In a Better World (2010)

Claus: You know what, Christian? If mom could see you now, she would be very unhappy to see what you've become. Why do you say such mean things? I don't know what I did to you?
Christian: ....You don't tell me what's right and wrong......You wanted her to die
Claus: No, I didn't.
Christian: Yes, you did! You can't just say it was the best thing for her. She didn't want to die, and you gave up. I can't stand people who give up.

Christian (William Nielsen) is a difficult child with a strong sense of rights and wrongs who has to grow up without a mother. Justice is important for him, and it doesn't matter to him if he has to bend the rules to achieve justice for the sake of others. When he moves back from London to Denmark in a new school, he befriends Elias (Markus Rygaard), the least popular student in the class and the target of all bullies.

Elias' father, Anton (Mikael Persbrandt), works as a doctor in the midst of a civil war in some African nation and a divorce in his personal life. He is mostly away, while his wife, Marianne (Trine Dyrholm), has to take care of both their kids. As Elias and Christian bond with each other well, Christian seems to grow further away from his father, Claus (Ulrich Thomsen). When Christian and Elias are out with Anton, Anton tries to intervene in a small scuffle between his younger son and the son of a mechanic. The mechanic slaps Anton in front of his kids, something that Christian does not take very lightly. When they visit the mechanic again and Anton tries to show the kids he is not afraid of him, he is slapped and humiliated again. Even though Anton comes out of the incident by preaching Gandhian values to the kids, Christian is not too sure of the lesson learnt and he prods Elias into action to take revenge. Although Elias is at first confused about the right thing to do, he feels more comfortable with the support of his friend than his father's, of whom he thinks of as a "wimp". As they set forth together on a mission to avenge Anton's humiliation, their actions will only test their relationships and cause further sorrow in the lives of the two families involved.

In A Better World, directed by Susanne Bier, probably tries to show us the consequences of a tit-for-tat world in a civil society as it keeps taking us back to a world (in Africa) where that's the norm for everyday survival. In the midst of broken homes and spirits, the theme of revenge or the futility of it carries this movie well, but at times comes across as a little preachy. The acting by most of the cast is brilliant, specially some strong and mature performances from both the kids. However, the pace of the movie is a tad too slow, and doesn't really live up to the expectations of Susanne Bier's earlier works, Things We Lost in the Fire and After The Wedding.

Rating: 7/10

V for Vendetta (2005)

Evey : Who are you?
V: Who? Who is but the form following the function of what and what I am is a man in a mask.
Evey : Well I can see that.
V: Of course you can. I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is.
Evey : Oh, right.
V: But on this most auspicious of nights, permit me then, in lieu of the more commonplace sobriquet, to suggest the character of this dramatist persona.
V: Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

Based on Alan Moore's graphic novel, V for Vendetta is a tale of an oppressive futuristic society in Britain where one man vows to raise the lethargic and fearful masses against the tyranny of the state on November 5th, the day that marks the anniversary of Guy Fawke's failed attempt to blow up the Parliament.

When Evey (Natalie Portman) is stopped and harassed by men of the state on a night of curfew, V (Hugo Weaving) comes to her rescue and makes her privy to his intentions of bringing about a revolution a year from then on the night of November the 5th. Evey, herself the daughter of two political activists who were killed by the state, returns the favor by helping V escape from the police and in the process becomes a target herself. We soon get to know the tragic story behind our masked hero as he sets himself upon the task of  eliminating, one by one, all the people responsible for his fate. His ultimate goal though is to free Britain from the clutches of its hate-mongering chancellor, Sutler (John Hurt), and his manipulative second-in-command, Creedy (Tim-Piggot Smith). As the police get closer on their pursuit of this masked vigilante, more details unravel about the identity of V and we see he as at least one sympathizer in officer Finch (Stephen Rea).

V cuts out a tragic figure while he feels the parallels between his own life and that of Edmond Dante, the protagonist of The Count of Monte Cristo (the greatest revenge story ever told). Even though Evey can't help falling in love with him, she is wary she might herself end up like Mercedes - Dante's love-interest for whom Dante cared less than his need for revenge. In one of the scenes we see V justifying his ways by remarking that what was done to him was "monstrous", while Evey completes his statement by saying "and they created a monster".

Is there any look that doesn't suit her?

With an ending that is not entirely a happy one, this movie is not an experience that you'll forget for some time. With a script by the Wachowski brothers, you can be fairly certain there's more to it than meets the eye. Just like their Matrix Trilogy, this is a movie about ideas. Although released way back in 2005, this could very well be a prophetic social commentary, and a call to the youth of the Wiki-leaks generation. Going back to the opening lines of the movie, We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten, but 400 years later, an idea can still change the world. 

Rating: 9/10

The Hunt (2012)

Lucas: What are you saying? Have you got something to say to me?
Agnes: Stop it, Lucas.
Lucas: You want to tell me something?
Theo: Relax, Lucas
Lucas: The whole town is listening . Tell me! What do you want to say?
Agnes: Stop it, you fucking psychopath!
Lucas: I want a word with Theo. Look into my eyes. Look me in the eyes. What do you see? Do you see anything? Nothing. There's nothing. There's nothing. You leave me alone now. You leave me alone now, Theo. Then I'll go. Thank you.

The Hunt by Thomas Vinterberg takes an extremely realistic look at the life of a social outcast, Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen). Lucas is a lonely school teacher who after his divorce has adjusted well in his role and is quite popular among the kids. Having lost custody of his son, Marcus (Lasse Fogelstrom), his life goes by after he finds a new love interest in Nadja (Alexandra Rapoport). However, his life soon takes a horrific turn when he is accused of sexual abuse by 5-year-old Klara (Annika Wedderkopp), the daughter of his best friend, Theo (Thomas Bo Larsen).

Klara is a lonely kid, probably a little neglected by her parents and her older brother too, who finds comfort with Lucas and his dog, Fanny. While her parents are busy arguing and fighting, it's Lucas who has to walk her to school at times. Although she is only five, she somehow feels some kind of attraction towards Lucas and places a gift in his coat pocket and also tries to kiss him in a way only meant for adults. When Lucas doesn't take it very nicely, he lets her know how kids her age are supposed to be. Klara probably feels betrayed in some way and makes up a story of sexual abuse without thinking much of the repercussions. Being a kid, she instantly forgets about it and when asked by suspicious people around, she mentions she doesn't remember things too well. Since there is a general feeling amongst adults that kids don't lie, specially about such things, they misconstrue it as a form of trauma because of which she doesn't want to remember the incident again. What follows is a systematic lynching of an innocent man who also has to face the questioning eyes of some of his very close allies.

As an investigation by the police ensues, there are further accounts of abuse by other children in the class too. They all seem to corroborate the same story of Lucas "touching" them after taking them to his basement. What no one ever questions in support of the poor victim is that Lucas never even had a basement in his house. Nobody even wants to suspect the vivid imaginations children can have sometimes once they are fed with an idea. Except for one friend, who also happens to be Marcus' godfather, everyone else turn their backs on him even after he is set free by the police due to lack of substantial evidence. We are taken through the unjust treatment of a man while he is thrown out of local stores and thrashed in public. Even his son, Marcus, who stands up for his dad, isn't spared and is harassed and beaten up by some of Theo's friends. If this weren't enough, they also send him the dead body of his dog, Fanny, in a plastic bag as a message to him to stay locked up in his house.

The ending shows that Klara owns up to her lie and all is forgiven to welcome him back to society, yet things don't truly change underneath. Even after a year of calm, there's an attempt on his life which goes to show that although people behave in a civilized manner at an individual level, mass behavior can bring out the beasts within in the form of pure evil. And what happens cannot be pinned on Klara since she is too young to even understand how she has affected Lucas.

Thomas Vinterberg has done an excellent job of bringing an uneasy subject and showing the true face of society and the evil that lurks in group behavior. Mads Mikkelsen (best known for Casino Royale, After the Wedding) plays the role of Lucas, a man who has withdrawn since explaining would prove his guilt,  convincingly and truly deserved a nomination, if not the Oscar (though he won it at the Cannes Film Festival). Overall, an excellent journey, yet heart-breaking.

Rating: 8/10

A Serious Man (2009)

Rabbi Nachtner: How does God speak to us? A good question. You know Lee Sussman?
Larry Gopnik: Doctor Sussman? I think I - yeah.
Rabbi Nachtner: Did he ever tell you about the goy's teeth?
Larry Gopnik: No... I- What goy?
Rabbi Nachtner: So... Lee is at work one day; you know he has the orthodontic practice there at Great Bear. He's making a plaster mold - it's for corrective bridge work - in the mouth of one of his patients, Russell Kraus. The mold dries and Lee is examining it one day before fabricating an appliance. He notices something unusual. There appears to be something engraved on the inside of the patient's lower incisors. He vav shin yud ayin nun yud. "Hwshy 'ny". "Help me, save me". This in a goy's mouth, Larry..... Sussman goes home. Can Sussman eat? Can Sussman sleep? ......Sussman is an educated man. Not the world's greatest sage, maybe, no Rabbi Marshak, but he knows a thing or two from the Zohar and the Caballah. He knows that every Hebrew letter has its numeric equivalent. 8-4-5-4-4-7-3. Seven digits... a phone number, maybe? ..........He has to find out if he is ever to sleep again. He goes to see... the Rabbi Nachtner. He comes in, he sits right where you're sitting right now. "What does it mean, Rabbi? Is it a sign from Hashem, 'Help me'? I, Sussman, should be doing something to help this goy? Or maybe I'm supposed to help people generally, lead a more righteous life? Is the answer in Caballah? In Torah? Or is there even a question? Tell me, Rabbi, what can such a sign mean?"
Larry Gopnik: So what did you tell him?
Rabbi Nachtner: Sussman?
Larry Gopnik: Yes!
Rabbi Nachtner: Is it... relevant?
Larry Gopnik: Well, isn't that why you're telling me?
Rabbi Nachtner: Okay. Nachtner says, look. The teeth, we don't know. A sign from Hashem? Don't know. Helping others... couldn't hurt.
Larry Gopnik: No! No, but... who put it there? Was it for him, Sussman, or for whoever found it, or for just, for, for...
Rabbi Nachtner: We can't know everything.
Larry Gopnik: It sounds like you don't know anything! Why even tell me the story? What happened to Sussman?
Rabbi Nachtner: What would happen? Not much. He went back to work. For a while he checked every patient's teeth for new messages. He didn't find any. In time, he found he'd stopped checking. He returned to life. These questions that are bothering you, Larry - maybe they're like a toothache. We feel them for a while, then they go away.

A Serious Man is another black comedy from the Coen brothers which is set in 1967 and is about a Physics Professor, Larry Gopnik, whose life unravels and goes from one trouble to another and there seems to be no end in sight to it.

Professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) leads a mundane life with his family and his eccentric brother, though things are about to get interesting which are certainly not in the way one wishes. A Korean student with a failing grade in his subject tries to bribe him while also trying to sue him for defamation. Larry also starts receiving letters from someone who seems bent on destroying his career and ruining his chances of getting tenure at the university. If his troubles at work weren't enough, his wife tells him she is leaving him for Sy Abelman (Fred Melamed) and they both would prefer if he can move out of the house and stay somewhere else. His daughter seems to be stealing money from his wallet for a nose job while his son has subscribed to the Columbia records without his permission. When Larry hears Sy Abelman has died of a car crash, his wife insists they have to pay for the funeral. As Larry finds himself strapped for cash, he wonders in front of the Rabbi if his religion requires him to pay for Sy's funeral and if it would be the right thing to do.

As matters complicate further, Larry finds himself on the verge of a nervous breakdown and feels a senior Rabbi, Rabbi Marshak, would have all the answers to his troubles. The Coens' again take us back to the same Uncertainty Principle while Larry tries to teach his class about the mathematics behind the Schrodinger's Cat puzzle. Just like the cat which is both dead and alive in Schrodinger's thought experiment, Larry isn't quite sure which state he is in.

Life - The eternal puzzle

As Larry's descent into hell starts, he finds himself attracted to his sultry neighbor who loves to sun-bath naked on her lawn. He keeps waking up in the night from his sleep with visions of making love to his neighbor and nightmares of his life falling apart. And to add insult to injury, his unemployed brother complains  about how the HaShem has been so kind to Larry while not having given him anything. With a clever and fitting song in the background, Somebody to Love by The Jeffersons Airplane, we finally see Rabbi Marshak who has a few words of wisdom for Larry's son - When the truth is found to be lies, and all the hope within you dies, then what? Be a good boy, Danny.

This could be easily the best film from the Coen brothers after giving us some classics such as The Man Who Wasn't There and No Country For Old Men. The movie has an unpredictable ending that just shows us a glimpse of what's about to come- as always, things can only get worse.  What's left unsaid is probably captured in the tag line of the movie- Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you. LOL.

Rating: 8/10

The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)

Reidenschneider: They got this guy, in Germany. Fritz Something-or-other. Or is it? Maybe it's Werner. Anyway, he's got this theory, you wanna test something, you know, scientifically - how the planets go round the sun, what sunspots are made of, why the water comes out of the tap - well, you gotta look at it. But sometimes you look at it, your looking changes it. You can't know the reality of what happened, or what would've happened if you hadn't-a stuck in your own goddamn schnozz. So there is no "what happened"? Not in any sense that we can grasp, with our puny minds. Because our minds... our minds get in the way. Looking at something changes it. They call it the "Uncertainty Principle". Sure, it sounds screwy, but even Einstein says the guy's on to something. Science...Perception....Reality....Doubt.....Reasonable Doubt. I'm saying...sometimes the more you look, the less you really know. It's a fact. A true fact.....In fact it's the only fact there is.

According to Reidenschneider (Tony Shalhoub), Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton) is the quintessential modern man. A sad, chain-smoking barber who has lost his place in the universe after being dealt some bad cards in life and is too ordinary to be the criminal mastermind that the jury is looking for. The Man Who Wasn't There is a story of adultery, blackmailing, deception, murder and a funny kind of justice shot in the film noir tradition in this work by the Coen brothers.

When Ed Crane hears about a business proposal from Creighton Tolliver (Jon Polito) about the in-thing called "dry cleaning", he feels he at last has a chance to get out of his humdrum life. Having known that his wife, Dorris (Frances McDormand), has been having an affair with her boss, Dave Brewster (James Gandolfini), he has a perfect plan to arrange the dough that he needs to invest in the business. What follows, however, is a series of confusing events that puts Dorris as the number one suspect for the killing of Big Dave. After Dorris commits suicide in the prison, Ed Crane is more or less free from all trouble and keeps leading the same boring life again. Feeling inspired to do something good for the daughter of a family friend, Birdy (Scarlett Johansson), a kid with a talent for piano, he takes her to the best teacher in Sacramento so that her life doesn't go down in waste as his. As fate would have it, they meet with an accident and while he is in the hospital, the police also find the dumped body of Creighton. Circumstantial evidence suggests that Ed has committed the crime, even though he had no direct part in it.

All through the movie, you'll find the dark humor that is so characteristic of all Coen brother's movies. Billy Bob Thornton plays the role of Ed Crane with perfection. He doesn't speak much (even though he gives the voice-over for the sequence of events) and is very controlled on the surface while being restless underneath for any chance to get out. He truly fits into the role of a ghost - the man who isn't there. In a way, he kept reminding me of the protagonist in the book, The Stranger, and with a similar brilliant last act in the court room, I was thinking it'd head in that direction. However, as always with the Coen brothers, we see an ending that is a signature of their view of life. Rest of the lesser known cast have also pulled off some brilliant performances with special note for Francis McDormand as the loud, dominating wife. Overall, a must-see for all with a taste for dark humor.

Rating: 7.5/10

Bobby Fischer Against The World (2011)

[Voices in the background]: Bobby Fischer is an isolated man....Bobby Fischer is a strange man, people think that there is something wrong with the man...His social life is a vacuum...The most arrogant man you'd ever like to meet...Whatever happened to Bobby Fischer...

"Chess holds its master in its own bonds, shackling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer" - Albert Einstein


Liz Garbus's Bobby Fischer Against The World is a documentary feature film on the rise and fall of arguably the greatest chess player to have ever walked on this planet. The documentary shows us real and very old footage of Bobby Fischer. Even though it was clear that he was a child prodigy, Bobby's awkwardness in front of the camera is very evident. Liz Garbus tries to hint at his childhood with an absent father and a mother who was more interested in other affairs as the reason for his strange ways with people. It had obviously started from a very young age and it wasn't the constant media attention and his privacy issues that turned him into the man he became for the later part of his life.

The documentary also captures the famous 1972 World Championship match against Boris Spassky in Iceland that Bobby won. The match received a lot of attention because of the Cold War and Bobby, the darling of the United States, was pitted against Spassky, a product of the Soviet communist regime. Bobby's wayward ways during the match where he arrived late and would make outlandish demands was seen by many as a psychological warfare tactic to annoy Spassky. However, it clearly wasn't about the match and Bobby had already started fighting his inner demons. What followed that famous victory was Bobby refused to defend his title three years later in 1975 and disappeared from all the unwanted attention.

Agreed that Bobby was a difficult child which could be traced to his upbringing, however, it seems weird that a Jew himself would come out and make some of the anti-Semitic comments that Bobby is known for. What the documentary fails to answer is whether Bobby turned into a Jew-hater and had a persecution complex when it came to the United States because of his deep-rooted mental issues or was it something that triggered the sudden change. Was his fall-out with the United States because of his refusal to defend the title wherein he was no more the poster-boy in the midst of the Cold War? Could there have been a propaganda against him to discredit anything he might say? We do see a footage of Henry Kissinger mentioning that Bobby's wins are "Good for America". Is it possible that because he was not good for them anymore that he'd be chased out of every country where he sought asylum (before finally Iceland providing him a home against the politics of the United States)?

The documentary is well-made that would cater to the taste of many as it claims to provide a deeper look into the intriguing life of a mad genius. Still, it is pretty much a one-sided view of the man and leaves a lot of questions unanswered. It is a view shared by most of the people since they love cheap thrills out of someone else's misfortunes or the sensationalism in associating genius with paranoia. Though just because somebody is paranoid, doesn't mean that he isn't right and holds no credibility.

Rating: 7/10