the inheritance (arven) 2003 region free dvd5 danish bcbc

The Inheritance (Danish: Arven) is a 2003 Danish film directed by Per Fly. It is released as Inheritance in the United Kingdom.

The Screenplay was written by Kim Leona, Per Fly and Mogens Rukov produced by Ib Tardini, and starred Ulrich Thomsen and Lisa Werlinder.

Contains movie and Optional English Subtitles. No menus or extras. Regular DVD quality. Thank you.















Synopsis

After his father's suicide, Christoffer (Ulrich Thomsen), at the behest of his domineering mother, leaves his contented life in Stockholm and returns home to assume control of the failing family business and toils to turn around the foundering steel works company. In the process, the dutiful sons learns hard lessons about competition, sacrifice and the conflict between corporate values and personal needs. Per Fly directs this unsettling parable.



Cast

Ulrich Thomsen, Lisa Werlinder, Ghita Nørby, Karina Skands, Lars Brygmann, Peter Steen



Movie Review

Inheritance (2003)

July 9, 2004

FILM REVIEW; An Executive's Hard Choices and the Toll They Take

By Stephen Holden

''The Inheritance,'' a sleek, desolate fable about the conflict between corporate values and human needs, gives the upscale ethos that engulfs its characters a bleak palette all its own. The predominant colors in this absorbing Danish film, directed by Per Fly, are shades of gray. The austere boardroom atmosphere that seeps into their souls suggests an elite airport lounge on a cloudy day. Efficiency and anxiety go hand in hand.



Late in the movie, the embattled central character, Christoffer (Ulrich Thomsen), who has reluctantly assumed control of his family's floundering steelworks, travels with his wife, Maria (Lisa Werlinder), to the south of France for a working vacation. The sprawling, ultramodern starter castle he rents resembles a glass-windowed mausoleum. Forbiddingly impersonal, it is the kind of chilly shell that could incite a nervous breakdown.



The film begins sweetly enough. Christoffer, who has dropped out of the family business after losing 30 pounds from stress, manages a restaurant in Stockholm, where he is living happily with Maria, a beautiful Shakespearean actress whose career at the Royal Dramatic Theater is on the rise. Not long after receiving a surprise visit from his father, the son is abruptly summoned back to Copenhagen. His father, who had been concealing sizable corporate losses, has hanged himself, leaving the steelworks on the verge of bankruptcy.



At a grim corporate powwow, Christoffer's domineering mother, Annelise (Ghita Norby), pressures her son to take control of the company, which is now being run by his brother-in-law Ulrik (Lars Brygmann). After vacillating, Christoffer agrees. His decision to remain in Denmark deals the first of many blows to his carefree relationship with Maria.



''The Inheritance,'' which opens today at the Cinema Village in Manhattan, reminds you in painful detail that one of the tasks of a financially responsible executive is to execute. And when Christoffer learns that the embittered Ulrik has been bad-mouthing him to the bankers whose support is essential for the company's survival, he summarily fires him. In one stroke the family is torn apart. Christoffer's sister Benedikte (Karina Skands) remains loyal to Ulrik and exiles herself from the family.



Christoffer's next order of business is to lay off 200 workers until the company returns to financial health. Swallowing his anguish, he carries out these executions with a curt, impassive deliberation.



Maria puts her acting career aside to move to Denmark and marry him on condition that he return to Sweden in two years. Business in Copenhagen is so pressing that he has no time for her, and she seethes with frustration. Ultimately Christoffer is faced with the choice between love and power: between Maria, who is disgusted by the human cost of his decisions, and the demands of his imperious mother, who wants Maria out of his life. Ms. Norby's manipulative matriarch is a portrait of ruthless determination carved in ice.



''The Inheritance,'' the second movie in a trilogy by Mr. Fly exploring different social strata in Denmark, is much too canny to be a glib anticorporate screed. Each excruciating decision Christoffer makes is critical to the company's well-being. To secure its future, he pursues a merger with a French steelmaker that would make the combined company one of Europe's largest manufacturers.



Christoffer doesn't really lose his humanity so much as ignore it out of necessity. Even though many of the laid-off workers are eventually rehired, the turnaround is cold comfort after all the bitterness that came before. You can read ''The Inheritance'' as an unsettling parable about any corporation, or for that matter any country (say, Argentina) forced to take stringent financial measures to avoid catastrophe. For all the pain he inflicts, Christoffer might even be seen as a farsighted, self-sacrificing hero. But as the relentlessly morose movie shows, a corporate hero is not the same thing as a humanitarian; in many ways, he's the antithesis.