by LARRY ROHTER
At the Oscars last month the gap between what interests Hollywood and what the rest of the world seems to be doing was sharp and clear. Of the five nominees for the best foreign-language film, all but one, among them the winner, “In a Better World,” from Denmark, dealt in some way with relationships between the West and Islam.
Incendies
So did many others of the 65 films offered for consideration by film academies around the globe, including the French, German, Dutch and Bulgarian submissions. In contrast, each of the nine American films that were nominated for best picture and eventually lost to “The King’s Speech” from Britain were inward looking, with purely domestic concerns — a characterization that can be applied to movies as different in style and substance as “The Social Network,” “Black Swan,” “The Fighter” and “True Grit.”
“I don’t think that kind of thing is coincidental,” Susanne Bier, the director and a writer of “In a Better World,” which opens in New York on April 1, said when asked to explain the profusion of foreign films addressing aspects of the complex ties between the Western and Islamic worlds. “There’s always a kind of wave of themes” in social and political discourse, she said, “a current that one not so subconsciously addresses.”
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