My Favourite Swedish Films

WOE IS SWEDEN (a tale with a moral, following the sad defeat of Sweden to Russia at football in 2008- repeated in the 2009 mubi film world cup).

And so it came to pass that a land of midsummer light was filled with darkness and despair. And a terrible huge rumbling roar, the sound of great weeping and gnashing of teeth, broke forth from the shores of Gotland to the great Lapp Gate twixt the towering peaks; from the waves of the Baltic shores, to the glowing waters of Tannforsen and the furthest northern reaches of the roaming moose.

“Can it be, father” cried a young boy, amid the wailing, jostling throngs in the vast cavernous halls of the Gothenburg fish market, “that these our brave men must return from afar with heads bowed and hearts filled with gloom? For did i not see with my own eyes, barely 7 moons past, these same warriors rout the descendants of Alexander and Aristotle? Did they not feed on the sacred smulltronstället in the moonlight beside Lake Vättern, as have our forefathers before battle, since the dawn of time? And did you not say that our race is foremost beacon of enlightenment for the rights of humankind and the banishing of poverty and pestilence? And did not the renown of Gustavus the Great entice even the majestic narwhal to pay homage in the capital?

And did not cunning Carolus Linnaeus cast down his enemies into eternal disdain by naming weeds after them? And is ours not the noblest prize after which the people of all nations strive? And what of Henrik the Hardy, who endured the cold and crags and hunger of Sonfjället and Stora Sjofället for 40 nights as could no foreigner? Or Magnus the Magnificent who slew the invading ten thousand trolls from Tromso with his bare hands? Or Erik the Erudite whose fame spread far and wide, and whom the lustful ladies of Latvia confirmed his pen/is mightier than the sword? And are not Swedish men all equally endowed? And did you not tell me of more recent heroes, of Bibi the Beautiful whose compassion cured the mute actress, of Ingrid the Good who beguiled the bogeyman and conquered the lava flows of far Stromboli, of Stenmark the Supreme, master of the snowy slopes, of Bjorn the Brave who bettered Mad Mac the redhead on the green field of Wimbledon, and Josephson the Just who saved the world by the simple power of prayer, at the price of his own sanity? Oh father…!” And he could contain himself no longer.

To which his father, shedding a tear at the sight of the boy’s anguish and confusion, replied, “My son, know this; the tongues of men, even those we trust, cannot always speak true. Only yesterday, even before our sad nation’s tragedy, i was confronted with life’s futility.” For this dapper bearded man, a distinguished professor of linguistics at Uppsala University (bearing an uncanny resemblance to the professor in Lubitsch’s To Be Or Not To Be) , had been grappling with translating lines from some foolish Anglo-Saxon book concerning a hyena who drank too much bovril and made a laughing stock of himself. “But when”, he continued, regardless of this infantile interruption, “i saw our compatriots fall by the wayside against the men of Rus, i remembered the lesson taught us by the divine Ingmar (God rest his late lamented soul!); that truth and wisdom come only through trials and suffering. And you and i, my son, will be all the finer and stronger for it. And so are we blessed.”

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