The Door, 2009.
Directed by Anno Saul .
Starring Mads Mikkelsen, Jessica Schwarz, Valeria Eisenbart and Heike Makatsch.
SYNOPSIS:
Plagued with guilt over the death of his daughter, an artist discovers a door that allows him to travel back in time to the day of her death and alter history.
We all make mistakes. We all have regrets. Regrets in particular are an undeniably universal part of the human condition and the lives of everyone; from rock star to street cleaner. It doesn’t matter if you’re the flawless Empress of dozens of kingdoms or a waitress in a greasy spoon; there will be things you wish you had done differently. Sometimes, when things get really bad, it’s a cliché phrase of woe to wish that the ground would swallow you up. Usually though you’re probably more likely to be hoping for a window onto the past. A hole big enough to crawl through, or a door if you’re feeling especially demanding. There’s not a soul on Earth, no matter how content they may profess to be, that wouldn’t consider the chance to go back. The chance to revisit a moment when everything changed.
Boiled down to its basics, this is what The Door is all about; that irrepressible human desire to erase what has been eternally written on the pages of history and memory. That craving for just one chance of redemption and the opportunity to take another path, a happier route, on the journey of life. In many ways The Door is an extremely simple tale but it’s one that uses fantasy to suggest dark and disturbing truths about human nature. It will simultaneously cut uncomfortably close to the core of your personal experience and be impossible to imagine and relate to.
The Door is a German film, telling the story of David Andernach, played by Mads Mikkelsen. I was dubious of Mikkelsen’s ability to carry this film off. I am most familiar with him from Casino Royale, in which he played a suitably menacing but also expectedly caricatured Le Chiffre. The way The Door is constructed requires intense focus on the personal viewpoint of Andernach and Mikkelsen is in practically every scene. You really notice it when things centre round his wife for a few minutes towards the climax. Thankfully his performance is varied, convincing and touching at times.
Also good are his wife Maja (Jessica Schwarz) and daughter Leonie (Valeria Eisenbart). Eisenbart is especially excellent as a child actor accurately expressing the knowing innocence of children, reacting to the sensational and dramatic events of the plot. Andernach’s mistress Gia is played by Heike Makatsch, and if I’m being really picky, which I guess I am, her performance was bland and predictable. She does play perhaps the least diverse of all the characters though, particularly when compared to the other more mysterious, male neighbour to the family.
However whilst poor performances could conceivably have ruined The Door, the really standout thing about this film is the story. It’s the sort of plot that can’t be justified in summary. I certainly can’t make my description of it much more alluring than the mildly interesting efforts of the production notes, without spoiling the surprise factor that made The Door so immensely enjoyable for me.
What I can tell you is that Andernach is a famous artist who is over the road fucking the neighbour one day when his daughter trips over her shoe laces and drowns in the family pool. Five years later Andernach is a broken man, begging his former wife for forgiveness. He tries to drown himself in the same pool, only to be rescued by a friend. He then follows a butterfly (his daughter wanted him to catch them with her but he chose a rendezvous with his mistress) to a hidden door that opens onto the day she died. He intends to simply save her and then perhaps alter his future, but he finds himself trapped in the past, lurching from one unintentional catastrophe to another.
In a way I’m tempted to write one review of The Door for those who have not seen it and one for after you’ve all hunted it down and enjoyed its one hour and thirty five minutes or so. It’s a film that raises a lot of big questions and emotional themes that would be interesting to discuss in more depth. You think you can work out its progression from the premise but you probably won’t. I will say that its poignant overall message seemed, for me at least, to be something along the lines of; we can all relive the past if we pay a big enough price and surrender enough of ourselves, but it’s a part of being human to let go and move on.
Trying to bottle up the raw feeling I got from The Door makes it sound far from creative or moving. But watching it with its tender score and acting and simple surprises, you are really sucked in. For once the glowing descriptions of the film adorning the marketing are totally apt and spot on; The Door is a “dark moral fable” and “an accomplished supernatural thriller”. You’ll be gripped by it, fascinated by it and haunted and moved by it. You’ll wonder what you’d do confronted with your own door.
Liam Trim (follow me on Twitter)
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