Intensity

Truth be told, I was slightly offended.
Just needed to get it off my chest.
If you think it's you, it's not.

It's dreadful having to wake up early during the holidays to attend a meeting which I was not looking forward at all too. Kept shuffling and squirming in my seat. My apologies.

I enjoy holding long conversations. Maybe I talk too much?
And the whole jive about to inspire and be inspired?
Cast members, y'all gotta brace yourselves for more of that from me during the course of the production.

The last time I used the word intense to describe a film, it was for "Closer".
Earlier today, I watched a movie that shouts intense. The movie also marks my first Singapore International Film Festival (SIFF) screening ever. Hahakz.


Brothers

Michael (Ulrich Thomsen) has a successful career in the military, a beautiful wife Sarah (Connie Nielsen), and two daughters. In contrast, his younger brother Jannik (Nikolai Lie Kaas) is an unanchored wanderer with a dubious relationship to the law. However, the order of things shifts when Michael is sent on a UN mission to Afghanistan and is eventually missing in action and presumed dead. Jannik rises to the responsibility suddenly placed before him and is able to provide reprieve for both Sarah and the children. Gradually, their feelings for each other begin to move beyond empathy and grief. Unexpectedly, Michael returns home, traumatized by his experience, only to discover the home he left behind has changed dramatically. From the director of the Dogme film Open Hearts (2002).
Won Best Actress and Best Actor award at the San Sebastian International Film Festival 2004.

The poster's a tad small but still...
Di, who watched it with me said that it sounded Pearl Harbour-ish.

Thankfully, I need not do a review of the movie. For, I do not know the exact words to use to describe what I felt when I watched the movie.
It felt different. The audience was put into the exact spot as the husband was when he returned. He did not know what had been going on between his wife and his brother. Neither did we exactly.
Intense. Emotional. Powerful.
That's about as much as I can conjure.
An A- for the film.

"God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates." (Herman Melville, Moby Dick)

Something to ponder over, and ironically it was from Moby Dick!