Sweet Land
Owen Gleiberman wrote such a mash note to this movie, I didn’t expect to feel so underwhelmed.It’s good, mind — good-natured as well, and a pleasure to look at, and the leads are very good (although some of the secondary casting is a bit left of center; I love Alan Cumming but there are in fact things he can’t do).
And it had the promise of something fresh, in the beginning at the train station — things you hadn’t seen done with this sort of story, like the fact that it isn’t subtitled….Or is it?I didn’t look on the DVD menu but they weren’t showing up on my screen.If it really isn’t, I like that choice.But then parts of it just felt too familiar — the canonization of Simple Farming Folk, the “oh, how quaint were the prejudices of an earlier time” attitude, the anachronistically free-spirited leading lady, the John Heard character’s abrupt reversal that came from nowhere except that 1) it had to happen and 2) the movie was 85 minutes old, I could go on.Even the double framing device felt like an old trick, not new but different (and not very well acted).
I’m making it sound worse than it is; it’s pleasant.Elizabeth Reaser (Ava on Grey’s) is great fun to watch.But Gleiberman owes me one.
Tags: movies
I enjoyed this one for the most part myself, but wasn’t overwhelmed by it either. “Sweet” is really the best word for it, with all the pros and cons that term brings to mind. Interestingly enough, I heard Reaser didn’t actually learn any Norwegian for her role and she and the other actors speaking it in the movie were essentially ad-libbing all that dialogue. That’s pretty impressive, if it’s true, because it sounded “close enough” to me to sound believable (I’m 1/4 Norwegian so heard the language some growing up). Glad to see her back on “Grey’s Anatomy,” even though I still can’t figure out why I’m keep tuning in for that crappy show!
Reaser’s character is German, which would explain that in part. Heh. Her German sounded like my mother’s, which is to say “school German”-y, but I’m otherwise ignorant as far as that goes, so it worked for me. (I assumed German and Norwegian share enough root words that she and her future husband could communicate a little, or that Olaf knew some German.)
I think I may have mentioned to you before, re A History of Violence, how I HATE the Simple Farming Folk cliche.
Thanks for the warning; will avoid.
Interesting post. I don’t read Gleiberman, but I see his short reviews on NY1 in the mornings, and I tend to respect him a lot (unlike that asshat, Neil Rosen, and his 4 freaking’ apple reviews–gack). So to hear him have missed the boat is interesting.
Now I’ll have to watch the film just to see which of you I agree with. Oh, Netflix??
I usually like the Gleib too, so when he gave Sweet Land such high praise, I figured I’d be in safe hands. And again, it didn’t suck. It just wasn’t as great as he said, I thought.
But he made up for it by tipping me to Mafioso, which is really a charmer.
Gah–I can’t stand Elizabeth Reaser. I’ve only seen her on Grey’s, but when she talks, she only moves her lower lip and the rest of her face is immobile. I can’t focus on anything else when she’s on screen.
Oh, see? I love Elizabeth Reaser. I saw her in that awful The Family Stone but was quite taken with her very quiet performance amidst the annoyance that was nearly everyone else. That led me to Sweet Land…which was sweet, and that’s about it. I like the quirky mouth. Huh. Go figure.