After The Wedding : A bollywood story told differently

Movies are essentially stories told in an interesting manner. How interesting is entirely up to the writer's imagination.

So here is a movie, whose language for dialogue delivery is Danish, but I feel the primary language for the movie should be called the "body language". Yes, eyes, face, lips, hands, movement, forehead, all of them talks and they say more than what can be captured in words. The movie shows the power of visuals and its superiority over written stuff in a certain way.

Most of the times I have seen movies where the first half of the movie deals with character introduction and character development and second part speaks about the events that bring the characters together and makes a plot. Well, this movie does it differently, it starts with events that weaves the character one by one in to a plot and then develops the characters as the layers of revealation of the depth of relationships is explored.

The movie is not a thriller, the movie is not a suspense movie, but still it has proper twists and turns at every juncture to tell an emotional tale of relationship in an interesting manner.

Story {Note : Spoilers ahead}

The movie starts with a Zealous Jacob (Mads Mikkelsen) working in slums of mumbai for running an orphanage. Taking food, shelter and education to the kids who require them the most, his only motive apparaently is doing good for them. The orphanage will have to close unless Jacob gets money for running it from somewhere.

Jacob's love at the orphanage seems to be the young boy whom he has raised since 8 years, Pramod(Neeral Mulchandani). Pramod finds it easy to play with and to demand things from Jacob just the way any little kid would demand from his parents. Jacob gets a message from some wealthy businessman in Denmark, for interest in donating money to his project. He has to leave for Copenhagen to know about the same. He feels sad getting parted from Pramod whom he promises to be back before his Birthday.

Reaching Denmark, Jacob meets Jorgen (Rolf Lassgard), the clear headed rich businessman, who informs him about his wish to donate money into one out of the 5 projects he has shortlisted. Jacob's Orphanage is one of them. Jacob has to wait till the next week to get an approval. Jorgen invites him to marriage of his daughter on the weekend.

Jacob hardly knows, that his life will be changed completely after the wedding. He does not realize any motive of Jorgen in inviting him to the marriage... But... There is.

The marriage is of Christian (Christian Tafdrup) and Anna(Stine Christensen), Christian is a young employee of Jorgen's business and Anna is Jorgen's daughter. In the wedding, Jacob meets Helene, Jorgen's wife (Sidse Knudsen) who had been his girlfriend before he left for India.

The eyes meet, the forgotten touch is mused over, a simple "hi" with troubled and surprised eyes pass by as Jorgen introduces them to each other. The marriage goes on fine till there is a toast made by Christian and Anna.

Anna toasts for all the love that her parents Jorgen and Helene had showered on her, even when Jorgen had not been her genetic father. One more layer of relationship seems to open up. Jacob is visibly disturbed thinking over and over again as to "is she his daughter?"

She indeed is and without a dialogue that comes clear between Jorgen, Helene and Jacob.

Oh my, should he be happy, for finding his daughter after all this years or should he feel angry for not having her for all these years. He does both.

Angry on Helene, for keeping his daughter away, he reaches their house after the marriage and has a fight with Helene on the same. Here you learn getting a layer deeper in the relationship that Helene had left a drunk, broke and drug addict Jacob as he cheated on her once. Surely Jacob has changed a lot since then. He asks them to inform his daughter about the same. Helene and Jorgen tells her daughter about the same.

Anna, now wants to know more about her father. They meet and they meet again. Anna is discovering a lot about his real father.

Jorgen also arranges a meeting between Helene and her old boyfriend. He takes his kids away on a fishing vacation as Helene and Jacob talks.

Anna discovers that Christian, her husband is cheating on her. The girl is disheartened and weak and she gets support from her parents, Jacob and Helene.

Jorgen now approves Jacob's request and sets up a fund in name of Anna and Jacob for the orphanage, but his demand is Jacob should stay in Denmark.

Why is Jorgen doing this? why did he do all that he did?

The answer slowly comes forth as you learn along with Helene, Anna and Jacob that Jorgen is having a disease and that he is going to die, and die soon. All he wants is to make Jacob replace him to take care of his wife, children and Anna. The final peel is now reached and all the pieces of the jigsaw now fits to give us a complete story.

The movie ends with the death of Jorgen, and with Jacob going back to India to see how is the new construction site of the orphanage. Pramod decides to stay back at the new place.

Credits

Well the movie is essentially a Bollywood story of lost and found and of "Anand" style Jorgen helping everyone getting united. But what makes it stand out is the way the director tells us the story and the way camera moves to let us know the same.

The story as I have already described, moves on slowly to disclose each secret and makes itself interesting. Susan Biers (Story) does a decent job with story though not great, but Anders Jensen (screenplay) just makes it interesting with the screenplay.

Most interesting part infact is the editing(Christensen and Hojberg) and cinematography (Hein and jacobsen) with extra closeup shots of faces, lips, eyes explaining each scene with vivid details.

Camera like the characters depicted is up, close and shaky.

My favourite scene in the movie happens to be the one where Anna goes to the hotel room for meeting her father for the first time. There they are, standing infornt of each other, not knowing what to say, not knowing how a young girl should talk to a father like Jacob, and Jacob not knowing how to talk to a young daughter. All he manages is blurt out a line "Do you want some coke?" Anna says yes visibly tense as the camera moves over her hands which tells you how nervous she is. All she then manages to say is "did you never know that I exist?" Jacob has no answers he is choked and so was I. Beautifully shot, very emotional.

One more scene that I liked was when Anna comes to Jacob with her photographs of growing up showing him all that he missed in the years that passed by.

Director ( Susan Biers) shows her brilliance with emotional scenes also in many other scenes like the one where Jacob meets Helene after all these years, a scene when Anna goes to Jorgen after knowing that he is dying. Scene where Jacob and Helene consoles their daughter who is facing what they had faced years back. Scene where Jorgen hugs Helene to cry that he does not want to die.

The music (Johan Sodgervist) of the movie is average and fails to impress.

Acting by all the actors is simply superb. The movie is to be watched for their acting more than anything else, especially Mads and Stine, who does beautiful work as father and daughter. Their chemistry as father and daughter stands out in all the scene. Rolf Lassgard does good barring certain scenes where he hams. Sidse Knudsen looks elegant and beautiful as a mother.

An ordinary story told in an extraordinary way. See it if you like emotional bollywood stuff. See it if you like to cry occasionaly watching a movie.

3.5* for the beautiful direction of the below average story.