The Door

This is a brilliant thriller that asks the viewer, what would you do in the same situation? David is a painter so has a lot of time on his hands between painting pictures and looking after his daughter when his wife is away during each work day. He's certainly no father of the year contender though, when his daughter pleads with him to join her outside, he tells her he'll be there soon then goes across the street to sleep with his neighbour. While he's doing this his daughter following a butterfly, falls into the pool, her shoelace catches in some sort of lobster trap on the bottom. By the time David returns home, and notices her at the bottom and pulls her out she's long dead. On the eve of exactly five years on he's still depressed, he keeps hassling his ex wife who can't stand the sight of him, has moved on and the now boyfriend tells him in no uncertain terms to get lost when his latest visit after she has begged him for years not to try and see her anymore, sends her into an uncontrollable sob session! Depressed David finds an abandoned tunnel, goes inside for the night. When he awakens he follows the tunnel and comes across a door, when he opens it and goes through he realises there something very different about the world now. He quickly realises this is his local suburb but time wise years ago. He races to his house and pulls his daughter out of the pool, just in time. After putting her to bed he leaves then for some reason he decides to return, however the five years younger David assuming he is a prowler violently attacks him. In the struggle a lethal wound kills younger David. Older David decides to stay in the past and just pretend to be younger David. He knows he will be a better father than the man he has killed anyway. He shaves and cuts his hair to look like his younger self which fools everyone else except his daughter, as knowing he wasn't her father she had crept to the top of the stairs to talk to the real one when the fight occurred below.

Relationship problems with his daughter aren't the main worry though for David. He's not the only local to have found that door. Others have come through as well and Biff style from Back to the Future II, have been improving their fortune by placing sports bets when they know the results. They have of course had to take similar actions to David, only unlike David's killing of his younger self, there's were not accidents and were all premeditated. If David secret is ever known to his wife and friends, they will all have to die. His daughter's insistence to everyone who visits that he's not her father isn't the only hurdle in keeping her and everyone else alive, for one he's not very good or smart at burying a body.

This is a good thriller, it's based on the book Die Damulstur by Akif Pirinicci. You can watch it in either its original German language or dubbed in English. There's actually hardly any shots of characters with their mouths facing the camera so you don't really notice the dubbing, it's done well. The method of time travel is pretty simple, and never really explained, it's just there. This may leave questions unanswered but is actually good in that the movie doesn't waste time with this, it's just a tool to get David back to the past and save his daughter. Plus the convenience of it being an exactly five years into the past door so his daughter drowns is a little bit convenient. I would also have maybe have liked to see the Back to the Future betting on sports game aspect acknowledged as "just like Biff" or something from these characters, as you're certainly thinking it. Maybe they could have gone with share trading or something else to profit from going into the past for the villains but as I've said the time travel parts of the movie aren't the gist of the thriller. It's the keeping the secret from spreading and also convincing his daughter he's not a monster type angle that is the main emphasis of this great pretty much unknown (in English speaking countries) great German thriller.

If you take winning awards into account this film has won plenty of 2009 and 2010 various film festival awards such as best film.

For anyone not familiar with the Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, or for those only aware of him as James Bonds nemesis Le Chiffre in "Casino Royal" prepare for a treat! This has to be one of the best Mads Mikkelsen films I've ever seen. Well written, wonderfully provocative and beautifully filmed (the use of light to express emotion and tension is palpable) this is a film that is difficult to describe without ruining the subtext - a magical psychological mystery might be the best interpretation. All the acting is superiour and Mads as a rather thoughless painter/serial cheater who deeply resents the demands put upon him by his wife and daughter is profound, not only in its intensity but in its gradual and powerful emotional resolution as he wrestles with his actions, his desires to fix the mistakes of his past and to avoid the consequences.
Is he halucinating his experiences due to his intense guilt?
Has he traveled to another world or another level of reality?
Can one ever really start again?

I must strongly recommend that English speaking viewers watch the German language version with English subtext as the English dubbing is at best annoying and at worst comical in tone.

While I think that I'll always hold "The Green Butchers" as my favorite Mads movie (so sweeet so funny so sociopathic!) and "Valhalla Rising" as his most stunningly and mesmersing performance - "The Door" is a film that I will come back to again and again - and not simply for Mads' delicious posterior ;)...well not entirely for that!

**1/2. Invasion of the Body Snatchers in Germany. The screenplay (-or the book) is rather weak but the film is saved by the performance of the actors.

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