Inheritance

I once asked myself that if I were able to work a hard 60 hour week, every week for five years straight, and be paid over $200,000.00 per year, but be able to leave after those 5 years a millionaire and be free do do the things I really wanted to do, would I do it? The proposition sounds enticing, but I soon began to realize that after 5 years, I will have been a changed person, stressed, unhappy, and the things that I really wanted to do at the beginning would no longer have any hold on me at the end of those 5 years.

This movie made me think of that. When Christopher takes over his father's business, he was a happy man, with the best of intentions. But as the years pass, work, prestige, money blinded him from being a good husband, father, brother, friend,...etc.. and his story is told very well by the filmmaker, very simple and straightforward, and the dramatic scenes with his wife, are very realistic and not written and acted merely for dramatic effect.

I give Christopher the "dope of the year" award for treating his wife Maria the way he did. She was a beautiful, loyal, passionate, and very understanding wife. How could he not see that? and you tell yourself it's only a movie, but then in real life, you see guys like that all the time, throwing away gems while searching for rocks.

"The Inheritance (Arven)" is the best look since "The Godfather" at the corrosive impact of family business where there's no boundaries between family and business.

The starting premise is strikingly similar to another Scandinavian drama, the Icelandic "The Storm (Hafið)," as in both we start off with a prodigal son happily and romantically involved abroad but forced back to deal with the patriarch's dramatic decision that has ever widening ramifications.

But whereas the first went off in psycho-sexual directions from a fishery, this Danish film stays realistically in the board room of a steel plant as much as the bed room.

Here, his wife is a Shakespearean actress and the Shakespearean references I caught are played up beyond "King Lear,"as the matriarch, a scarily formidable Ghita Nørby, whose role could be taken by Judi Dench or Glenn Close in an American remake, is a Lady MacBeth, and he's baited by a CFO with a pronounced Iago modus operandi, while the wife, the very moving Lisa Werlinder, is left to plead like Portia in "Julius Caeser."

Un-Hamlet-like, Ulrich Thomsen's manipulatable Christoffer plunges into decisions that succeed at high psychological prices for him and those around him, reminding me of the classic closing line of the adaptation of Henry James, "The Heiress": "I've learned from masters."

A Danish modern that seems spare and bare bones when compared to other slick art house fare that is out there like "Vanity Fair" and "Bright Young Things." But it is just that lack of gloss that gives it its strength. The semi-Dogma style fits the story of a young man living in Sweden with his beautiful actress wife who gets called back to Denmark to run the family steel mill after his father's suicide. When he had been younger, he had almost died from the stress of working in the business. Now, with his relations and the workers depending on him, he slowly starts to shut down all of his systems in order to deal with the tough decisions he has to make. This is not a new theme, but Fly gives it new life with his astringent approach.

To start with the negative, I have two criticisms to make of Per Fly's film 'Inheritance'. Firstly, there's an "everything is beautiful" sheen to the world he depicts, manifested in the mock-idyll of the semi-aristocratic environment of its protagonists, the deep bond that connects the family business and the workers they employ, and the actors playing the characters themselves, especially the illuminating Lisa Werlinder. I appreciate that this is in part a stylistic choice, for the story is one of trouble beneath a superficially perfect surface, but real life is rarely that perfect, even when viewed superficially. Secondly, the tale of a young businessman worn down by executive responsibility and a dominant mother is fairly predicable. The latter fault is a special shame; because it threatens to mask what is a superbly directed movie, whose cast all give perfectly judged, understated performances. The opening sequences are utterly, though quietly, gripping, but once the basic scenario has been laid out, the story ceases to surprise and one can almost overlook the quality of the film-making: it takes the power of an unexpected scene (the attempted rape) to remind one just how skilfully Fly has managed to convince us of the reality of his world, excessive beauty notwithstanding. In some ways, and in spite of the more affluent setting, the story feels like something that would have been at home in Kiesolowski's 'Dekalog'; but in that work, each story took only an hour: at the same length, this could have been a knock-out. As it is, 'Inheritance' can't quite reach those heights; but it's still a compelling portrait of the way that people change.

Arven is a superb 'European' film. It is compelling viewing. It deals with a plethora of human issues and choices without

being sentimental or resorting to clichés. It is visually stunning. It is moving. The actors are convincing. We care about the characters. In fact, we really care! And I can only recommend it highly.