Paradise

Three Danish male directors stand behind this reflecting impressionistic collage on Life and Death, joy and pain, sorrow and happiness. The background is Denmark in this beginning of a new century, a country that is at war in Iraq, a society where refugees from the same country live in asylum centres, a place on earth – like everywhere else – where old people die and children get born.

The directing team has chosen a contrasting structural principle. From the young boy who is to be sent to Iraq, to the asylum centre girl, who writes to the minister for help. From the drug abusers and alcoholics who get a visit by the police to the young rich man who negociates a price for his airplane. Or to the young couple who is expecting their child and argues about how to arrange their future life. And many other characters from the country and from the city. Old and young. Rich or well-off and poor. And in between the old man whose wall is full of small philosophical notes. The one who is there to stress that the film wants to be more than glimpses of life in Denmark.

But is it more than so? Is this the right narrative format for going deeper, for making us viewers reflect? I doubt it, at the same time as I welcome the ambition. For me, however, it stays on the surface, I am looking at something that I know very well, Denmark and Danish life – and as such the film in some ways succeeds to give us Denmark as it is right now, for good and bad – but the universal layer stays conceptual wishful thinking where at no point you feel really involved. Gemacht. What a pity. For a film with three fine directors, right intentions and brilliant camera work.

Paradise. 70 mins. By Jens Loftager, Erlend Moe, Sami Saif. Denmark, 2008

http://www.filmfestival.dk/Webnodes/da/Web/Top/Forside

http://www.dfi.dk/english/Danish+films/Directors/filmFact.htm?FilmID=16149