In A Better World (2010)

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign film last year, director Susanne Bier takes us on a worldly story that deals with two families entering a crisis.   Anton is a doctor who works from time to time in Africa, a man who is against violence at any cost, but also a father whose in danger of losing his family because of an affair.  One of his sons, Elias, has become friends with Christian, a young man dealing with the death of his mother by lashing out at the world with anger.  This is a powerful film with universal truths about violence and how it rots the soul, and yet sometimes its hard to put out.   There's a lot to love about this film: it's beautifully shot, the acting is superb and the writing sublime.  Sometimes the cinephotography is too perfect but becasue of the strong story I can't call this really a bad thing.  I still have a few more films to see before I've seen all the nominees that year for the Foreign-Language Oscar but I can see why this one won.  Grade: A-