Susanne Bier

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Susanne Bier
Bier in 2011
Born (1960-04-15) 15 April 1960 (age 64)
Copenhagen, Denmark
Alma materBezalel Academy of Arts and Design,
Architectural Association in London,[1]
National Film School of Denmark
Occupations
  • Director
  • writer
  • producer
Years active1991–present
Spouse(s)Tómas Gislason
(198?–?; divorced)
Philip Zandén
(1995–?; divorced)
Jesper Winge Leisner
(?-present)
ChildrenGabriel Bier Gislason, Alice Bier Zandén

Susanne Bier (Danish:

European Film Award (for In a Better World) and a Primetime Emmy Award (for directing The Night Manager).[2]

Bier made her feature film debut with Freud's Leaving Home (1991). She directed a string of films including Open Hearts (2002), Brothers (2004), After the Wedding (2006), and In a Better World (2010), the later of which earned the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. She directed the English-language films Things We Lost in the Fire (2007), Love Is All You Need (2012), Serena (2014), and Bird Box (2018).

On television, she directed the

The Undoing (2020), the Showtime historical anthology series The First Lady (2022), and the Netflix mystery series The Perfect Couple
(2024).

Early life and education

Susanne Bier was born to a

Holocaust caused Bier's parents to instill the strong moral values and principles into their children. Later, the importance of human resilience and dignity would be a recurring theme in her films.[3]

During her schooling, she attended Niels Steensens

Channel Four.[5]

Career

1990–1999: Early work and film debut

After directing music videos, commercials and the feature films Freud Flytter Hjemmefra (Freud's Leaving Home, 1990), Det Bli'r i Familien (Family Matters, 1993), Pensionat Oscar (Like it Was Never Before, 1995) and Sekten (Credo, 1997), Bier made a breakthrough in her home country of Denmark with the film The One and Only in 1999. A romantic comedy about the fragility of life, the film won a clutch of Danish Film Academy awards and established Bier's relationship with actress Paprika Steen. The film remains one of the most successful domestic films ever released in Denmark.

A sidestep from the easy going charm of Livet är en schlager (Once in a Lifetime, 2000), Elsker dig for evigt (Open Hearts, 2002) brought Bier's work to much wider international attention and acclaim. Acutely observed and beautifully written by Bier and Anders Thomas Jensen, the film is a perceptive and painful exploration of broken lives and interconnected tragedies. Made under Dogme 95 regulations, the film also marked a move towards a more minimalist aesthetic.

Since the completion of Open Hearts, Bier's reputation has continued to ascend with the harrowing Brødre (Brothers, 2004) and the emotionally engaging Efter Brylluppet (After the Wedding, 2006), which was nominated for Best Foreign Language film at the 2007 Academy Awards. After her first American film, Things We Lost in the Fire (2008) starring Benicio del Toro and Halle Berry, Bier went on to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film for In a Better World (2010).[6]

Also a maker of shorts, music videos and commercials, Bier's films typically meditate on pain, tragedy, and atonement. Bier is signed as a commercial director with international production company, SMUGGLER.

Bodil Award
as the Best Film of 1999.

2000–2014: Rise to prominence and acclaim

Following the influence of

Robert
awards for Best Danish Film in 2003.

Bier in 2009

In Bier's next film

Musikhuset
.

Bier's next film tells the story of Jacob Petersen who manages an Indian orphanage. With a small staff, he works as hard as he can to keep the orphanage afloat and is personally invested in the young charges - in particular, Pramod, a young boy Jacob has cared for since the boy's birth. The film was a critical and popular success and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Time magazine's Richard Schickel named the film one of the Top 10 Movies of 2007, ranking it at #4, calling it a "dark, richly mounted film". While Schickel saw the film as possibly "old-fashioned stylistically, and rather manipulative in its plotting", he also saw "something deeply satisfying in the way it works out the fates of its troubled, yet believable characters."[12] The film was remade as the English-language After the Wedding in 2019, starring Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, and Billy Crudup.

In this film we follow the character of Audrey who has been married for eleven years with Brian and leads a well-to-do life, but suddenly her husband dies after trying to defend a woman from an assault. Left alone with two children, Audrey has to face the terrible pain of loss, so she decides to welcome Jerry, her friend's friend, with problems of drug addiction. The two will establish a relationship that will force them to unite their pains, helping each other to make a change in their lives, the difficult search for happiness. Critics gave the film generally favorable reviews. As of 29 January 2008 on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 64% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 117 reviews.[13] On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 63 out of 100, based on 30 reviews.[14] The two leads received praise for their performances, particularly Benicio Del Toro as he received immense acclaim for his portrayal of Jerry, considered one of his best roles to date.

In a Better World (

Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards.[15] Director Susanne Bier said: "Our experiment in this film is about looking at how little it really takes before a child – or an adult – thinks something is deeply unjust. It really doesn't take much, and I find that profoundly interesting. And scary."[16] Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 77% out of 114 professional critics gave the film a positive review, with the site consensus stating that "In a Better World is a sumptuous melodrama that tackles some rather difficult existential and human themes."[17] Metacritic gave the film a score of 65, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[18]

Kim Skotte called the film a "powerful and captivating drama" in Politiken. Out of the four collaborations between Jensen and Bier, he considered In a Better World to be the one most similar to Jensen's solo films and compared the combination of biblical themes and high entertainment value to Jensen's 2005 film Adam's Apples.[19] Peter Nielsen of Dagbladet Information called In a Better World "in all ways a successful film", and although there "is no doubt that Susanne Bier can tell a good story", he was not entirely convinced: "She can seduce, and she can push the completely correct emotional buttons, so that mothers' as well as fathers' hearts are struck, but she doesn't earnestly drill her probe into the meat."[19]

Bier at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2015

In 2012, Bier directed Den skaldede frisør (Love is All You Need), a 2012 Danish romantic comedy film starring Pierce Brosnan and Trine Dyrholm. In 2013 she was a member of the jury at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival.[20] In 2014, she directed her second American feature, dark romantic drama Serena starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, and shortly after followed up with Danish drama A Second Chance starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Ulrich Thomsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Maria Bonnevie. In 2013, Love Is All You Need was selected as best comedy film at the 26th European Film Awards.[21]

In 2014, Bier directed Serena, based on the 2008 novel of the same name by American author Ron Rash.[22] The film stars Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper as newlyweds running a timber business in 1930s North Carolina. Serena has received negative reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a score of 16% based on 106 reviews with an average rating of 4.3/10. The website's critical consensus states "Serena unites an impressive array of talent on either side of the cameras – then leaves viewers to wonder how it all went so wrong."[23] On Metacritic the film has a score of 36 out of 100 based on reviews from 29 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[24] In 2014, Bier directed A Second Chance (Danish: En chance til), a Danish thriller film. The film stars Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Ulrich Thomsen, Maria Bonnevie, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Lykke May Andersen. It was screened in the Special Presentations section of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.[25][26]

2016–present: Television work

Taking a break from film, Bier directed The Night Manager, a British television serial starring

Primetime Emmy Awards (for director Bier and music composer Victor Reyes)[31] and three Golden Globe Awards
(for Hiddleston, Colman, and Laurie).

The series received widespread critical acclaim. Adam Sisman, le Carré's biographer, wrote in UK daily newspaper The Daily Telegraph, "It is more than 20 years since the novel was published, and in that time two film companies have tried and failed to adapt it, concluding that it was impossible to compress into two hours. But this six-hour television adaptation is long enough to give the novel its due." He added, "And though Hugh Laurie may seem a surprising choice to play 'the worst man in the world', he dominates the screen as a horribly convincing villain. Alert viewers may spot a familiar face in the background of one scene, in a restaurant: John le Carré himself makes a cameo, as he did in the films of A Most Wanted Man and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. But he is on screen only for an instant: blink and you'll miss him."[32]

Returning to film, Bier directed Bird Box, an American

AFI Fest on 12 November 2018. It was released worldwide on 21 December 2018 by Netflix, and went on to become the most-watched film in Netflix history.[33] On Metacritic, Bird Box has received mixed to positive reviews.[34] Forbes called it a "truly terrible movie".[35]

Bier directed the TV series The Undoing, which premiered on HBO in October 2020 and starred Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant.[36] The Undoing became the first HBO original series to grow its audience each week[37] and the network's most watched show of 2020.[38]

Most recently, Bier directed the Showtime limited series The First Lady, starring Viola Davis, Michelle Pfieffer, and Gillian Anderson. The First Lady premiered in April 2022. Most recently, Bier directed the limited TV series,The Perfect Couple starring Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Dakota Fanning, Eve Hewson and Ishaan Khatter. It is an adaptation of the 2018 novel of the same name by Elin Hilderbrand, and premiered on September 5, 2024, on Netflix.

Style and themes

Bier's films often deal with the traditional family framework, with the collapse of the bourgeois middle class under the pressure of globalization, terrorism, and war, and the way in which people deal with a disaster or a formative event outside their lives. She notes that the moment that interests her in characters' lives is when their sense of security cracks and the outside world knocks on the door. The main questions in her films are questions of morality: whether it is moral to leave a partner who has become disabled, whether personal good precedes the general good, and how to respond to the violence directed at the individual. Bier often raises questions about how far one would go for a child is in distress, if social services appear to be unable or unwilling to help, and the limits one exceeds to get their own desires fulfilled.[39]

Bier's style of direction gives the players a great deal of freedom, allowing improvisation in both texts and presentation. Her films have a common visual code - all of them are filmed in a shoulder camera, and emotional peaks use extreme close-ups of eyes, lips, and fingers. In addition, the editing method is not faithful to the continuous editing tradition, and it adds to a more free and random feeling.

Bier's films are characterized by the fact that, despite their tragic structure, there is a "flattening" of the dramatic events, or, alternatively, no dramatization of the major events. For example, in the scene of the first encounter between the father and his daughter in After the Wedding, the two of them are silent for most of the scene, and talk about a bottle of water he brings to her. This style of direction creates the feeling that nothing happens in her films, but a thorough analysis of the events shows that the films are faithful to the dramatic structure of the theatre of ancient Greece.

Moreover, Bier makes sure to finish her films with a slightly optimistic tone, saying that although her films are not purely commercial, they are also not pure art, and therefore she should communicate with her audience and give them some light to lean on.[40]

Influences

In Susan King's article,[19] Bier claims her Jewish heritage embedded a strong sense of family in conjunction to a sense of instability and turmoil. This pertains to her father's need to flee Germany in 1933 to Denmark, where he met Bier's mother. The two of them fled by boat to Sweden after Nazis began rounding up Jews in Denmark. Originally, Bier imagined herself married to a nice Jewish man with six children. She later decided that she wanted to pursue a career. She has been married twice and has two children, Gabriel and Alice. Despite this, she still holds family as her biggest influence and claims she would have never become a filmmaker without her children. To Bier, "family is a sense of identity". "I speak to my parents every day. I have a very close relationship to my aunts and uncles, but also my ex-husband…who comes to stay with us. I have this almost obsessive desire to whomever is close to me, I want to have a very intense, close, intimate relationship with them. That way of living definitely informs the stories I tell."Although she frequently depicts international stories in third world countries, Bier had never been to Africa or India until she started making movies there. On her frequent interest and depiction of the Third World, Bier insists that "it is sort of pointing out that the Third World is really a part of our lives. It is unavoidable, and we need to relate to it…" As she writes in a public letter after winning the Oscar for In a Better World,[41] "My particular world is not just Copenhagen. It had to be broader than this. My world is larger than it used to be." In Sylvaine Gold's article,[9] Bier claims she doesn't like to be in a state of comfort when working. Typically in her films, happy and comfortable characters are met by situations of extreme sadness and catastrophe. She attributes this obsession to her parents experience during World War II when "society suddenly turned against them" because they were Jewish. Despite this obsession with tragedy, Bier says "I've had a very fortunate, very privileged life [but] I say that with all humility, because it could change tomorrow. But I have a very strong ability to empathize, to understand what things feel like." Her frequent writing collaborator Anders Thomas Jensen confirms this "humanness" in her, that "She's very good at putting herself in a character's place, which is really a gift." Bier also insists that despite her negative depictions in her films, she always wants to end a film with some vestige of hope. She never wants to alienate her audience, that it is always key to "have an ability to communicate".

Personal life

Bier first married the Danish-Icelandic film director Tómas Gislason (da), with whom she had a son, Gabriel Bier Gislason (born 1989), who also works in the film industry. With her second husband, the Swedish actor and director Philip Zandén, she had a daughter, the actress Alice Bier Zandén (born 1995)

Following her divorce from Zandén, her partner is the Danish singer and composer Jesper Winge Leisner (da), who wrote the music for several of her films.[42][43]

Filmography

Film

Year English title Original title Director Writer Producer Notes
1989 Notes on Love Notater om kærligheden No Additional No Also assistant director
1991 Freud's Leaving Home Freud flyttar hemifrån... Yes Additional No Directorial debut
1992 Brev til Jonas Yes No No Cameo as "Director"; short film
1993 Family Matters Det bli'r i familien Yes No No
1995 Like It Never Was Before Pensionat Oskar Yes No No
1997 Credo Sekten Yes Yes No
1999 The One and Only Den eneste ene Yes Idea Executive
2000 Once in a Lifetime Livet är en schlager Yes No No
2002
Open Hearts
 		Elsker dig for evigt Yes Yes No
2004 Brothers Brødre Yes Story No
2006 After the Wedding Efter brylluppet Yes Story No
2007 Things We Lost in the Fire Things We Lost in the Fire Yes No No
2010 In a Better World Hævnen Yes Story No
2012 Love Is All You Need Den skaldede frisør Yes Story No
2014 A Second Chance En chance til Yes Story No
Serena Serena Yes No Yes
2018 Bird Box Bird Box Yes No Executive
2022 A ciegas No No Executive

Television

Year Title Director Producer Story Editor Notes Ref.
1988 Fridtjof Nansens fodspor over Indlandsisen No No Yes Television documentary film
1993 Luischen Yes No No Television film
2016
The Night Manager
 		Yes Yes No Miniseries (6 episodes)
2020 The Undoing Yes Yes No Miniseries (6 episodes)
2022 The First Lady Yes Yes No Miniseries (10 episodes) [44]
2024 The Perfect Couple Yes Yes No Miniseries (6 episodes) [45]

Music video

Year Title Musician Notes Ref.
1989 Summer Rain Alphaville

Awards and nominations

Freud's Leaving Home (Freud flytter hjemmefra...) (1991)
  • 1992 Angers European First Film Festival
    • Audience Award: Feature Film
    • C.I.C.A.E. Award
  • 1992 Creteil International Women's Film Festival
    • Grand Prix
  • 1992 Guldbagge Awards
    • Best Director (Nominated)[46]
  • 1991 Montréal World Film Festival
    • Montréal First Film Prize – Special Mention
Brev til Jonas (1992)
  • 1993 Robert Festival
    • Best Short/Documentary (Årets kort/dokumentarfilm)
Family Matters (Det bli'r i familien) (1994)
  • 1994 Rouen Nordic Film Festival
    • ACOR Award
    • Audience Award
Like It Never Was Before (Pensionat Oskar) (1995)
  • 1995 Montréal World Film Festival
    • FIPRESCI Prize: Official Competition
The One and Only (Den eneste ene) (1999)
  • 2000 Robert Festival
    • Best Film (Årets danske spillefilm)
  • 2000 Bodil Awards
    • Best Film (Bedste danske film)
Open Hearts (Elsker dig for evigt) (2002)
  • 2002 Toronto International Film Festival
    • International Critics' Award (FIPRESCI) – Special Mention
  • 2003 Bodil Awards
    • Best Film (Bedste danske film)
  • 2002 Lübeck Nordic Film Days
    • Baltic Film Prize for a Nordic Feature Film
  • 2003 Robert Festival
    • Audience Award
  • 2003 Rouen Nordic Film Festival
    • Press Award
Brothers (Brødre) (2004)
  • 2005 Boston Independent Film Festival
    • Audience Award: Narrative
  • 2005 Creteil International Women's Film Festival
    • Audience Award: Best Feature Film
  • 2004 Hamburg Film Festival
    • Critics Award
  • 2005 Skip City International D-Cinema Festival
    • Grand Prize
  • 2005 Sundance Film Festival
    • Audience Award: World Cinema – Dramatic
After the Wedding (Efter brylluppet) (2006)
  • 2007 Festroia International Film Festival
    • Jury Special Prize
  • 2006 Film by the Sea International Film Festival
    • Audience Award
  • 2006 Cinefest Sudbury International Film Festival
    • Audience Award
In a Better World (Hævnen) (2010)
Love is All You Need (Den skaldede frisør) (2012)
  • 2013 Robert Festival
    • Audience Award: Comedy[47]
The Night Manager (2016)

References

  1. ^ "Susanne Bier". Denmark.dk. Retrieved 5 August 2013.
  2. ^ Schauser, Søren (12 November 2016). "I Always Fall a Bit in Love With My Characters". Berlingske (in Danish). Retrieved 15 November 2016.
  3. ^ Bloom, Nate (18 February 2011). "Jewish Stars 2/18". Cleveland Jewish News. Retrieved 5 January 2018.
  4. ISBN 978-1-904764-90-8
    .
  5. ^ Wood (2006), pp.3-13.
  6. ^ "Oscar-Nominated Susanne Bier Remaking French Thriller 'Rapt'". Deadline Hollywood. 23 February 2011. Archived from the original on 24 February 2011. Retrieved 11 March 2011.
  7. ISBN 978-0-08-046847-1
    , retrieved 11 June 2021
  8. ^ Molloy, Missy; Nielsen, Mimi; Shriver-Rice, Meryl (2018). ReFocus: The Films of Susanne Bier. Edinburgh: University Press. p. 117.
  9. ^ a b c "A Director Comfortable With Catastrophe". The New York Times. 25 March 2007. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
  10. ^ "Open Hearts". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 25 May 2008.
  11. ^ "Awards for Elsker dig for evigt (2002)". IMDb. Retrieved 25 May 2008. [unreliable source?]
  12. ^ Schickel, Richard (9 December 2007). "Top 10 Movies". Time. Archived from the original on 9 July 2010. Retrieved 13 May 2013.
  13. ^ "Things We Lost in the Fire Movie Reviews, Pictures". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 29 December 2008.
  14. ^ "Things We Lost in the Fire Reviews, Ratings, Credits". Metacritic. Retrieved 29 December 2008.
  15. ^ "Denmark's 'In a Better World' wins foreign Oscar". Associated Press. 28 February 2011. Archived from the original on 3 March 2011. Retrieved 28 February 2011.
  16. ^ Rifbjerg, Synne (27 July 2010). "I's never just black and white". Danish Film Institute. Archived from the original on 30 January 2011. Retrieved 3 February 2011.
  17. ^ "In a Better World". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 11 June 2012.
  18. ^ "In A Better World, Critic Reviews". Metacritic.com. 12 May 2011. Retrieved 6 January 2017.
  19. ^ a b c King, Susan (20 February 2011). "'In a Better World' widens director Susanne Bier's world". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 16 March 2016. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
  20. ^ "The International Jury 2013". Berlinale. 28 January 2013. Retrieved 28 January 2013.
  21. ^ "Winners 2013". European Film Awards. European Film Academy. Retrieved 9 December 2013.
  22. ^ Smith, Zack (20 February 2013). "Ron Rash discusses the craft of the short story and the complexity of Appalachian speech". Indy Week. Retrieved 25 February 2013.
  23. ^ "Serena (2015)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
  24. CBS Interactive
    . Retrieved 1 November 2017.
  25. ^ Punter, Jennie (22 July 2014). "Toronto Film Festival Lineup". Variety. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  26. ^ Felperin, Leslie. "'A Second Chance' ('En Chance til'): Toronto Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
  27. ^ Barr, Merrill (10 January 2015). "AMC Will Air 'The Night Manager' Starring Hugh Laurie & Tom Hiddleston". Screen Rant. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  28. ^ Littleton, Cynthia (30 October 2014). "AMC Nabs Hugh Laurie, Tom Hiddleston 'The Night Manager'". Variety. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  29. ^ Petski, Denise (5 March 2015). "Olivia Colman, Tom Hollander, Elizabeth Debicki Join AMC's 'The Night Manager'". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
  30. ^ White, Peter (5 July 2018). "'The Night Manager': 'Humans' Namsi Khan & 'The Rook's Francesca Gardiner Join Second Season Writers Room". Deadline Hollywood.
  31. ^ Hipes, Patrick (14 July 2016). "The 68th Annual Emmy Nominations: The Complete List". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 15 July 2016.
  32. ^ Sisman, Adam (19 February 2016). "The Night Manager: le Carré's 'unexpected miracle'". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
  33. ^ "More than 80 million Netflix viewers watched 'Bird Box—What were the next best originals?". Newsweek. 18 October 2019. Retrieved 3 May 2022.
  34. ^ Hoai-Tran Bui (13 November 2018). "Sandra Bullock is a Bright Spot in 'Bird Box'". Slash Film. Retrieved 13 November 2018.
  35. ^ Alm, David (5 January 2019). "The Top 10 Things I Hated About 'Bird Box'". Forbes.
  36. ^ "How 'The Undoing' Opened Director Susanne Bier's Eyes to the American Justice System". Variety. 28 October 2020.
  37. ^ Hersko, Tyler (2 December 2020). "HBO Touts 'The Undoing' as First Original Series to Grow Ratings Each Week". IndieWire. Retrieved 3 May 2022.
  38. ^ Zorrilla, Mónica Marie (17 February 2021). "'The Undoing' Becomes HBO's Most-Watched Series of 2020, Surpasses 'Big Little Lies' Audience (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved 3 May 2022.
  39. ^ "Danish director may become first woman to helm a Bond film". Women in the World. 2 June 2016. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
  40. ^ Molloy, Missy; Nielsen, Mimi; Shriver-Rice, Meryl (2018). ReFocus: The Films of Susanne Bier. Edinburgh: University Press.
  41. ^ "In A Better World: Post-Oscar letter from Susanne Bier". AX1 Entertainment. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
  42. ^ "Susanne Bier Biography". IMDB. [unreliable source?]
  43. ^ "Director Susanne Bier and husband Jesper Winge Leisner". Alamy. 24 October 2007.
  44. ^ Rice, Lynette (8 November 2021). "Get a first look at Viola Davis as Michelle Obama in Showtime's The First Lady". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on 9 November 2021. Retrieved 9 November 2021.
  45. ^ "'Sexy and delicious': Director on making 'The Perfect Couple'". CNN. 12 September 2024. Retrieved 14 September 2024.
  46. ^ "Freud flyttar hemifrån (1991)". Swedish Film Institute. 17 March 2014.
  47. ^ "Awards for Susanne Bier". IMDb. Retrieved 5 August 2013. [unreliable source?]

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Susanne Bier.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Susanne_Bier&oldid=1277665639"