Fossier, In a better world

The film In a Better World (Susanne Bier) is a translation from the original Danish title, The Revenge. The film follows the story of Anton (Mikael Persbrandt) and his son Elias as they struggle to decide how to approach life: calm and steady, or grab it by the balls and go, a concept Elias friend Christian brought to him and his dad. When Christian’s mother passes, he finds out she had asked to die and that his father helped her. Christian views this “giving up” as weakness and develops a very strong attitude about personal space. He asserts this new attitude on the school bully as befriends Elias, the quiet kid. Meanwhile, Anton deals with his own bully, “the big man,” as his daily routine is undoing the carnage he spreads. “The big man” cuts open pregnant women and kills their babies and Aton can only sit back and try to help those who have been victimized. The internal conflict in Anton comes to a head one day at the playground when Elias and Christian witness another man slap Anton in the face. The boys are outraged at Aton’s restraint and formulate their own plan to enact revenge. They track the man from the playground from his van to his office at an auto shop. Elias calls his dad a wimp, provoking him into entering the auto shop. Though Anton stands his ground, the mechanic still slaps him in the face. The boys, mostly Christian, cannot see past Anton’s maturity of the situation; Christian believes in “an eye for an eye.” The boys take their revenge plot further and make a car bomb from old fireworks. Meanwhile, the situation at home has given Aton courage in his work. “The big man” has gunned his way into Anton’s camp with a leg injury and tries to bully him into treating him. Realizing he is the man in power, Anton sets his ground rules and orders “the big man” to dismiss his army. When “the bigman” steps over the line by suggesting Anton let the men rape the dead woman’s corpse, Anton finally makes a decision to drag him out to the tribe whose wives had been cut open, ending “the big man’s” life, and leaving the tribe with a better world. I would argue that since the opening scene and ending scene focus on Anton’s struggles, the title A Better World fits better because he enacts no revenge, just Christian.