Discussion Questions for Women in Film Gathering, March 5, 2013
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1 Discussion Questions for Women in Film Gathering, March 5, 2013: Focal Film: After the Wedding (2006; Denmark; Story & Direction by Susanne Bier; Screenplay by Anders Thomas Jensen) Susanne Bier (1960‐ ) is a Danish film director. She studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts & Design in Jerusalem and also studied architecture in London before attending film school at the National Film School of Denmark (a 1987 graduate). Since 1990, her feature films have gained increasing attention both in Denmark and internationally. After the Wedding (2006) was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but lost to the German film The Lives of Others. After the Wedding garnered a number of other international awards, however. Other Bier films of note are The One and Only (1999), Open Hearts (2002), and Brothers (2004). Her only U.S.‐based film to date, Things We Lost in the Fire (2008), starring Halle Berry and Benicio del Toro, received mixed critical reviews. Her 2011 film, In a Better World, received the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Susanne Bier’s films have been variously described as: * Celebrating the “unpredictability of life” (Thompson, 2007) * “Kitchen‐sink realism” (Sauntved, 2011) * Using clichés to “force us to challenge those short‐cut judgments and ill‐conceived assumptions we too often use to gauge the world around us” (Chahine, 2007) * Featuring “happy, comfortable characters [who are] jolted by events of unfathomable sadness” (Gold, 2007) * Demonstrating a strong ability to empathize with others (although Bier herself has had a privileged life) (Gold, 2007) * Having a recurring focus on the family, with an idealized “good family” (Marklund, 2008) In After the Wedding, the principal characters are: * Jacob, a Danish native who lives in India while managing an orphanage (played by Mads Mikkelsen) * Jorgen, the wealthy CEO of a Danish corporation that provides funding to Jacob’s orphanage (played by Rolf Lassgard) * Helene, Jorgen’s wife, who was once involved with Jacob (played by Sidse Babett Knudsen) * Anna, Helene’s daughter whose true paternity is revealed the day after her wedding (played by Stine Fischer Christensen) The cast of characters also includes Anna’s new husband Christian, Jacob’s boy in India, Pramod, and Jorgen and Helene’s twin sons, Martin and Morten. 1. Do you identify with either of the principal female characters? In what ways, and at what points in the story? 2 2. While not a “female‐focused film,” After the Wedding certainly does make observations about the accepted roles and expected behaviors of women. What are these observations? What do you think of them? 3. More generally, this film presents various alternative family roles. How are the roles of mother, of father, and of daughter, constructed in the film? In particular, note Jacob’s shifting role as father (of Pramod, of Anna, and even of the twins). What do you conclude from these role portrayals? 4. Who has power in this film? Is this power balanced by the efforts of other characters? Or, are some characters rendered helpless? 5. How about the ethics of the application of this power? As Susanne Bier asks rhetorically in the film’s DVD extras, “Does anyone have any right to want to control other people’s lives?” and “Can anyone who manipulates other people to benefit them ever really know what is good for them?” (Smith, 2010) 6. And, who is “good” and who is “evil” in this film? Are good and evil distributed as we might expect them to be? (Note that the character Jorgen actually claims, “I am just a good person.”) 7. The cinema of Denmark has a long and highly respected history, from the films of Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889‐1968; considered to be one of the greatest directors of all time; e.g., The Passion of Joan of Arc, 1928; Vampyr, 1932) to the works of contemporary masters Gabriel Axel (e.g., Babette’s Feast, 1987), Bille August (e.g., Pelle the Conqueror, 1988), Thomas Vinterberg (e.g., The Celebration/Festen, 1998), and Lars von Trier (e.g., Breaking the Waves, 1996; Dancer in the Dark, 2000; Dogville, 2003; Melancholia, 2011). Note that among these important Danish directors, Susanne Bier is the sole female. What would you think she brings to the task of film directing that is unique among her peers? 8. On being a woman in the film industry, Bier has said, “I made a choice early on that I wanted to be both director and producer. I wanted to have my cake and eat it because I didn’t want to make it seem impossible. Having said that, I don’t think my movies are defined by my gender” (Goodridge, 2012). Do you agree? 9. Bier’s films have generally been “overshadowed” internationally by those of her countryman Lars von Trier (Sauntved, 2011). Critics and film festival programmers have found her work “too commercial” or “insufficiently artistic.” It should be noted that her film In a Better World (2011), which won both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, was rejected by the Cannes Film Festival. How about After the Wedding? Does it seem more commercial, or more artistic? 10. Like many of Bier’s films, After the Wedding was produced by the Danish film company Zentropa, founded in 1992 by Danish National Film School grads Lars von Trier and Peter Aalbaek Jensen. In an ethnographic study of Zentropa conducted over a ten‐year period, scholar Jesper Strandgaard (2011) concluded that the company uses a prototypical “auteur model” for production—i.e., a director‐centered model characterized by artistically driven logic. This is as opposed to the more typically American “high concept” model for production, which is market driven, producer‐centered, and employs integrated 3 professionals who tend to work within the conventions of the film industry. How would you characterize After the Wedding with regard to this dichotomy? 11. However, Zentropa principal Lars von Trier and fellow National Film School of Denmark graduate Thomas Vinterberg in 1995 organized a collective of film directors called Dogme 95. The group issued a 10‐point “Vow of Chastity” aimed at refuting the “auteur” approach to filmmaking and infusing contemporary cinema with new life. (See Appendix below for the full Vow of Chastity.) Bier’s 2002 film, Open Hearts, was made under the Dogme 95 requirements (it is also known as Dogme #28). Dogme 95 created ripples of debate through the film world for years, although it has fallen from view in recent years. While After the Wedding is by no means a Dogme 95 film, can you see some influences of the manifesto? (By the way, Bier is quoted as saying, “We don’t necessarily have to obey all the rules. We’ve learned the lesson.” (Gold, 2007)) 12. Susanne Bier’s films have been noted to include a frequent look at Third World locations and problems. She has pointed out that the Third World is “really a part of our lives. It is unavoidable, and we need to relate to it” (Wikipedia). How does this Bier motif apply to After the Wedding? 13. Bier’s work has been noted to include the interweaving of high drama and the mundane. Bier attributes her own predilection toward disaster coming randomly, “out of nowhere” to her Jewish heritage, including her own parents’ flight from Nazi forces in Germany and Denmark (Sauntved, 2011). How does this pattern of melodrama in the mundane world manifest in After the Wedding? 14. Bier has also indicated that for her, “as a director, hope is probably the most important thing. I would have a really hard time making a movie with no hope” (A Discussion About Things We Lost in the Fire, DVD feature). What hope is demonstrated in After the Wedding? 15. On the other hand, at a Los Angeles screening of After the Wedding, Bier responded to an audience member’s declaration that “Americans want happy endings,” with her own statement‐‐“Happy endings are not truthful” (Ortner, 2012). How happy, and how truthful, is the film’s ending, do you think? 16. A recurring motif in Bier films is the loss of a parent by young children (e.g., The One and Only, Things We Lost in the Fire, In a Better World, After the Wedding). How is this manifested, and with what outcome, in After the Wedding? 17. Bier believes in an “organic” method of adapting the film’s screenplay with actors on the set. In After the Wedding, this was notably true of the scene between Jorgen and Helene when he realizes he is close to dying. Bier and the actor playing Jorgen agreed that the scene needed to be improvised (Goodridge, 2012). What result does this achieve? 18. In terms of production, we see in Bier’s films an often heavy use of elliptical cutting (“jump cuts”) that shortens the run time of a given sequence. Do you notice the use of elliptical cutting in After the Wedding? What impact does it have on your reception? 4 19. And, Bier’s films are noted for their nearly constant use of hand‐held camera. She eschews the use of “flashy camera work or long tracking shots. I am interested in human beings, not technical stuff” (Goodridge, 2012). How does this approach color our response to the content in After the Wedding? 20. Susanne Bier has said that she has “always been obsessed with extreme closeups. It’s almost like a landscape. They take part of a character’s face and almost turn it into an abstraction. [so that] you only stay with the emotion, you don’t necessarily stay with the physical features of a face” (A Discussion About Things We Lost in the Fire, DVD feature).