Review of The Glassblower’s Children (1998)
Seen in 2021.
The local lord has a pair of siblings kidnapped, hoping this will please his wife.
A charming blend of Scandinavian folktale archetypes, Selma Lagerlöf’s contributions to the golden age of Swedish cinema in the 1910s, and a deeper humanism befitting the 1990s. Though the film does get slow, I appreciate the care taken to characterize the biological parents, the adoptive parents and the children, giving them all equal importance and eschewing the moral dichotomy of the simplest folktales. The special-effects work with Nana is a weak point and the children, predictably, speak their Stockholm dialect despite the provincial Småland setting.