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by tpmx
2297 days ago
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To Americans with Scandinavian/Swedish ancestors (there sure are a lot of you), I really recommend watching these two movies starring Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emigrants_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Land They are based on a series of novels (1949 and onwards) by Vilhelm Moberg chronicling the fate of a family who decides to migrate from famine/poverty-stricken Sweden to the US in the mid 1800s. A full 25% of the Swedish population ended up migrating to the US. These two movies made Max iconic and so beloved to pretty much everyone in Sweden. They are also fantastic movies; I find myself rewatching them once every 5 years or so. |
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In it, von Sydow plays the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun, who, after WW2, was accused of having collaborated with the Nazis. His portrayal of Hamsun is one of the most nuanced, moving performances I've seen on the screen. It's a superb film. He didn't play many main characters in his life, certainly not in his American movies, but he should have.
(An interesting fact that will elude most non-Nordic viewers is that the cast is made up of a blend Norwegian, Swedish and Danish actors, and they all speak their own native language; von Sydow performs the role in Swedish, for example, even though Hamsun was Norwegian. The film is so well made that it doesn't make any difference at all.)
This and Jan Troell's other films used to be on Criterion's streaming service, but they're not there anymore. Hamsun is only available through Kanopy, I believe, which requires a library card from one of their supported libraries. The Emigrants can be rented on Amazon Prime Video and Vudu, and the The New Land is on iTunes/Apple TV. But it's often difficult to find these masterpieces.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamsun_(film)