News@FMUL invited Dr. António Pais de Lacerda*, an “expert” in films related to medicine, to contribute with some movie suggestions for its readers. In addition to being the founder and president of MedCine Film Festival (Cascais, 2009), this FML lecturer has developed and maintains an updated lists of this type of movies that is given to students in Module III-I, in the first year of the Integrated Master Degree in Medicine.

News@FMUL thanks him for his precious support to medical culture and the “seventh art”.
*Assistant Lecturer of the Subjects of Module III.I “Clinical Medicine – The Physician, the Person and the Patient” and of Intensive Medicine at FMUL.



“In a better world”, Susanne Bier (Denmark, 2010)

“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method that rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. And the foundation of such method is love.”  (Martin Luther King, Jr.)



When one thinks about Danish film production, it is natural to think about the films by Lars von Trier, the director who became renown in 1996 with “Breaking the waves” and then with “Dancer in the dark” (2000), who was already famous thanks to the 1994 mini-series “Riget” (“The Kingdom”), that took place at a large hospital of the 1950s type, with cutting edge technology.

The film industry is of utmost cultural importance in a country that is half the size and population of Portugal, and the government and the Det Dansk Filminstitut believe that it is vital that citizens view their own lives on the screen, as this makes them understand their thoughts better, allowing them to discuss their problems and concerns. In this sense, the state subsidy to cinema is high and the support to the Danish Film School eventually gives rise to new filmmakers who want to maintain a film industry that is interesting in terms of social evolution and also has an educational purpose, particularly for young people.

This is how Susanne Bier comes about. She graduated at this school in 1987 and became well known in 2004 with “Brødre”. More recently, she directed “Hævnen” (which means “Revenge” but was translated into other languages as “In a Better World” 2010), a film written by Anders Thomas Jensen. After having received the Public and the Grand Jury awards at the Rome Film Fest (2010), this movie was awarded “Best Foreign Language Film of the Year” (2011) at the Academy Awards of Los Angeles, and the Golden Globe for “Miglior Film Europeo” in Italy. In the same year, Susanne Bier received the European Film Award for “Best Director”.

Anton (Mikael Persbrandt) is a Swedish physician who divides his activity between the Danish city where he lives (and who is considering divorcing Marianne, Trine Dyrholm) and a refugee camp in Africa. Conflict situations arise on both sides of his life that require choosing between revenge and forgiveness.

In fact, his eldest son, Elias (Markus Rygaard), aged 10, is being bullied until the moment he started being protected by a colleague (Christian, William Jøhnk Nielsen), newly arrived from London, revolted against his father (Claus, Ulrich Thomsen) and still not recovered from having lost his mother to cancer. The way this 12-year-old child expresses his deep hurt, transforming it into resentment and anger, leading to impulses of violence, is interesting. The chemistry in the relationship between the two boys is strong and very realistic, leading to extreme situations which, following the initial resignation of one of the boys, change into the revenge of both, endangering their own lives.
In the same fashion, in Africa, the specific situations happening at the refugee camp (including the need to treat/save the people who assault the victims staying in the same camp) cause agony moments when choices need to be made and professional ethics need to inform decisions.

The film progressively reveals the constant overlapping of day-to-day issues between the most innermost feelings and the resolution of external problems (of a family or social nature) affecting us, keeping an utopian (?) orientation of justice and non-violence. The reflection (in which we are certainly involved) develops around our responses to aggression. Can we keep the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius that “the best revenge is to be different from the one who committed the act of aggression”?

How do we respond to domestic violence alongside experiencing times of psychological aggression at work? Is violence so deeply rooted in human nature that even the best of us will eventually resort to it (or tolerate it)? Or are we able to find a “higher” standard of conduct that is able to make us overcome irrational instincts? Is it possible to format/live in a better world?

It may be that we think that the film presents aspects of a reality finally resolved in the most reassuring form for the viewer (which probably is not the reality of “this world”). But maybe that is just the intention of Susanne Bier – we do not need to feel tragic responses in order to think. We need a movie that makes us aware of problems and that, in a simple way, (perhaps) takes us to a better world.