Arven (2003) / Inheritance / Das Erbe

A story about the power of family structures and social pressures. Christoffer is the scion of the Borch Møller steel dynasty. But he has left the family business and runs a restaurant in Stockholm, where he is happily married to the actor Maria. When his father commits suicide, Christoffer’s mother insists he return to Denmark to run the company. He is forced to undertake a radical restructuring that does not spare either relatives or faithful, long-term employees. In the process, his marriage crumbles and conflicts with his family escalate … Per Fly meticulously depicts the "decline of a personality" with striking parallels to that of Thomas Buddenbrook. Christoffer is a victim of what dramatist John von Düffel, who adapted Thomas Mann’s novel for the stage, said about Buddenbrook, who is fighting "the battle against his own weakness, against any sensitivity, against anything that harboured the danger of failure in the hard, practical world of business". At the end, Christoffer, too, is "only a shell".