Yes, the characters in disaster films usually live in the present tense that this future catastrophe, however certain it may be, doesn’t get the likelihood of events that come. That’s the real drawback in creativity trying to aestheticize such tragic development in art or politics. It is the dramatization of global warming and its, satisfying attempt, consequences. An example would be that people would jump out of a burning building in nanoseconds but behave like frogs in a pot of water whose police rose is slowly turned to high temperature boiling in its exterminating effect. That is the creative deadlock that awards-winning director Thomas Vinterberg and his script-maker Bo Hr. Hansen have guts to break in their series named Families Like Ours. It envisions Denmark when there are no more Denmarks to stay because the tribe has to migrate due to increasing desperate conditions.
As in the case of all Vinterberg’s masterpieces like The Celebration and The Hunt (and also his captivating Oscar-winning Another Round) the miniseries is both a sociopolitical commentary and a psychological drama. Families Like Ours takes generalized, even geographic levels of the problem of water level increase and then has a valid aim which is to address something basic and universal to our state. It does not have such false ‘Roland Emmerich’ style world-ending disaster scenes. It’s not a nature calamity that’s going to wipe these protagonists out; but it can be frenzied looters, human trafficking, hunger, poverty, anti-refugees rationale or even worse, the sentiment towards refugees. That’s the kind of future we are going to have.
Oceanic levels steadily increase, and it is irrespective of whether you pay heed to it or not, every politician will tell you otherwise. In the coming 16 years, Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, will be submerged entirely. A 40 billion dollar sea wall has been being built for some time but the people living within the city which amounts to 11 million will have to relocate. Then, in a similar dynamic, it will happen with Tokyo, Mumbai, New York, Istanbul, London, Miami, and Bangkok exactly the same and by the turn of the century it will be very hard to live in a place currently, we call the coastal area; but quite soon, all that, will be just, well, water. You think the planet has much of a problem with immigration at the moment? Well, this century it is going to multiply that problem by a hundred.
The story of Families Like Ours is set in the period of six months to empty Denmark so that it cannot be inhabited. And then it attempts to pursue the stories of a few of the Danish who have emigrated to other countries in such disorientation. On a smaller level, the series chronicles the journey of young Laura, who is on the cusp of becoming an adult and graduating from high school. Eagle-eyed TIFF audiences are in for a treat with this new release — Families Like Ours — which is engaging and creative in many ways but also has an unfortunate strain of emotional exploitation which gets excessive. Still, it is one of the precious few works of art that does and does so effectively addressing the greatest horror that you are facing as of today.
The appreciation of urban settings in Families Like Ours resembles reading Blindness by José Saramago in that it is understandable why such a book would provoke so much interest. The narrative explores this theme exhaustively and realistically, hypothesizing how such an evacuation would actually transpire. Fresh institutions are created, while people queue at the dull like DMV offices to schedule meetings with people about the types of jobs and houses that are offered in certain nations.
The migration cycle is not uncommon as many wealthy countries people leave first. After that, the decision hinges on the individual’s abilities, languages spoken, relations, friends, passport and so on. In some cases, you may wake up in Paris in a new job while in other cases, you may wake up in a hostel in Romania whose bathroom is shared by ten other occupants. Either way, it is last order and you are not allowed to stay here all.
Very much balancing this macro perspective is the micro perspective of a young lady called Laura and the rest of her immediate and extended family (mother, Father, stepmother, uncle, brother, grandfather, grandmother, and boy friend). They are the main focus of the show, although the peripheral life in her circle is also included in this epic novel. Families like ours is generally quite good in the politics and the personal, the small and the large, the clock of using or the politics of using one family to describe apocalypse bureaucracies and vice versa. It actually might be too much of an expectation to put on one set of persons however, causing some dramatic overacting.
As with other immigrants, Laura ( Amaryllis August, performing the emotional pivot of the show that she sings ) has roots in different countries and is pulled in various directions with various ties and commitments. Such circumstances can create stress for their children – in Laura, they see this when she is caught in the middle of parents with different homes and different lives, often rising to negotiate her own mother’s emotions more. She rushed into a heated senior year relationship with young Elias, played charmingly by the future heart melter Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt who is quite good here. This is why di caprio is so effective as the character, serious within but still fascinated and wanting to have fun and make others happy.
And in the end, Families Like Ours becomes that epic where Laura and Elias who even before the last fall of Denmark found each other and reunite by fighting between each other. After the backers backed out, and the coup occurred, which made the two protagonists unaware of the lovers, are some of the highlights of the drama. What each of them did in seeking one another would almost make another cinema on its own, and easily one of those breathtaking, romantic, picturesque, and emotionally draining ones. Sadly, this one as well suffers from the same flaws that are mostly noticeable in Families Like Ours — over-reliance on easy emotional manipulation.
Let me be clear; Families Like Ours is a brilliant series; perhaps it is even more important than it is good (and it is very, very good). It is entertaining as it is, but sometimes its purpose of making conflicts is too much for its own good. In doing so, it makes certain characters, well, annoying. For example – Laura has to make the difficult decision to move out with her mother and not her father hence changing the whole family picture on that side. But then she emotionally chooses to stay with, or light the idea that she wants to stay with, her father’s family. That is, until she quite dramatically decides she is going with her mother instead. Each time, it is made that it is a choice that comes with certain Perils.
Such phony trickery is not only confined to the poor Laura whose lack of decision making leads to insufferable pain for all and may even make you hate her (and although the poor lady suffers much in this show due to her errors). The most harrowing sense of emotional abuse reaches beyond sympathy, the narrative looks onwards to what art is sometimes meant to provoke—empathy. The problem is like the boy who cried wolf, you don’t really buy into some of the decisions and actually care about them anymore since aiming for that will be cowed by the end of the same episode, it is very highly probable that those will be altered by the end of the same episode.
That is the kind of scandalous behavior that is more dramatic rather than quite dramatic, which is disappointing because Families Like Ours is practically flawless in all other departments. The love story is both heartwarming and heart-wrenching and depicts the struggles of love after it has been freed from its most whimsical fantasies into the real world that it lives in. The other cast of characters and their story arcs are quite impressively good and do not seem too excessive for this show.
It seems that it’s perhaps even Laura’s step-uncle Nikolaj (Esben Smed), who is the most memorable one; the intense side story with him and his husband Henrik (Magnus Millang) is always welcome. These two actors are quite decent together, however, especially Smed, who is a revelation. You will see him and his character Nikolaj in this show and you will wish to have a spinoff – no, you’re gonna need a spinoff. At least go watch Smed’s previous work; boy is he good. What is vegetable love in the advertisement and how does Nikolaj and Henrik’s story flow and intersect Allan’s love Lakshmikantha is intriguing, poetic and almost some kind of religious.
And piggybacking off that, perhaps we should mention David Dencik, he will be hard to forget as Henrik’s dreaded to suppose weaselly, godawful brother. The way in which he occupies space and how it is utilized is highly intelligent, and he and henrik, STRATMAKER become rather interestingly, ironically, stereotypically representative of the larger concerns of the show. But almost majority are excellent here on this one. Lagging behind would probably, in terms of characters fleshed out or adequately explored, would be Thomas Bo Larsen in the role of Holger. Larsen is a staggeringly visceral actor. Holger and his story had brimming potential. Sad to say, it simply adds up to narrative nuts and bolts.
The reason that you are always stimulated because of the family melodrama is what Ireland and Denmark cultures particularly featured in the story Families Like Ours Splashes you through. And such an impressive credit goes to the fast paced – borderline hasty at times – direction by Vinterberg and the vast script of Hansen that makes the show one of the very memorable ones.
Most importantly, maintaining the concept of the macro and micro approaches, in this film Vinterberg masterfully stages big things (for example, a demonstration in the street, mass people at the docks), while also working with minute, disturbing details which are very powerful too. For example, for a very brief moment, in the scene somebody drives away a neighbor and when he is driving away he is asked weather he forgot about his dog. The neighbor acts out a quick and quiet one handed slashing motion across his throat indicating that the dog has been ‘put down’ but the children are still in blissful ignorance. The sacrifices, confusions, and politics of the case – all these aspects arise, sculpted in major and minor details.
Sometimes it is so awkward, hard and painful that the writers express the reality and the how they experienced the migration. There is no need to focus only on the pain of those immigrants and refugees who fit into the conventional image that most people, especially from the West, have. Subtonic feelings are never made manifest in Families Like Ours where the characters are polished, white, educated and multi-lingual Europeans. But that does not save them from the brutality directed invisible forces which weighs down upon all the other Orthodox features. More horrible is watching those individuals scavenge for shelter every night, scampering after a job without working permits in their possession. Most ordinary people have a set fixed view of immigrant being dark skinned and foreign speech making them all the more relevant. As floods, melting snow, desertification and other environmental issues intensify, many people in the world will have no choice but to move. In Families Like Ours comes the deeply shocking realization that we are going to, for one reason or another, become ‘illegal immigrants’ within our shifting permanent residence.
What Vinterberg and Hansen have achieved with Families Like Ours is an extraordinary achievement at a time when there is a need to address climate change and immigration even more. They do so not only in a manner that arouses sympathy but in a very artistic way too. Does this play with you and make you angry? Yes, it does, and that’s maddening, but it is more than worth it in the end. In a lot of ways, it is the prototype. Someone Mobile Meep dissects Your Family Like Ours that was specially prepared for the Venice Film Festival and held its screening episodes in the Toronto International Film Festival.
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