Three Miles North of Molkom (2008)

A Masterpiece!

The first must-see film of the year.

Blistering performances.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I was lucky enough to be invited to the premiere in London a few years ago and it was the first time I saw people from the audience actually falling off their seats in laughter. The Australian protagonist is a gold mine, if you can understand his accent. This is a great example of what a good documentary one can make with a great idea, very little money and a lot of luck (if the Ozzy hadn't mistakenly ended up there, there would be no movie).Really recommended.I guess only on DVD at this point but well worth it.Buy it if you can and support these guys. They made it with almost nothing.

You may well have missed this little gem of British cinema, which had a far shorter run in the cinemas than it rightly deserved. Most explicitly Molkom is a film about collective therapy as an antidote to the alienating individualism of our consumerist societies. It is also a very funny character study. As a sounding board for the audience, sceptical Aussie Nick (who arrives at the Angsbacka festival by chance) encapsulates the mixture of curiosity, amusement and mild terror we feel right from the film's opening scene when we follow the camera down a boulevard of smiling faces – that little bit too welcoming. For me, the success of the film is that it takes us beyond those maniacal smiles, capturing both the communal frenzy of the festival and the quiet intimacy of the individual journeys within. Directors Cannan and McFarlane achieve this through their focus on one of the festival's customary 'sharing groups'– a group that brings together eccentric characters including a Finnish grandmother, Swedish pop star, Californian goatherd, a Viking-like Swedish harbourmaster. And Nick. This intimate focus allows the individual personalities to shine but also provides us with real insight into the group dynamics as they evolve and are disputed – sometimes quite unexpectedly. In this way the film achieves an accomplished balance between genuine sensitivity and laugh-out-load humour. A truly emotive experience. Visually the film is quite beautiful and the fluid camera movements capture the raw physicality of the workshops that presumably give the 'no mind' festival its name. It is this strategy (adopted by both cinematographer and directors) of tracing bodies, landscapes and personalities unobtrusively rather than through a contrived script that allows for the unpredictable development of the characters and in doing so (paradoxically) gives Molkom an feel of a feature film rather than a documentary. Looking forward to seeing what the team put together next!

There is a favourite quiz question which runs along the lines of "when did the 1960s end?" to which there are two basic answers. Most people will answer 1st January 1970, whilst some will be clever and answer 1st January 1971 - on the grounds that there was no year zero so all decades end on the first year of the next. For others there appears to be a third answer to the question, and that is "Hey, man, the '60s never ended, dig, it is forever 1967 like wow!" The largely white, middle class hippies who inhabit this dog of a movie would seem to belong to this group, as each and everyone of them have, to my mind, ignored the march of time and have stayed utterly rooted in their own groove which started during the first summer of love.Now, that on its own is no reason to take so venomously against this film - a documentary about people caught in their own timewrap is no bad thing, but therein lies the rub. This is not a good film, it is dull, poorly edited and tells you nothing at all about the events at Molkom - why are people attracted to it, what exactly are they hoping to achieve whilst there, etc etc. The interviews are perfunctionary in the extreme - with the notable exception of the Australian guy who, at the start at least, was the only "proper" person there. But even he was a blindly obvious sell-out in the end - if that had been a feature film then the screenwriters would have been taken out and shoot for being so crass in having a character that starts off as a Doubting Thomas and ending up a convert to the cause (whatever cause that may have been!) Even with the happenings themselves there was no explanation - what was all that nonsense about pulling down power on the shores on the lake about, what actually happened in the sauna (oops, sorry, sweat lodge!) and why, yet again, was something so simple as fire walking shown as a deeply spiritual thing to do (white hot coals cause a thin film of sweat to form on the soles of the foot, thus protecting them from the heat, so anyone can firewalk with no special preparation - and, yes I have done it!). Also, did everyone actually end up shagging each other in the big tent or just cuddling - now that would have been worth watching! By the end I was beginning to question my own existence and just why was it I did not find the courage to simply walk on this dross! At the end there was, naturally, captions showing what each individual had done since leaving Molkom, but by the time they were being shown I was off down the street heading back to reality! I cared not a jot about any of them during the film (the class room show off (women with no saliva), the bully (big man who thought he was a king!), the quite mousy type (blonde Swedish girl who had everyone bowing down to her - like wow man!) the weird guy, and, of course, the Australian! Next time I see advertised a film about modern day hippies I will cross the street and let them get on with their thing, man. I know they are doing no harm, but I do not want to waste any more of my hard-earned dosh watching them do no harm.

I saw this film a few years ago at the Melbourne Film Festival. The audience loved it. I found it hilarious and unforgettable. It's a 'Fish out of Water' Documentary about a young rugby player from Sydney who is sent to a New Age Alternative Lifestyle Festival in Molkom, Sweden. There have been many failed attempts to parody the 'New Age' movement but this film demonstrates once and for all that it parodies itself. It also manages to do it with compassion. I have been waiting for a distributor to pick it up here in Australia and I've tried to buy it on DVD. I notice that it has recently been exhibited in the UK and would love to know how it went. It will be a great shame if this film doesn't find a big audience. Google it and see what the critics had to say.