Submarino

Still involved in his preoccupations with collapse of family foundation and its bonds (as evident also in his fantastic Dogme 1, FESTEN), Vinterberg comes back to Berlin with a film which is not about love at all, but about misery in general. SUBMARINO is the story of lack of love, family and commitment which is reflected in addiction, despair and murder. Looking through a glass darkly at the depressed people in times of depression, it gains its strength from the constraint approach to the subject matter. In his usual personal visions (of course, without a trembling camera after his Dogme propaganda and anti-bourgeoisie pretense), Vinterberg finds his way through a way far from any sentimentality. Grey overtones in each shot marks the world he's going to portray – a world in which everyone has forgotten all about fear and trembling. However it seems too naturalistic, SUBMARINO is able to make a survey into the lives of miserable men of the third millennium, not as a tearjerker, but as a veritable mirror

I don't get why they called this movie Submarino. I must have missed something or maybe I'm just too stupid to understand the pun. That said, it doesn't really matter as long as the movie is entertaining and that it was for sure. It's a Danish drama, about two brothers that grew up in a highly dysfunctional family, with an alcoholic mother that can only bothered by her next drink. The story is told in two parts, each part seen by the other brother. It isn't a happy movie, the desperation is overwhelming, but it's realistic, certainly for people living in big cities where these kind of things happen on a daily basis. I didn't know any of the actors but they all did a very good job playing their characters. Their acting made this movie worth watching.

We see two separate but continuously interleaving stories of two brothers, each trying to cope with their daily lives, overall providing for a pessimistic view on their lives, riddled with drugs, violence, alcohol, bad housing circumstances, but at the same time trying to deal with their responsibilities like caring for a kid. The title of the film says it all: it stands for a method of torture, where someone is kept under water until he nearly drowns.

Though knowing no people living in similar depressing circumstances, casting and acting looked very convincing to me. Apart from that, we saw a sequence of events that kept us wondering what would happen next. All this resulted in a "page turner" experience, fundamental to a good movie.

Alternating between the stories of the two brothers was an extra bonus that made this film entertaining throughout. They each live their own separate lives, under circumstances that are very different but equally troublesome. Their respective paths cross each other in less than a handful of situations. Once you get a fix who the main characters are, this way of structuring two story lines works perfectly.

The film opens with a prologue, wherein two young boys imitate the baptism of a newly born child "just like they do in church". After that, the real story takes off, but I could not connect the dots at the point where the prologue moves on to the actual two story lines. Maybe I was not paying attention enough. I had to wait until the final scene before I understood. Regardless, it did not hinder my appreciation of the film as a whole.

Given all things happening you cannot expect everyone to live happily ever after. Nevertheless, the finale of the movie shows a moving scene under impressive musical tones, where even the toughest role players seem to show some tears. It may be intended by the film makers to leave us with an optimistic feeling after all, with some silver lining around the clouds.

Vinterberg has a great grip on playing out human drama. Even though the circumstances are extreme and might feel a tiny bit too much, I never felt the emotions displayed are overplayed or inauthentic. The subtleties of the main actors were very nicely used to convey dread as well as sympathy with the two brothers. All in all it felt like a roller-coaster of redemption-feelings, since with every chapter closed, yielding the actual redemption, another backside opened, inducing jarring unfinishedness, unansweredness, and despair.

An incredibly intriguing, engaging, emotional and thoughtful drama from Denmark. Intriguing because there is a mystery about the sequence of events. You see the movie from one brother's perspective, initially, and there's a question mark over the whereabouts of the other brother. Then you see the other brothers story, starting a few weeks earlier, and everything starts to fall into place. A very clever plot device.

Engaging and emotional because you feel for the characters. They might not be the most angelic of people, but they are people worth caring about. You are drawn into their characters and relationships, and keep fearing for the worst.

Thoughtful because of how the movie depicts life at its rawest and people at their mot vulnerable, in a very sensitive and intelligent manner.

Not perfect though. The film is a bit rough around the edges. There are some minor character inconsistencies and some small sub- plots are inflated all out of proportion.

Solid performances all round, including one of the better performances you'll see from a child: Gustav Fischer Kjærulff as MArtin.

Great script and direction from Thomas Vinterberg, who I'm sure we'll hear a lot more of in the future. He has already directed one English-language/US-based movie, Dear Wendy, so will not be totally foreign to US audiences. His follow-up to Submarino, The Hunt, received a Best Foreign Film Oscar nomination in 2014, and has pushed him further into the limelight. He is bound for great things.