After the Wedding
Directed by Susanne Bier
Defining the qualities that make actors into talented artists requires a clear understanding of the elements that create their range. Sean Connery, for example, will always play James Bond, which either helps or hurts his later work. Samuel L. Jackson has devolved into cartoon riffs on his earlier performances. Neither man demonstrates a lack of ability—but the specific limitations of their careers are predicated on the roles that appear to most appropriately suit their abilities. Danish actor Mads Mikkelson is a different story altogether. In the last few years, Mikkelson has played a dangerous Bond foil in Casino Royale, a thug seeking redemption in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher II and now portrays the soulful manager of an orphanage in Susanne Bier’s After the Wedding. That sort of chameleon versatility doesn’t come along very often.
The remarkable feat of After the Wedding is that Mikkelson’s character, Jacob, at first seems to be the story’s hero, but the trappings of his fragile personality gradually turn him into its central victim. Leaving his home in India to meet with a potential financier in Copenhagen, Jacob finds himself suddenly confronting a past that he tried to escape years ago by vanishing into altruism. The investor, a wealthy family man named Jorgen (Rolf Lassgard), regards Jacob’s activist mindset with jovial condescension, but a larger scheme eventually becomes apparent: The two men share an aspect of their past (which I won’t spoil) that requires Jacob to reexamine his value system.
In early scenes, his emotional fragility makes his mission tough; he has a hard time convincing Jorgen that the orphanage is worth supporting without gritting his teeth and lighting his eyes on fire. Bier draws a fascinating parallel between the two men, who harbor different global initiatives but seem equally plagued by personal disillusionment.
Jacob’s real reason for traveling to Denmark is unknown even to him for most of the movie. Jorgen, who gradually becomes the real center of the plot’s winding path, carries ulterior motives that call into question Jacob’s moral priorities and redefine his responsibilities. Bier constructs this conflict with distinct noir ingredients, but the suspense isn’t your typical who-killed-who dynamic. Instead, it’s a whodunit about human nature. Mikkelson has his work cut out topping this one, but everything that has come before suggests that he’ll figure something out.
