DANE'S HOLLYWOOD DARES : HONOURS TOBIAS LINDHOLM

 

A Dane casts a wary eye on Hollywood. And ' The Good Nurse ' gives rein to the instincts of the director Tobias Lindholm.

The true-crime thriller ''The Good Nurse'' is ultimately an indictment of American systems :  the hospitals that turned a blind eye to the atrocities of Charles Cullen, a nurse who has admitted to killing 29 patients.

And may have killed dozens if not hundreds more as he quietly moved from job to job; and the interlocking demansa of employment and health care benefits that held back Amy Loughren, a fellow nurse who eventually helped bring Cullen to justice.

''The Good Nurse,'' which is adapted from Charles Graeber's nonfiction book, is also a movie that would not exist without another American system -namely Hollywood.

Its stars include two Academy Award winners, Eddie Redmayne asCullen and Jessica Chastain as Loughren, and Netflix released it last week on its streaming service.

This is the first English-language film for the director Tobias Lindholm, a Danish screenwriter and filmmaker, and '' The Good Nurse '' has the potential to be seen by his widest American audience yet, though many viewers may already be familiar with Lindholm's work.

At 45, he has seen many of his films and TV series cross seamlessly into the American marketplace, without having to sacrifice his homegrown artistic sensibilities. Those projects include the political TV series ''Borgen,'' which he wrote for; the life affirming drama ''Another Round,'' which he wrote with its director, Thomas Vinterberg; and the procedural mini-series ''The Investigation,'' which he wrote and directed.

Lindholm has always eyed Hollywood warily, regarding it as a place where some of his peers lost their way.

Speaking from his office in Copenhagen during a recent video conversation, Lindholm said, ''I had seen a lot of awesome fellow Scandinavian filmmakers disappear in the American studio system and not end up making the film they wanted to make.''

Yet Lindholm said he inherently identified with what he considered American cinema, in which people are defined by their jobs. [''That's why all your stories are about presidents, police officers, sheriffs, cowboys, detectives,'' he said.] He contrasted that with European cinema, which he said is ''obsessed with psychology and caught up in emotions.''

Lindholm grew up fascinated with American cultural exports like jazz and hip-hop, and devoted his early 20s to pursuits like skateboarding and graffiti before he enrolled in the National Film School of Denmark.

There, Lindholm met future collaborators like Jeppe Gjervig Gram, a fellow ''Borgen'' writer, and his future wife and producer, Caroline Blanco. Before graduation, Lindholm was tapped by Vinterberg, the Dogme 95 co-founder, to help him write what would become the 2010 social realist feature ''Submarino.''

Also that year, ''R,'' a prison drama that Lindholm wrote and directed with Michael Noer, was released, and both movies earned widespread international acclaim.

The World Students Society thanks author Dave Itzkoff.