Some films age beautifully like some women do. Pelle The Conqueror
is one of them. I vaguely remember seeing it in a movie theater as a teenager and
still carry a good feeling about it, but nothing else. Now with this revisit after 30+ years, I wouldn’t
hesitate to call it a masterwork (of Swedish director, Billie August) and I
wish I could see it on a larger screen as I did in the past. It received the Best
Foreign Language Film in 1989, and that probably explains why and how it made
it all way to the Istanbul theaters.
The film is an adaptation of Martin Andersen Nexø’s novel. The
main character Oscar nominee Max von Sydow who played the all-talk-little-action
old father named Lasse died this spring. The little boy is played by Pelle Hvenegaard who continued with acting career if you google. In the movie, he is dreaming of living
in America one day from the small Danish island where he lives under horrible poor
conditions like most refugees today. The son and the father uproot themselves
from their native Sweden at the turn of the 20th century in hopes of finding
better work and save some money on the Danish island of Bornholm (so they are
not refugees). I know it is hard to imagine this today that there had been
quite some waves of immigration and hardcore
exploitation as a result within the Nordic countries before they became the
most developed and built the best welfare system in the world. Even to challenge
one’s stereotypes and make some sad temporal and special comparisons of poor Swedish
immigrants, the movie is worth seeing.
The workers are paid near-slave wages to work on a farm by a
very brutal boss with an owner that is driving his wife insane with his
adulterous actions. As is the case with most child protagonists, Pelle acts as
voyeur to many heated acts of lechery and genuine love; and witnesses the worst
the human beings can do to each other. Despite the high number of characters to
explore after the movie is over, Pelle the Conqueror always
brings us back to the father-son dynamic, a constant source of compassion and deep
disappointment. In fact, I cannot think
of any other movie which captures a series of disappointments with fathers that
most boys experience and cannot express as a child so movingly and successfully.
I feel there is something so universal that will touch many male viewers’ hearts
and they won’t even be able to tell why. Pelle slowly turns to more forceful
personalities on the farm whom he can look up to including one worker who speaks
out against harsh treatment and low wages (but he pays the price for it). I couldn’t help but constantly think of refugees
today except that the faces in the movie are all pale and get very red, and hair
color is blond or red.
It is a two-and-a-half-hour work, just so know and plan
ahead. I post this recommendation particularly to the younger generation so
that they can practice some attention-focusing and also appreciate the beauty
of epic movies.
PS: If you like this movie, I also recommend Antonia’s
Line and Babette.
Fun fact: Berkeley’s BAMPFA's beautiful second floor
café is named after the movie Babette.
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder