Uncle (2019)
This is a slow film that demands patience. It doesn’t reward the patience with some big payoff in the end. What is does give is a deep character portrait of a women struggling with her internal conflict between own ambitions and her strong sense of taking care of family. Losing her parents at a young age, she has lived with her uncle who is now old and frail, so she basically runs the farm by herself. She clearly cares deeply for him, and maybe feels some guilt and sense of duty to take care of him and the farm. What makes this a great film is how everything comes from herself. The uncle isn’t mean or anything, he doesn’t expect or demand anything from her. Outside factors exposes what she is missing, like an abandoned ambition to became a veterinarian and romantic relationships, but she holds herself back again and again.
The narrative builds up in a way that make you expect a specific development, a hopeful outcome, but instead it surprises with sort of a reset. Not a massive big twist or anything. The ending is neither tragic or hopeful, more like a quiet resignation that could go either way. The genius I think lies with that choice. As a viewer we don’t any definitive payoff or resolution, but it is not ambiguous either.
A remarkable thing unlike anything else from Denmark in recent years. It reminds me more of Japanese filmmaking, and no wonder this film won at the Tokyo Film Festival.
Rating: 5