There are times when a film, even when recommended, so exceeds any expectations that the experience wipes away, if only for a moment, all of the disappointments that occur when mediocrity is found to lie behind the curtain of hype that precedes a film’s release. In this case, the savior of cinema was a recent Oscar nominee from Denmark, Susanne Bier’s After the Wedding. What makes the film all the more remarkable is that there isn’t really anything extraordinary or original in the core of its story; however, the story telling is so well executed, such a pleasure to experience, that it would be wrong to talk about the plot in much detail.
Here is how it starts, however. Jacob (recent Bond villain Mads Mikkelsen) is a Danish expatriate running an orphanage and school in Calcutta. 
He learns that a potential benefactor, which their operation desperately needs, insists on meeting Jacob in Copenhagen before writing the big check. Jacob is surprisingly resistant to going (we have seen him tell the orphans about the terrible rich people who live in Europe) yet he eventually relents. Jacob meets with the potential benefactor, Jørgen (Rolf Lassgård), who comes off as the typical megalomaniac businessman. As a show of his largess, and having delayed the decision to fund the orphanage, Jørgen invites Jacob to his daughter’s big wedding the following day.
At the wedding, the first of a series of coincidental mysteries is revealed which will keep the characters (and the audience) off balance for a great deal of the picture. This initial description, which I had known before sitting down with the recently released DVD, seemed dangerously similar to Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen, aka The Celebration, a film I thoroughly enjoyed. Rest assured, they are very different films. The level of craft in the scripting and especially the editing — providing subtle visual clues which either reveal or obscure our search for the truth — is peerless. As one might expect from the country whose Dogme movement championed the hand-held camera, its use here is ideal, creating intimacy and yet never calling attention to itself. (The latter seems to elude so many.)
One reason we don’t notice the camerawork is that the performances are marvelous. Lassgård is particularly amazing, as much for his loud moments as for his subtle ones. As for Mikkelsen, he is perfectly cast as Jacob, the type of character which calls to mind Bresson or Hanake: 
part stoic robot, part emotional prism. Jørgen call him an angry man at their first meeting. He, like almost every character in the film, reveals himself to be much more. Bier and co-writer Anders Thomas Jensen (The Green Butchers, Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, The King Is Alive) develop the story and the characters with such careful orchestration so as to eventually demand our total investment. And yet, to the credit of the filmmakers, what eventually becomes a wrenching story is told without a hint of sentimentality.
So as not to spoil anything, I unfortunately can’t discuss the moral and ethical issues presented by the film. I can tell you that, like a good book, After the Wedding still has me thinking about the character’s motivations and of several minor, but fascinating, unresolved details. It is rare for a film to so vividly create a sustainable world for its characters. I am looking forward to catching up on some of director Bier’s other work, which includes a Dogme film with Mikkelsen, Open Hearts. (Thus reviving my quest to see the remaining Dogme films, after having been put off here.)
Here are this morning’s Oscar-nominated films, alphabetically. The nominees for foreign language film and documentary feature are compiled at the end of the list. (Short format nominees are listed in a 
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