As It Is in Heaven (2004)

You won't be disappointed!

the audience applauded

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This movie was recommended to me, and while I found it entertaining enough to watch, I could also predict the whole plot as it was unfolding. And I hate being able to do that. What kept me watching is that I enjoyed listening to the Swedish and see the countryside. While it carries a sentimental message, that it is never too late to change or to learn, that one should believe in oneself...that life is what you make it etc etc...it is right up there in the genre of Sister Act and similar. One element I liked was the discussion of bystander effect, and if one carries part of the responsibility of what happens to other people. I liked that there was a mix of characters from young to old, handicapped etc... but...they all remained a bit shallow, like their backstories were rushed and it was very black and white. I would not put the movie on a pedestal, I felt it was okay...but not great. It would not make it in my personal list of the top 20 best movies I have ever seen.

The second film about a man forming a chorus that was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2005 Academy Awards. I caught the other one, Les choristes, last week and didn't like it much. I liked this one even less. This Swedish film stars Michael Nyqvist as a famous conductor who is forced to retire due to health problems. He moves back to his small hometown, and signs up as the new church cantor. Unfortunately for him, there's a lot of behind the scenes, small town drama going on with everybody, and he gets caught up in the middle of it. There's a lot of ridiculous melodrama here, and a typical scene has a bunch of people in their little choir practice room shouting at each other for little reason. Really, the various plot lines of this movie probably could have worked, but the writing never develops any of the characters or situations enough for it ever to work. There are three major plot lines: 1) One of the choir members is being abused by her husband, and he tends to believe his wife is cheating on him with Nyqvist. 2) The local pastor (Niklas Falk), who seems at times like he walked straight out of Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, is a stern priest who feels the choir members (including his wife) are having too much fun, and he's jealous that Nyqvist is more popular in town than he is. And 3), there's a love story between Nyqvist and the town tramp (Frida Hallgren). It's ridiculously innocent, but the more religious townspeople blow it out of proportion. Kudos to Nyqvist for a decent performance, giving his underwritten character much more personality than was apparently on the page. I also liked Hallgren, who also doesn't have any character to speak of but does have a nice, likable presence.

An internationally renowned conductor, Daniel Daréus, played by Michael Nyqvist, suffers a heart attack during a performance and returns to his native Swedish village to take stock of his life. Yet, his efforts to keep aloof in self-reflection do not succeed. After overcoming his initial reluctance, he becomes the local church choir teacher and inspires a bunch of no-hopers not only to find their true singing voice but also to get in touch with their inner, more sensual selves. Inevitably, this outsider-come-guru with his New Age ideas rubs up against the conservative-minded curate Stig, played by Niklas Falk.However, what sounds a promising story is holed beneath the waterline by cliché and clunking pretentiousness. The priest is a leftish caricature--weak, hypocritical, envious. Armed only with his 'outdated' ideas of sin and redemption, he cannot compete with the touchy-feely emotions awakened in each of the choir members by Daréus who, adorable with his air of pained vulnerability, liberates (albeit unwittingly) the inhabitants from the stifling moral climate which pervades the village. With his peculiar intimate way of communicating music, he takes the inhabitants to a higher mystical plane, which, of course, is clearly intended by the director, Kay Pollak, to be several orders higher than Stig's fusty Christianity. However, the director's efforts are so clumsy in this regard, that no such effect is achieved. The director has also decided to lend the film a strong, but slightly jarring feminist slant. All the male characters are either weak or weak, stupid and bad, or completely inoffensive like the protagonist himself (heart condition) and the retarded youth who plays, rather predictably, a mysterious role at the heart of the group. In contrast, all the women are strong, intelligent and sensitive characters. The battered wife of the group sings solo a defiant song about 'finding herself' and so on. But it's the attempts at profundity that annoy. Daréus' new-found girlfriend, Lena, played by Frida Hallgren tells him 'there is no such thing as death'. I suppose that's meant to sound profound. But it drops from her mouth like a potato from a torn sack. Yet it's the finale which finally exposes the vacuity of the film, where, without giving the end away, the director's final stab at sublimity merely makes you squirm in embarrassment.

This is one of the best films I've ever seen. If I could give an award for the best ensemble acting and character development in a film, this would take the prize. Every single character is superbly developed and portrayed, down to the smallest role. But more than that, this film has incredible honesty and heart. As the characters open and change, we open with them and find ourselves caught up in the joy of rediscovered love - not the sappy unreal love of movies, but the real love of everyday people for each other in community and relationship. There are so many lessons in this movie that it would be tedious to name them, but they are so integrated into the plot and characters that they are organic and tangible. This is a wonderful movie, full of light and love. I will watch it again and again.