Film: After the Wedding

Those of us who are married know that the wedding is the easy part of marriage. After the lovely mess has been cleaned up, we face the “after,” which is, to be sure, where the real marriage begins. Here is where our film focuses: After the Wedding.

There’s a message even in that insight: once the ceremony celebrating, any ritual event is over, we return to the real world.  The Eagle Scout wakes up a pinch different; the departing missionary sports a new suit and tie, etc., and puts on the battle badge.  The Green Beret paints his face and jumps into the “work of death.”

What happens, then, when the woman you love but have in your endless drifting, lost track of her, only to find her married, blessed with two young bouncing Danish tow-heads and a daughter, much older, say 18, about to marry.

And you’re invited. Then her father offers your orphanage enough money to keep going, to survive, maintaining that oasis in the middle of New Delhi, teeming with hungry children.

Watch this chess game for real stakes played out by Jergen, the father of the children. You’ll find yourself studying Jacob’s [the great Danish giant, Mad Mikkelsen] every move and always his eyes. The musical score evades you 5 minutes after the film but the camera work is excellent, carried out, of course, in that Bergmanesque manner. Apparently Scandinavians like to look you in the eye. Perhaps they don’t. That’s why Bergman would not take the camera off the eyes. The windows of the soul.

In fact, film buffs become detectives. We like to look for hints. You accomplished chess players, in keeping with our chess motif, will enjoy following the moves.

Jergen is the power piece, and he controls the center of the board. Jacob sees himself unfairly as a pawn. The object in this chess game, however, is not to hunt the King and kill him. The idea is to orchestrate the board into a balanced, aesthetically pleasing arrangement.

What would you do if you had great resources, but “time’s winged chariot” was at your heels, relentless in her pursuit, soon to scoop you away after running over you, into the heavens, into peace?

The full impact of that moment brings the best out of Rolf Lassgard. And it is as fine an acting moment you will see, even in George Clooney’s breakdown in Descendants.

Imagine yourself empowered to do this good thing.  My skeptic friends would say, “look at history, look at human nature, look at your own sacred texts’: “We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, . . . they will exercise unrighteous dominion” [italics added].

It doesn’t say all men [and women]; it says “almost all men.” Jergen is not one of those men, whatever his faults.