Home and abroad 'In a Better World'

The suggestion that someone else always has it worse than you do is never much consolation for the aggrieved, but Danish director Susanne Bier builds an entire movie on that very premise. In a Sudanese refugee camp, a doctor without borders named Anton (Mikael Persbrandt) treats the victims of a sadistic warlord, insisting on remaining neutral, treating all comers. Back home, where his estranged wife, Marianne (Trine Dyrholm), lives with his son, Elias (Markus Rygaard), the boy is being bullied at school, until an angry newcomer named Christian (William Johnk Nielsen) beats Elias' tormentor with a bike pump. Matters escalate to the point that when the war-weary Anton returns to Denmark, he discovers a dismaying situation that he has very little luck in defusing. And that neutrality has its downside.

"In a Better World," which won the Oscar this year for best foreign language film, has all the attributes that tend to win such awards, including a noble purpose, an enlightened worldview and a wish for improved relations among human beings. It also, incidentally, has a lot of first-rate acting. But Bier ("Brothers," "After the Wedding") displays the delicate touch of a boiler mechanic as she makes her moral points. That Christian would be angry -- he's just lost his mother to cancer, and blames his father (Ulrich Thomsen) -- is understandable. Whether his unventable rage would lead to a car bombing is another question, and whether a seemingly progressive society like Denmark's would contain such institutional cluelessness about the psychology of young boys also seems a stretch. "In a Better World" is eminently watchable, even elevating. But those looking for nuance should look elsewhere.