The Son

"Four men is sitting at a table playing poker. The scene is rather boring. Suddenly, after 15 minutes, we hear a big bang - it turnes out there was a bomb under the table. This is called surprise as it isn't what we expected would happen.

"If we watch the same scene again with the important difference that we have seen the bomb being placed under the table and the timer set to 11 AM, and we can see a watch in the background, the same scene becomes very intense and almost unbearable - we are sitting there hoping the timer will fail, the game is interrupted or the hero leaves the table in time, before the blast. This is called suspense." -Alfred Hitchcock

The Belgian Dardenne brothers use Hitchcock's insight to great effect in their film "The Son." The premise is deceptively simple: Olivier, a carpentry teacher, takes on a new student who was responsible for the death of his son. The student, Francis, doesn't know of Olivier's connection to him. The whole movie becomes a sort of moral cat-and-mouse game, leading up to a particularly tense trip to a lumberyard. Will Olivier exact revenge? Will he manage to forgive Francis? Will he even reveal his secret? The Dardennes could have kept the characters' connection a secret until the end of the film. That would have given us a great surprise, but it wouldn't have provided the tension that permeates the whole movie.

Olivier's emotions are impossible to read, which only adds to the suspense. The Dardennes' camera follows closely behind him for almost the entire film, yet we can never read what he's thinking. He seems to process emotions in the same way that he works: in short bursts. One moment he's berating Francis, the next he's doing him favors. Will the better angels of Olivier's nature win out?

No CGI. No chase scenes. No explosions. And yet this film is more exciting than almost anything Hollywood produces today.