I finally caught up with the 2011 Danish film, In a Better World (Hævnen), a film I was interested in back when it was playing in New York theaters, but wound up avoiding out of fear it was a bleak, postmodern downer. It turned out to be neither bleak nor postmodern. It’s actually a fairly gripping and interesting little movie about violence and where we draw the line for resorting to it, its story revolving around a pair of children: Christian, who has just lost his mother and is messed up about it, and Elias, a sensitive child who is bullied at school and is struggling with his parents divorce. The lives of the boys and their respective families are changed forever by their newly-formed friendship, a friendship dominated by Christian’s dark psychological issues.

The Danish title of this film is Vengeance, and the message of the film seems to be that violence is sometimes a good thing, but when it is wielded cavalierly it can quickly spin out of control and lead to mayhem and despair. I’m not totally sure what I think of this philosophy, but having spent a few years of my boyhood being viscously bullied by the violent, demented, genetically compromised spawn of northern New England, I had a lot of sympathy when Christian saves Elias from a psychopathic tormenter by bashing the cretin’s head in with a tire iron! When told that violence just leads to more violence, Christian replies “not if you hit hard enough the first time,” and he is proved right in the film as neither of the boys is ever bothered again. But this initial act of violence cascades in a very interesting way to Elias’ father, a gentle, Doctors Without Boarders physician who faces various types of violence in his own life, both home and abroad in Africa, where he works. The new influence of Christian in his son’s life initiates in him an overt expression of moral code in which he starts walking the line between “good” violence and bad, with nerve-wracking consequences.

This is a well-written film which manages to develop effectively its ideas on violence while also painting an interesting and sensitive portrait of the two father-son relationships; the father-son themes are not super deep, but they are woven together with the main vengeance theme quite skillfully, giving the narrative a pleasing flow and texture. The dialog is solidly good, and character development is very nicely done, with even minor characters coming across surprisingly vividly. All the performances are really strong. And the film’s ending is extremely satisfying and delightfully broadminded.

I really didn’t expect anything half this good when I sat down to watch this film, and together with other recent, high-quality Danish films I’ve enjoyed – A Hijacking and Love is All You Need – it’s making me realize I need to pay more attention to what’s going on in the Danish film industry. I would definitely recommend In a Better World.