A SECOND CHANCE: Subverting Familiar Character Types

A Second Chance is a film whose plot synopsis could easily have come from a one of dozens of late 90s or early aughts Lifetime movies. But in the hands of Academy Award winning Danish director Susanne Bier, any schlock value one might assume to be present is replaced with clarifying sincerity and surprisingly subversive characters.

Bier, who won the Best Foreign Film award in 2010 for In a Better World, partnered again here with frequent writer and collaborator Anders Thomas Jensen for this story that continuously upends expectations throughout its running time.

A Surprisingly Tender Protagonist

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (best known for his turn as the troubled royal Jaime Lannister on HBO’s Game of Thrones) plays police detective, Andreas, who appears to have his head screwed on straight, and a lot going well for him. He is a new father who, along with his beautiful wife Anna (Maria Bonnevie), spend their evenings caring for their newborn boy, Alexander–by turns taking him for a walk in the stroller or ride in the car to put him asleep.

They reside in an idyllic home in the countryside. Maybe too idyllic for a police detective’s salary? And even though Andreas’ partner Simon (Ulrich Thomsen) is not dealing well with a recent divorce, Andreas proves to be a good friend as well, rescuing him from a possible altercation at a strip club, and standing watch through the night as Simon sobers up.

Andreas is masculine and physical in all the ways we might expect protagonist cops to be in American films. He kicks down a door, slams a criminal’s head against an interrogation room table, and punches through a glass window, bloodying his hand. But there’s also a tenderness to Andreas that is not as often seen onscreen in male characters–especially those we might perceive as amen of action.

Besides his care for his partner Simon and clear admiration and affection for his wife, Andreas has a few fatherly scenes with children–both his own and other’s–that are among some of the best I have ever seen. Coster-Waldau is impressive in a role that requires the audience to believe he has the capacity to be a physically intimidating force to those who signal danger, and a gentle, caring giant to the most vulnerable of characters.

A Life-altering Decision Decision

Andreas, Anna, and their baby boy’s lives are mirrored by Tristan (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), a drug dealer who can’t seem to get his life together, and his girlfriend Sanne (model May Andersen in her debut film role), a drug addict, and their own baby. Andreas encounters this couple during a routine police call and finds their child in a state of horrific neglect. It’s as traumatizing a scene as in any body horror film and sets the stage for the story to come.

One night, not long after Andreas encounters Tristan and Sanne and their child, he awakes to the screams of his wife in the middle of the night. Rushing downstairs, he awakes to Anna’s distraught screams, and finds their baby Alexander unresponsive, dead. It’s a traumatic moment, and the film leaves the characters room to breathe in their distress.

After refusing to allow Andreas to call first responders, Anna succumbs to her exhaustion and takes some sleeping medication. Andreas takes their dead child to the hospital, but in the parking lot, through tears of grief, he makes a shocking and life-altering decision. From this point, the film takes a number of twists and turns. However, the surprises are less plot driven and played for shock value–although one late film revelation is truly shocking–as they are character driven. And in the case of Andreas, the biggest surprise may be how he handles certain revelations and taking responsibility for his own actions.

Letting Characters Breathe

The name of the film, A Second Chance, deftly manages to apply to a small host of events and characters in the film. But in each case, every redemptive second chance is hard won after navigating poor decisions. And not every second chance manages to prove salvific. Some of the second chances serve to  highlight a character’s latent or concealed internal struggles from which they can no longer run away from or hide.

This sort of character development–that asks the story’s characters to wrestle with their own internal struggles – is a refreshing change of pace. The audience is given room to digest not just the action, but reflect on why the characters make the decisions they do, and how those decisions affect their own lives and the lives of those around them – both personally and professionally. This is exactly the type of character development that is so often never given an original thought, let alone a second one.

Conclusion: A Second Chance

A Second Chance manages to pose a shocking moral quandary without falling into an academic exercise as a thought experiment by grounding its characters in real feelings. And while it can be easy for material like this to swing too far in the other direction, it also manages not to be a soap opera by taking seriously the ways we go about rationalizing the decisions we make to ourselves after we have made them.

While it’s unlikely to be heralded among Bier’s best work, it’s a solid feature in her body of work and would arguably make a good entry point to her filmography.

What films have you seen that have the best examples of tender father figures?

A Second Chance is available to buy on DVD and Blu-ray.