A good movie

It is another movie that I wanted to watch for so many years. Seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if I had been looking for this movie for more or less 20 years. Well, I wish I could say it had been worth the wait. However, even though I did like the damned thing, to be honest, I can’t say I was really blown away though. I mean, sure, it was a solid drama showing the harsh lives of Swedish immigrants trying their luck in Denmark at the end of the 1850’s but there were a couple of things that didn’t really work for me. First of all, there was no real plot but a succession of little dramas involving the different people living in this farm. Of course, you might argue that it provided a more realistic slice of life but it did lack some dramatic punch. Another issue was that, in my opinion, there were also too many characters. As a result, except for Lasse Karlsson, none of them was really developed and, in fact, they were all reduced to a one note characteristic. For example, you had the ugly bastard son, the pretty young girl who gets pregnant, the mean foreman, the fornicating Kongstrup,… The only exception was, as mentioned before, Lasse Karlsson. Indeed, Max von Sydow, the Swedish master, gave here another strong performance. Above all, while this character might be considered weak or even pathetic, I thought he was incredibly human and believable and his flaws made him even more interesting to behold. Basically, he was not an improbable hero but an average and ordinary man who had to face  the harsh realities of his life and kept on moving forward anyway and this realistic approach was really appreciated. Anyway, to conclude, even if it didn’t really impress me, it was still a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.