The Door, based on a novel by Akif Pirincci, is a well-made German science fiction drama (which, incidentally, could be enjoyed at the CPH:PIX film festival in 2010). It is a TV movie with a fairly modest budget, but it doesn’t need expensive effects to tell its story. Danish cinema’s greatest current actor, Mads Mikkelsen, plays David Andernach, a successful painter who makes a fatal mistake resulting in the death of his young daughter, Leonie (played by very talented Valeria Eisenbart). This leads to a break-up with his girlfriend, Maja, and for five years David tears himself up about what happened, finally opting to kill himself on a cold winter evening. But before he succeeds, he sees a beautiful blue butterfly of the type his daughter liked to catch, and it leads him to a strange cavernous corridor. Going through it, he finds it is sunny summer on the other side, and five years earlier. He is now in the position to save his daughter from her accident, and he does.
But this privilege comes with a hefty price tag of mounting complications. The newly arrived David has to deal with the “old” David, who’s right there and not about to give up his place. So New David accidentally kills his former self, and buries him in the back-yard. This, in turn, leads to his daughter sensing that something is very wrong and that New David is not her real father. But, rather brilliantly, he manages to convince her that he is a guardian angel, come to take better care of her than Old David could.
I kept suspecting that the whole thing was probably just New David’s wishful thinking; a fantasy of his. Or that something weird and supernatural would start happening. But actually the movie sticks to its sci-fi plot with an impressively tight focus, treating the cross-time corridor more as a proper wormhole than some kind of magic door. And it turns out that its presence and usefulness have not gone unnoticed by the rest of the local neighborhood…
Events and people from the future continue to spill over into the past, and the plot thickens with surprising and shocking developments. I did wonder where all this was going – it might have gone in all sorts of directions. But again I ended up impressed and bemused with the way the plot was kept on course, following a very particular logic. The Door is a beautifully directed science fiction art movie filled with intriguingly intelligent symbolism, and it treads a fine line between showing a world which gyrates back and forth between feeling real and unreal, always keeping you guessing. In an era where most movies start losing steam and plot logic after the first 45 minutes, it is refreshing and gratifying to experience one in which the story truly grows, flowering into a highly engaging pattern of thought-provoking narrative excellence which accomplishes all it sets out to do.
The DVD has some extra features: a trailer, cast interviews, a behind the scenes featurette, and 12 alleged deleted scenes. Most of the interviews are very short, and clearly made for a promotional TV spot, consisting mainly in summarizing what the movie is about (which is not terribly interesting to hear when you’ve just watched it). Mads Mikkelsen terms the genre of the movie “a magical thriller” (whereas I personally call it science fiction). I viewed several of the so-called deleted scenes, and was a bit puzzled, since, as far as I could see, they were just scenes from the movie. Possibly they were alternative takes, but I could tell no difference, so they did not appear to me to be deleted scenes, and there does not seem to be any reason for them to be on the disc.
Still and all, a fair release.
The Door is released on DVD 18th April.
Director: Anno Saul
Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Jessica Schwarz, Valeria Eisenbart, and others
Runtime: none listed
Country: Germany
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DVD Rating: 
