I've started something I can't control

EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE (2010)

Unreliable narrators seemed to be a fixture in film last year. From DiCaprio’s delusional Teddy Daniels to Portman’s disquieted Nina Sayers, a handful of now prominent films featured stories told through the eyes of their unhinged protagonists. Christoffer Boe’s Jacob Falk is no exception. The Danish director's fourth feature film is one that caters to our curiosity and forces us to look beyond the scope of normalcy.

Much like Swimming Pool and even Memento – to an extent – Everything Will Be Fine offers more than a fair amount of interaction – films with enigmatic structures usually do. Minds race, questions are asked, clues are assembled. Films like Pool and Memento are fun to watch because they involve the audience; when our narrator is clearly unsettled, it becomes our job to separate fantasy from reality. There’s no singular path provided, thus we’re left to draw our own conclusions.

We’re initially led to believe that the events unfolding in Everything Will Be Fine are based in reality and that the contradiction of this would turn out to be the “twist”. As a firm hater of spoilers, I’ll just safely confirm that the real “twist” – if you can even call it that – has nothing to do with the psychological aspect Boe promotes in this film. In fact, the clues given throughout are presented so overtly that it’s not all that challenging to discern a large sum of the plot as pure fantasy.

 

Appropriately enough, our lead character’s – Jacob Falk’s (Jens Albinus) – strong suit centers on fantasy; he’s a director/screenwriter faced with a deadline and the pressure to meet it is taking toll on his mental health. Adding additional pressure is his wife (Marijana Jankovic) who nags him about the adoption papers he’s failed to fill out and capping it all off is the soldier (Igor Radosavljevic) he runs over – who happens to be carrying photos of Danish soldiers committing atrocities against POWs. This little finding incites a spiraling descent into paranoia, a descent that serves more as a guilt trip than anything else and one that ultimately finds Falk wallowing in regret over his past.

If any film deserved the label of “mind bender” last year, it was Boe’s thriller. Inception may have pulled out all the stops in the dream department – with a hefty amount of exposition, I might add – but it never once allowed me to determine the logic behind what was happening for myself; mostly because explanations were doled out so generously to the audience. With Everything Will Be Fine, audiences are rendered just as clueless and disconcerted as Falk.

The disorienting effect Boe employs through Falk is the essence of “mind bending”, the remnants of classic psychological thrillers unearthed in brilliant form. What also makes Falk’s journey so transfixing is the capability of the actor portraying him. Albinus quickly transforms from a seemingly composed director into a man influenced by fear. He comes to distrust his own sister (the talented, but wasted Paprika Steen), loses his grip on reality and begins rambling on about government conspiracies and secret agendas that fit better in his script than they do in reality. Albinus really slips into the psychosis of this character, delivering a disturbed, but natural performance.

Boe’s structure causes some minor concern – as we follow Falk on his wild goose chase for answers we’re simultaneously following Ali, the soldier Falk mows down in his 70s model Grand Marquis. What’s bothersome about this is the interweaving of story arcs. We hear Falk mumbling to himself about penning a script on war; enter Ali. Ali’s arc begins, we shift between his and Falk’s, Falk eventually runs Ali over, snags his sensational photos and heads off on an aimless quest for answers. Ali’s arc technically ends there, but Boe continues to recount the soldier’s story alongside Falk’s. So instead of contributing anything crucial to the plot – Ali’s arc really has nothing important to say – this tactic mainly interrupts flow. I suppose one could always consider Ali’s back-story necessary in visualizing Falk’s script, but what a distracting way to execute such an idea.

On the technical end, Boe’s cinematography and camerawork are absolutely spellbinding; the way he captures Denmark’s modern aesthetics – the country’s obscure architecture specifically – is laud-worthy. His decision to display external scenes as film set dioramas rather than actual locations further confirms the falsity of what Falk perceives as reality. All in all, an ambitious film with ambitious performances that sits high on my list of the year’s best foreign features.

8.5/10