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Best movie of this year hands down!

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Brilliant and touching

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

To start with the negative, I have two criticisms to make of Per Fly's film 'Inheritance'. Firstly, there's an "everything is beautiful" sheen to the world he depicts, manifested in the mock-idyll of the semi-aristocratic environment of its protagonists, the deep bond that connects the family business and the workers they employ, and the actors playing the characters themselves, especially the illuminating Lisa Werlinder. I appreciate that this is in part a stylistic choice, for the story is one of trouble beneath a superficially perfect surface, but real life is rarely that perfect, even when viewed superficially. Secondly, the tale of a young businessman worn down by executive responsibility and a dominant mother is fairly predicable. The latter fault is a special shame; because it threatens to mask what is a superbly directed movie, whose cast all give perfectly judged, understated performances. The opening sequences are utterly, though quietly, gripping, but once the basic scenario has been laid out, the story ceases to surprise and one can almost overlook the quality of the film-making: it takes the power of an unexpected scene (the attempted rape) to remind one just how skilfully Fly has managed to convince us of the reality of his world, excessive beauty notwithstanding. In some ways, and in spite of the more affluent setting, the story feels like something that would have been at home in Kiesolowski's 'Dekalog'; but in that work, each story took only an hour: at the same length, this could have been a knock-out. As it is, 'Inheritance' can't quite reach those heights; but it's still a compelling portrait of the way that people change.

This film plays like Ibsen, especially the play John Gabriel Borkman, but it's lacking in drama.It's like a fourth of Ibsen. It has the conflict between the individual and society (here meaning family), and it has the categorical imperatives. But the technique doesn't allow for anything deeply conflicting, because there's only one conflicted character. His wife wants him back, and that's all. His mother wants him, and that's all. His sister wants him, and that's all. These three peripheral characters are not given conflicts of their own.Modern drama requires some life on the periphery. Save for the main character, no-one is conflicted. They're all cardboard. There's no complexity to this film.

Inheritance (Arven) is just OK. It's not a bad film, but it's far from great! At least it's better than The Celebration (Festen); a movie that I find absurd and pretentious. It's very well-photographed. The camera movement is less arty and self-conscious compared to the other Dogma-style movies that I've seen. The acting is uniformly good. The major thing that I dislike about this film is the story itself. The presentation is great, but the content is left to be desired. It follows the usual plot that you see in most family-saga afternoon soap operas. The whole time I was watching it, I was kind of guessing what will happen next. The movies didn't explain much where most of the major characters are coming from and why they are behaving the way they do. I particularly don't understand one unsympathetic character – The mother. You can't relate to her because you don't have a clue why she is the way she is. The attempted rape scene near the end of the movie seems to just come out of nowhere and was totally unnecessary and out of character. At least it didn't have a happy ending. I give it *** out of *****.

I absolutely disagree that Arven should be boring. From the very beginning we feel the dilemma of Ulrick Thomsen and is thorn apart the deeper we go in the story, as we feel his pain and his obligations. Per Fly is an exellent director who forces his actors to do their vey best and it shines through the whole movie. The acting is deep and sensitive. It's exellent. Director Per Fly also understood to make us feel all swallowed up in the story. It's an exellent movie. Intellegent, sensitive and it really makes you think about how to live your life.