Q&A USA

감독: Bille August

주연: Esben Smed Jensen

재능있는 엔지니어가 코펜하겐의 엘리트들 사이의 부와 성공을 추구하기 위해 그의 끈질긴 뿌리에서 도망칩니다. 그러나 그를 움직이는 자부심이 그의 파멸로 위협되는 story.

Peter Sidenius gets accepted into an engineering university. He can leave rural Denmark for Copenhagen and he can break ties with his overbearing pious father. He hates his father and he rejects a gift of his father's pocket watch. The self-confident Peter, free of family and Christian religion, is poor but studies hard. He befriends a waitress who teaches him the ways of the city and the world of sex.

Peter meets Ivan and his father Phillip Salomon from a wealthy Jewish banking family. Ivan likes the ambitious smart engineer and especially likes Peter's grand future project to harness water and wind power to develop the country with electricity. It is the late 19th Century and his ideas are new and revolutionary. Ivan helps Peter adjust to free thinking intellectuals, new political thought, monied class businessmen, cultural rules and expectations and the Salomon family with daughter, Jakobe. She is to marry Eybert, a little older, wealthy, and established Jewish man. Peter is a young student with no money from a Christian family no one has yet met. Nonetheless Peter is welcomed into the Salomon family circle even vacationing with them. They like his visionary energy project to which Peter is quite proud and his youthful ambition sees no obstacles.

Peter's pride has failed to get ministerial government approval of his plans. Father Salomon thinks sending Peter to Austria to further his engineer studies and get outside review of the viability of canals, windmills and water energy is best. This separates Peter and Jakobe who by now are in love. Peter's brother Eberhardt told him their father is gravely ill with only a short time for a reconciliation. The Sidenius family does not approve of the Jewish Jakobe and expect Peter to overcome his pride and find peace through Jesus Christ. Peter leaves for Vienna and does not return for his father's funeral. Jakobe too violates family norms and rules of etiquette and goes to Vienna to visit Peter. They exchange words of love and have sex. She becomes pregnant.

With Austria academic liking of Peter's ideas, Ivan and his father set up financial backing. Jakobe is making wedding plans and a joint trip to England. The Salomons have taken over Peter's life. Unbeknownst to Peter his destitute mother has moved to Copenhagen. Peter visits and she asks him to return to Christ. She tells him the background story of the watch. He is angry and leaves without it. A project meeting is all set and everything is a go except for the local minister's approval. Peter needs to apologize from his earlier outburst. He will not. His project stands on its own. His pride and arrogance kills the project. Ivan, Phillip, and Jakobe cannot understand how a simple apology stands in the way of Peter's life's work. He has let everyone down. In reverse, Peter feels betrayed.

Peter's mother dies and he takes her body back to Jutland for burial beside his father. His mother leaves him the watch with a letter of advice. Back home he reflects on his life. Life is simpler in the countryside. The Vicar counsels him and his eye wanders to the Vicar's daughter. She rebuffs his advances for he is an engaged man. He has values unless they interfere with his own ambition or self-interest. Peter returns to Copenhagen and calls off the engagement. He tells her they are just too different with their opposite backgrounds. She has been so wonderful to him. They should call this off before anyone is hurt. Jakobe cannot believe it. She has suffered so much for her love and is devastated. She does not tell Peter she is pregnant. Peter is now rejected by Copenhagen society. He return home destitute. Jakobe gets a private abortion.

Peter returns home and marries the Vicar's daughter, Inger. They have three children. He attends church weekly. He has no real job and continues to work on his grand plan to develop the country. He has become his father. He isolates himself from his wife. He is not happy. His one son is afraid of him. He is too strict and not understanding. Jakobe has never married even though Eybert again offers to marry her. Jakobe takes what would have been her inheritance and starts a charity school for the abandoned and orphaned children in Copenhagen. She has seen the scars that has ruined peoples' lives. Peter dies of cancer and leaves his meager estate to her school.