Commentary |
Even better than the first film. Von Sydow is perfect as Karl Oskar, whereas the Norwegian Ullman continues to butcher the Smålandian dialect. In 2014 I saw the stage musical version of the original series of novels, where both Kristina and Ulrika were played with Finnish accents, similarly to my dismay.
Troell’s films are less focused on sex than Moberg’s novels, and less focused on religion and romantic love than the musical. They’re brilliantly naturalistic. If anything, they seem to emphasize racism, as they should in a story of emigration, but Troell is also very good with the characterization of the leads: flawed, ignorant, bigoted, brought together by geography rather than destiny. Troell extracts his drama from the representativeness of their lives, as opposed to a template larger than life. |