera pays special attention to Jorgen zipping up the coat of one of his young sons, only to show Jacob doing the same thing later in the film after Jorgen's metaphorical passing of the torch has been made clear. Sure, maybe these parallels could do with a bit more subtlety, but they're just clever enough that they inspire confidence that Bier at least has some sense of direction for the film. However, these strong moments are not enough to tip the balance in Bier's favor. All in all, After the Wedding is an unremarkable film bogged down by mediocre screen writing and an overeager desire for a quantity of ideas over quality.
After the Wedding starts off being a movie about how Jacob can't stand rich people. When told that their teacher is going to be sent to the rich-in-comparison land of Denmark, the children at Jacob's orphanage note his distaste of the wealthy. One boy says to Jacob, "Is it because the houses are far apart and the people are far apart?" This is about as profound as the film ever gets.
When Jacob arrives in Copenhagen, the film shifts from being about the political to being about the personal. Jacob meets Jorgen, who at first seems to represent the sort of suave, detached rich man that Jacob despises. However, as the film lumbers forward Jorgen turns out to be a less sinister yet also a less interesting character in an almost lazily written transition. Jorgen is not the manipulative businessman looking for an easy way to buy some publicity, but, in fact, the husband of Jacob's ex-girlfriend, Helene (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and the man who raised Helene and Jacob's daughter (Stine Fischer Christensen), a child Jacob never knew existed until he attended her wedding at Jorgen's invitation. The film meditates on these messy familial relationships for a hot second before revealing what the audience has already guessed fifteen minutes ago, that Jorgen is actually dying and has called Jacob back to Denmark to take his place as the man of the family.
The main weakness of After the Wedding is its thin script that presents a variety of familiar (dare I say cliché) themes without fully delving into any of them in a way that elevates them from mere banality. For instance, the idea of a man meeting his daughter for the first time after 22 years, the agony of a father organizing his life in preparation for his own death, the tenuous rekindling of a romance with the one that got away, and the struggle to provide aid and resources for underprivileged children are all perfectly fine topics that get thrown together and promptly skirted over in this film.
Rather than taking the time to develop any of these themes with any sort of nuance or inventiveness, Bier simply plops them down into the movie and moves on to the next thing as if the audience is expected to have some sort of emotional reaction at just at the mention of these "serious" topics. Instead of communicating heart wrenching truths through the sort of strong writing that paves the way for arresting acting performances, Bier scrounges for emotion in a never ending stream of close-up shots of both human and (yikes) dead animal eyes. In a word, there's a lack of depth and artfulness to the screenplay and the film as a whole. It's a shame that Mads Mikkelsen's stoic stare isn't put to better use.
That's not to say that After the Wedding is a disaster. There are some charming moments that arise from Bier's use of parallels in the movie, for example. In one such moment, the camera lingers on Jacob's nervous habits, (wiping the scuffs from his dress shoes, shifting his feet, hand tapping) and then closes in on similar anxious tics expressed by his daughter, Anna, thus visually portraying their heredity. Moreover, another parallel occurs when the camera pays special attention to Jorgen zipping up the coat of one of his young sons, only to show Jacob doing the same thing later in the film after Jorgen's metaphorical passing of the torch has been made clear. Sure, maybe these parallels could do with a bit more subtlety, but they're just clever enough that they inspire confidence that Bier at least has some sense of direction for the film. However, these strong moments are not enough to tip the balance in Bier's favor. All in all, After the Wedding is an unremarkable film bogged down by mediocre screen writing and an overeager desire for a quantity of ideas over quality.