Sorrow and Joy

When filmmaker Johannes returns from a lecture one evening, he finds a house in mourning and terror. That same afternoon, his wife, a teacher, has killed their baby – not out of spite or hate, but a sense of despair and loneliness and psychosis. Johannes doesn’t judge her, but tries to get to grips with all the ways he has failed her without ever meaning any harm. The pupils and their parents want her back. Only the State and its representatives need to be convinced that society needs this woman.
Sorrow and Joy is a meditation on the limits of human laws and the infinite possibilities of kindness and understanding; a deeply protestant melodrama on grace; a sum total of Malmros’s life as well as his filmmaking; a perfect starting point for a voyage of discovery through a strikingly intimate cosmos in which every human being should be able to recognize at least some of himself or herself. One of the greatest films of contemporary cinema. With a Critics’ Talk on Tue 28.

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