Mads Blog

This post is back-dated on my Scandinavian film blog, like the others I have reviewed, because of the craziness and then the crash after the TIFF. My apologies for being tardy!

I went to the gala screening of "After the Wedding" on September 15. I arrived at 8:30 or so, and the line was already around the block. I asked someone to hold my place, and then went to stand near the entrance, because I'd never seen a red-carpet walk before. And I still haven't. For the life of me, I can't understand who those people - kids, really - were who got the closest-standing spots to the entrance with the red carpet. I imagine they just got there good and early for the excitement, or had friends in the biz, or some in the biz themselves…

A fellow came by to offer me his tickets (just my luck! and after I'd already bought mine!) and he was young, in the biz, and by himself, so I persuaded him to use his and come and see it with me anyway.

The VIP line were getting free schwag like mints and toffee coffee, which the rest of us General Admission audience got when the VIPs were through. We were steered up to the balcony - really high up, nosebleed seats - where we got second-row. Some people got switched to lower balconies or main floors, and I really wish they had done that with everyone, because there was ample space throughout the crowd. Nonetheless, though Mads and Stina, the stars who introduced the movie (director Susanne Bier was in Vancouver, and writer Anders Thomas Jensen just had a baby) looked like well-dressed insects from way up high, once the movie started the perspective of the screen wasn't all that terrible.

So the movie starts with little fanfare or showy-ness. The story just begins. And it's remarkably tender, the relationship Jacob has with one of his orphans in particular. Pramod came into the orphanage when he was a baby, and now he's 8. And he is furious that Jacob is leaving to go to Denmark to get funding, saying he'll never come back (he does, that's all I'm saying).

Now prior to the movie, the General Director or CEO of the TIFF Group said that this was a weeper, that everyone would be crying. I was not. That's not to say I wasn't affected, but I had seen Färvel Falkenberg earlier that day and was all cried out. The drama of the relationships that come out of the past and smack Jacob hard in the future - they're hard enough to smack Jacob into the background, actually, because they are bigger than he is, and the wonder of it is, Jacob has the courage to realize and humility to submit to it. Now that's a man. And it was very, very satisfying to see.

The film had already picked up American distribution while it was in production, by the way. I imagine all gala movies did, perhaps in order to be gala movies.

Now I have a trivial question: what is it with Ander Thomas Jensen and dead animals? Please, would somebody tell me? Because if I have to, I'll go straight up the chain to find out. And I will, too.

After the movie, I saw Mads from about 15 meters away, and because I had met him the day before, I felt like I could have said hello. But unless I'm with a connector stronger than myself, I don't usually connect except by myself. Other people aren't as comfortable as me at going after introductions, and to keep things polite, I take their cue and trust that if I'm going to make connections, it'll happen naturally or "through the proper channels." And though I hate being restrained, I know it's the right thing to do in most cases.