This film and its characters are so intricately layered that it's difficult to know how to begin, but as Jorgen is the puppetmaster of the story, it seems appropriate to focus on him and his influences on the moral negotiations of the characters around him.
As is revealed or implied throughout the course of the film, Jorgen discovers that he has a fatal, incurable disease and, in response to this, tracks down the father of his wife's daughter (Jacob) to serve as a replacement in the lives of his wife and children. He invites Jacob to Denmark under the guise of a meeting to discuss funding Jacob's orphanage, and ends up inviting him to the daughter's wedding. There, Jacob discovers that Jorgen's wife is his previous lover and the daughter is his daughter. As the film progresses, Jacob (led by Jorgen) integrates himself further into the family. Jorgen goes so far as to set up a possible cheating scenario (leaving for the weekend and insisting that Jacob take his wife out to dinner), even displaying a degree of cruelty toward Helene before the trip (whether this was intentional or a side effect of excessive alcohol consumption is difficult to say; Jorgen was very controlled throughout most of the film, but his internalized grief may have pushed him to drink beyond his control, making the hostile exchange with his wife less a preconceived means of pushing her away from his mortal self toward Jacob and more a case of emotional overload). Both Jacob and Helene negotiate this moral pitfall with ease; neither give in nor truly express temptation to cheat.
The next moral conundrum Jorgen presents is the decision Jacob must make in regards to the orphanage. Does he give up his direct work with the children, especially the child he raised, to give them the funds they need or does he stand up to the rich bastard pulling the strings, leaving the orphanage without a penny but keeping his dignity and integrity intact? In the end, he chooses to stay in Denmark. This, I feel, was the more morally correct decision when considering the different needs of the family in Denmark and the orphans in India. In India, they needed the funds more than the emotional support of one man; if he had returned without the money, the orphanage would have failed and the children would have been homeless and starving once more. By giving up the personal involvement with the project, he gave the children what they needed most; once they meet their basic needs they will be able to focus on more abstract needs, like the need for emotional support. Pramod demonstrates this in the end; despite his apparent dependency on Jacob throughout the film, he chooses to stay where he is rather than travel to Denmark. Things are good here, he says, demonstrating that his need for basic things was more driving than his need for Jacob particularly. The family in Denmark, however, has their basic needs more than met and need emotional support. They are rich enough to worry.
Jorgen's own moral negotiations are more complicated than the ones he presents to the other characters. There is the issue of his lie of omission in regards to his health. On one hand, his family had a right to know and prepare for his inevitable death. On the other, he was able to spare them some pain for a while, but the knowledge that he had been hiding the truth from them created a different pain, a trust-severing pain that ended up being more hurtful to his family than merely finding out that he was doomed to die. His ultimate motivation was largely selfish; as he told Anna, he did not want them to see him as a dead man until he was one, suggesting a desire to keep his dignity until he passed. This is further reinforced during his emotional conversation with Helene, where he tells her that he didn't want her to see him in the pathetic state he finds himself embodying.
The other major moral negotiation undertaken by Jorgen is the idea of replacing himself in his family without their knowledge and consent. He upends their lives, and the life of Jacob, by bringing Jacob to the wedding and forcing old wounds of Helene's, Jacob's, and Anne's to reopen. The motivation here was largely selfless, I feel; I think he genuinely felt like it would help his family move past his death to have another father in the picture. It was morbidly brave of him to so carefully plot out his own replacement, especially because it's programmed pretty deeply in the human mind that we do not wish to be replaced in anybody's hearts, much less in the hearts of your wife and children. It is deeper contemplation on this inevitable outcome to his plan that leads the otherwise held-together man (disregarding alcoholic influences) to break down in one of the most heart-wrenchingly emotional scenes I've ever witnessed, further supporting the selfless nature of this plan to replace himself. Despite the selflessness, the damage to all parties cannot be disregarded. As for the moral outcome, I suppose it depends on whether you believe the end justifies the means. Was it worth the disruption and emotional scarring of all involved parties to give his family some stability after his death? I remain undecided on this point.
Great stuff, Amanda. I think you're right about the selfishness of Jørgen's silence about his illness, and we see the effects of this on Helene and Anna, though we're spared the reaction of the twins, who seem fairly stoic at the funeral. I do wonder, though, about the selflessness of his finding a replacement. It seems to me, rather, that there is a related self-regard in this act, and that perhaps this extends beyond just an overappreciation of himself (though Jacob is certainly not Jørgen, he is the latter's chosen successor), but also of the role he plays as master of the house and CEO of the company that is his family. It seems obvious that he loves Helene, Anna, and the twins, but I can't shake the feeling that this has mostly to do with their roles as reflections of himself, his magnanimity and his goodness. In his discussion with Jacob over lunch, he praises Helene as a "beautiful woman," perhaps as much a prize as any of the heads in his study rather than whatever else she could be, and perhaps is, to Jacob.
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