Pelle the Conqueror (1987)

Powerful

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I saw this film during it's original release almost 30 years ago and have held it in the highest regards ever since. I was curious to see it again and how it would hold up to the passage of time. I was very happy to find it as beautiful and inspiring as I did those many years ago, perhaps even more so. It's a truly beautiful film to look at. The stark landscapes, seasons, people, the farm and buildings, are all captured and expressed so naturally and lyrically. All of the performances are solid but the two leads are really great and generate a real depth to the story. As for the story itself, it's expressed with such simplicity that it feels poetic.

The end of the 19th century. A boat filled with Swedish emigrants comes to the Danish island of Bornholm. Among them are Lasse and his son Pelle who move to Denmark to find work. They find employment at a large farm, but are treated as the lowest form of life."Pelle the Conqueror" won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, 1988; it was submitted to the Academy by the Danish government, giving Denmark its second consecutive win after "Babette's Feast". Max von Sydow was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, but lost to Dustin Hoffman for "Rain Man".First of all, well done Denmark on the back-to-back wins. Few people discuss the "Danish film industry", but it appears that at least for a few years it was going strong. (I suppose people tend to include it as a broader category, the Scandinavian film industry.) Max von Sydow is one of my favorite actors and he deserves all the nominations and awards he can get. I can accept him losing to Dustin Hoffman, though. "Rain Man" is not just a great film with a great role, but unlike most Oscar movies has become part of our popular culture.

The harshness of life for immigrant agricultural labourers in 19th century Scandinavia is the subject matter of this film by one-time Bergman acolyte Bille August; and in places, it's every bit as depressing as it sounds, though livened by moments of black humour. Pelle, a young boy, is supported by, but increasing supports, his aged, and somewhat self-pitying father; the dynamic of their relationship is nicely conveyed, although the semi-idiot status of all the peasantry limits the subtlety of what can be conveyed. While it's welcome to see a costume drama that engages in no prettifying, personally I preferred August's 'The Best Intentions', based (in fact) on Bergman's early life, whose middle class setting provided a more sophisticated take on the nature of hardship.

I was expecting the Pelle character to be Max Von Sydow... anyway the boy Pelle hardly measures up to Von Sydow, but this is only one of this movie's shortcomings.To begin, it is much too long. Clip the school scenes. The schoolmaster's role is inconceivably bad and his flock of sex-obsessed children is not only obnoxious but would make Freud himself squirm in his grave. Also, the daughter, and all scenes related to her sub-plot, should be cut. This role adds very little or nothing and seems inserted only to supply the sex/beauty demand. Drop a few other flat characters too---and you drop an hour from the movie.Speaking of "Pelle's"characters, apart from Lasse (Von Sydow), they all seem to share an inert quality. It's as if they inhabit a Scandinavian winter scene painted by a second tier artist--beautifully set, but filled with people as props. Some are too stereotypical, some too gray, some too general---as if belonging to a wide-angle picture and not to a movie. And although the mother and Eric are potentially convincing and interesting characters it's as if their lines have been loaned out to them. In this sense, "Pelle" is too much like a TV movie.Another kind of stereotype is the strong association here of poverty and farms with a kind of animal sexuality. The youngest child to the very old seemed to be defined more by a mindless sexual interest than by any other. I mean since when do 5-10 year old kids gang up on adult sexual behavior? Then there's the baron (and son to a point) who can never pass up a chance to roll in the grass and hay with their indentured farmhands. And does the mutilation material really fit an already morbid movie? I've scored "Pelle" a 6, but believe it closer to a 7 (7.8 needs to be countered) The movie, I think, does have three strengths, with the first overshadowing the other two.Max Von Sydow's acting is exceptional, and it alone is worth the price of the ticket. Whatever problem there might be with his role, he overpowers it. He is utterly convincing as someone fated to poverty on one side and age on the other. Victimization seems to have seeped into his mind, spirit, and body. He calls on no tricks, and never deviates from the character he inhabits whether as a man cowering before the powerful wieldings of his masters, or buckling under one more shattered dream. He is as certain of himself as a proud and determined immigrant as he is as a broken and debilitated man. And he inevitably carries the movie's truth about oppression and discrimination on his back.Photography is another positive. The Danish landscape, the isolated world of a large farm, the centering big house, the natural world of farmland and seascape, and the snowy winter scenes all add realism, romance, atmosphere, and a sense of place which so often seem lacking.Finally it is rare to view so original a father-son relationship as the one portrayed here. It can teeter into sentimentality at rare moments--the boy actor is not Von Sydow---but the unabashed closeness between the two is remarkable. No matter how many falls from grace his failure to defend his son may entail, Lasse is a protective and truly loving father.