In Your Hands
Directed by Annette Olesen
Reviewed by Catherine MacLennan
Director Annette Olesen's Dogma-certified In Your Hands (Forbrydelser) demonstrates how emotions, desire and pain can override principles and belief systems that one normally subscribes to, affecting our actions and reactions to other people.
Ann Eleonora Jorgensen plays Anna, the new chaplain at a women's prison. As she first enters the prison, she is uneasy, looking up to a forbidding sight of stairs and bars. But she is no stuffy, old-fashioned chaplain - she is hip, sexy and modern - she and her husband even joke about the bureaucratic letter describing her appointment. Further, she wants to help the prisoners in a meaningful way: "I want to preach on something relevant to their lives. ‘Preach' - I don't like that word."
One of the prisoners shyly asks if she can be an assistant. The chaplain is surprised but welcoming. As they get talking, the prisoner asks if priests really believe in things like Jesus walking on water. Anna initially answers that these things are metaphorical, but sensing the prisoner's disappointment with this answer adds that with God anything is possible, including walking on water. It appears that Anna has both the sensitivity and theological flexibility to minister to such a challenging and diverse group. The prisoner has something else she wants to talk to Anna about - Kate, a new prisoner, who has a "special relationship with God."
Tall, silent, solid Kate is credited with healing a prisoner from a drug addiction. Kate also knows that Anna is pregnant, before Anna herself knew (in fact, she had been trying to get pregnant for a long time without success). Anna herself begins to wonder about Kate: Does she have special powers, a special relationship with God? A guard is dismissive of such talk, diagnosing the prisoners with "speed-psychosis."
Anna's fascination with Kate turns to revulsion upon reading her file (the details of the crime that put her in prison). A guard (also fascinated with Kate) is seated beside Anna as reads her file and defends Kate by saying she was on drugs at the time. Anna doesn't appear to hear his words and keeps reading with horror and disgust.
After a meeting with her doctor, in which he informs her about the problems that may exist with her pregnancy, Anna has grave concerns about the baby's health and survival. Agonizing over it, she contrasts herself with the prisoners - "murders, drug addicts with healthy babies." Her sermons change: gone is the earlier message that God forgives everyone; now she preaches that people must take responsibility for their actions.
As stress and fear and anger boil over in Anna a chain of events affects Anna, the guard and Kate - their private miseries co-mingling in a sudden violent end. Olesen's drama deals with our faith in each other - how it can be willing to grow and how easily it can be destroyed.
The Lamp. October 2004