Here's Your Life (Här har du ditt liv)

Director Jan Troell on the set of Here’s Your Life (Här har du ditt liv), 1966

 

HERE’S YOUR LIFE (Här har du ditt liv)        A                    

Sweden  (169 mi)  1966  d:  Jan Troell  

A beautiful example of a young filmmaker’s first feature film, though Troell was 27-years of age at the time, but he’s also the cinematographer, the editor, and the co-writer of the screenplay along with Bengst Forslund, adapting the second semi-autobiographical novel Romanen om Olof (A Novel of Olof) in a series of four novels by Nobel Prize-winning novelist Eyvind Johnson.  The film has a greater reputation in Sweden where the epic three-hour drama was originally seen on Swedish television and was immediately pronounced a masterpiece, with Ingmar Bergman calling it “one of the uncompromising masterpieces of Swedish film history,” a searingly realistic coming-of-age drama of a young 14-year old working class boy Olof Persson (Eddie Axberg) as he grows up in a small village of Norrland province in the north of Sweden during the First World War.  Winning the Gold Hugo for Best Film and another for Best Director at the Chicago Film Festival in 1967, the film was cut considerably for the American release a year later, cutting as much as an hour, which is unthinkable, where the film has rarely been seen in its full version outside Sweden.  Born in Malmö, Troell worked professionally as a teacher in a Malmö school for nine years, while at the same time making amateur movies.  His film career started with television, making educational films and shorts for children before working as a cinematographer on several Bo Widerberg films.  What’s immediately striking is his visual style, obviously influenced by the French New Wave, using freeze frames, jump cuts, changes of speed, and spectacular location shots, as the sparsely populated Norrland province is known for wide forests, large rivers and untouched wilderness. Opening with several different freeze frames of a bird in flight, the film follows the journey of a young boy who is about to leave the hospitality of another family to return home to see his sick father.  As the family can’t afford to provide for him at home, Max von Sydow plays a friend of his father who helps find him a job and a place to live in a remote lumber mill, where the intimate portrait of these veteran workers is startling, seen hauling around trees in the snow in preparation for the industrial saw.  Shot in black and white, these early close-up shots of workers performing their jobs in the immensity of the natural splendor all around them are among the best sequences in the film, reminiscent of Alexander Dovzhenko’s EARTH (1930), one of the most impressive films of the Soviet era, a film that pays tribute to peasants working in the fields, elevating their work to a kind of cinematic high art. 

After an even younger boy gets killed in an unfortunate accident at the mill, Olof develops some deep-seeded resentments against the indifference of the owner of the plant, who expects the men to get back to work afterwards as if nothing has happened, telling them in the most patronizing manner that they ought to be more careful, never once acknowledging that the worker killed was only a child.  Eventually Olof gives the owner a piece of his mind and sets off for the city, where he meets Lundgren, Bergman actor Gunnar Björnstrand, who runs a movie house, hiring Olof to sell candy and bon-bons to theater customers while also pasting up flyers around town of upcoming events.  Here he’s able to wander around town and get into discussions about the role of the working man in society, where one amusing point of view is that workers are better off uneducated, as the more educated they are the more likely they’ll turn into socialists.  Olof is seen reading at every available opportunity and becomes a devout believer in worker’s rights, where one of the more intriguing shots is his first march in a May Day parade, where the rousing music played interesting enough was La Marseillaise, France National Anthem - La Marseillaise (Instrumental YouTube (1:19), signifying an end to war in Europe.  Sweden was subjected to food shortages and severe economic hardships during the war, as the Allied forces blocked trade with Germany, one of their largest trading partners, a situation that only grew worse when the United States entered the war and utilized submarines.  The visible deprivation seen throughout the land is one of the unforgettable aspects of the film, where there is no discussion about the family turning away Olof during hard times—it is simply a fact of life.  At 14, he is expected to drop out of school and earn his keep as an adult, even though it’s clear he’s still a child.  Still working for Lundgren, he’s again taken under the wing of another eccentric character, Nicke Larsson (Ulf Palme), who’s like an old sailor back on the high seas as they go on the road together projecting hand-cranked movies in small towns, where they actually have to light the lamp of the projector, but audiences are shocked by what they see on the screen, from newsreels to melodramas, where they are brought to tears by some of the stories.  Olof is more shocked by Olivia (Ulla Sjoblom), one of Larsson’s sultry old flames working in a circus shooting gallery, who takes on the characteristics of a Fellini woman that young men are expected to have their first sexual experiences with.  But rather than be goaded into it, Olof passes, but doesn’t forget, as he returns to her again much later under different circumstances as her business partner.

Instead he’s back on the road again, this time working for a blacksmith who has beautiful sirenesque daughters at home, where Olof decides to tell them he’s on vacation, as this seems like an idyllic paradise to any young boy.  It’s here that he has his first sexual encounter, frolicking in the woods free as a bird, INSTANTES: Här har du ditt liv aka Here's Your Life (1966 ... YouTube (3:07), where he’s quickly on his way again afterwards.  Reading Homer’s Odysseus, Olof’s life is another episodic journey from one adventure to another, where the people he encounters along the way are fully written, broadly developed, world weary characters that help him overcome his adolescent fears and develop his own worldly views, where he grows from being a passive observer to an active participant, freely expressing his views, all set in the bleak economic conditions of the times.  Often playful and humorous, with a feeling of drifting through life, the film adds a deeper complexity when he begins projecting early cinema shows, as his own journey parallels the birth of cinema, where the vintage clips couldn’t be more fascinating and are beautifully integrated into his young life.  Using abrupt mood shifts, some of his own flashback thoughts are rendered in color, while that bird in flight becomes an animated image that follows him on his journey, where perhaps the most prominent visual theme is the impressive scenic beauty, where the unique splendor of the natural environment covered by a blanket of snow can be breathtaking.  Unlike the populated cities of the south, there is a harsh realty in the rugged, individualistic work ethic that each man must confront in the north, as this test is traditionally how a man measures up in society.  Olof’s propensity for reading and educating himself however helps him make the progression to a more independent thinker, whose view of man transcends brute physical labor, where his sense of societal injustice forms his political and social consciousness, where a man’s value is ultimately based on what he can contribute to social change.  Carrying cinema as his message, Olof’s future is wide open as the road ahead of him is surrounded by the most incredible expanse of unexplored wilderness.     

The Last Sentence (Dom över död man)

THE LAST SENTENCE (Dom över död man)      B                 

Sweden  Norway  (120 mi)  2012  d:  Jan Troell

Cattle die, kinsmen die,
one day you die yourself;
I know one thing that never dies --
the dead man's reputation.

—Dom över död man, a quotation (Verse 77) from the Old Norse poem Hávamál

Jan Troell began his career in the early 60’s working as the cinematographer for Swedish director Bo Widerberg, both from the working class town of Malmö, where he’s always been known as an exceedingly well-prepared director, a man who thoroughly does his homework.  In the last stage of his life, he seems determined to tell historical dramas, where he’s particularly concerned with Sweden’s place in history.  In this film, Troell not only directs, but collaborates with Mischa Gavrjusiov on the black and white cinematography (the first Troell film *not* shot on film), with Ulrika Rang on the editing, and with novelist Klaus Rifbierg in adapting Kenne Fant’s 2007 biography of Torgny Segerstedt.  It’s clear that Troell wanted to exert complete creative control over every aspect of this picture, which in many ways bears an autobiographical similarity in his own life, as both discovered inspiration late in life, where they seem to be struggling against their own mortality.  Segerstedt was a religious scholar who went on to become publicist and editor-in-chief of the Gothenburg daily newspaper, drawing inspiration in his scathing exposé’s of Hitler and the Nazi’s in the 1930’s, though in this film version he’s the nation’s leading editorial columnist, literally the voice of the nation (which was officially neutral) in condemning Hitler and the threat of fascism long before the rest of the world had the nerve to do so, as no one wished to provoke Hitler into war.  Originally considering iconic Swedish actor Max von Sydow for the role, Troell chose Danish actor Jesper Christensen to play Segerstedt, the camerashop owner in EVERLASTING MOMENTS (2008), where there was some worry his accent wouldn’t be sufficiently Swedish, but apparently he alleviated all those concerns.  In the film, the newspaper publisher is Axel Forssman (Björn Granath), whose Jewish wife Maja (Pernilla August) is Segerstedt’s most ardent supporter, blatantly playing the role of his lover in front of his Norweigan wife Puste (Ulla Skoog), who is unceremoniously relegated to second class status, even in front of the family children, creating something of a scandal.  Of note, the director’s own daughter, Johanna Troell, plays Segerstedt’s devoted daughter Ingrid, who in real life became a journalist and politician, living to the age of 98, and was actually interviewed by Troell for this film before her death.   

Perhaps most interestingly, Troell continually makes WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957) references throughout the film, where Segerstedt continually speaks to the ghost of his dead mother (Hanna Holmqvist), often reflecting back to some earlier memory, where making a valiant struggle against aging seems to be part of the theme, as Segerstedt was largely bored and at an impasse as a journalist until he started his attacks on Hitler, calling him “an insult,” which literally revitalized his life and gave him a purpose for living.  The film is divided into two sections, personal life and professional career, where his marriage with Puste was something of a disaster, where she put on a good public face about it but was deeply hurt.  Forssman, on the other hand, seemed resigned to the fact his wife loved Segerstedt, so willingly accepted it in every respect, especially since she continued to live with her husband, as Segerstedt (like Hitler) had a particular fondness for dogs, especially big dogs, a white bulldog, a black lab, and a Great Dane, which he kept near his side always.  Perhaps both men found it easier to express feelings towards animals than they could to the human race.  While Segerstedt is the star, a constant intellectual force, and is in nearly every frame of the movie, except for the actual newsreel footage of Nazi’s on the march, easily the most humanizing aspect of the film is Pernilla August, who is simply a revelation onscreen, an iconic presence ever since her early appearance in Bergman’s FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1982), though she cruelly uses her power at the newspaper and in high society to undermine Puste, often embarrassing her in public at every opportunity up until her untimely suicide, though she remains the love of Segerstedt’s life and his most devoted confidante until her own health fails, at which point he takes up with his secretary Estrid (Birte Heribertson).  The returned ghosts of his lost loves, like Scrooge’s ghosts of Christmas past and present, have an amusing aspect, as he’s more openly revealing to the dead than to anyone else.

Segerstedt is viewed as a man who lived by his convictions, whose moral courage in the face of the scourge of Nazism is exemplary, especially as he started lampooning the entire leadership of the top Nazi officials long before the rest of the world saw Hitler as a threat, predicting he would lead the world into a prolonged war, and one he would not live to see the end of, as he died a month before Hitler.  Segerstedt as a journalist could see what the nation’s politicians couldn’t, that silence was in fact collaboration, as they were too easily fooled or scared into complicity, fearing German reprisals, as Hitler invaded both Norway and Denmark early on, but spared Sweden largely due to the appearance of neutrality.  For this reason, both the Prime Minister and the King of Sweden attempted to suppress his columns, actually succeeding to silence him on occasion, where he would instead print a blank column, with his byline and everything else intact, but the actual words missing, a clever tactic which in its silence kept his readers informed. Segerstedt is seen as part of the aristocratic class, often seen sipping champagne at luxurious dinner affairs, where his open marital affairs seem self-serving and arrogant, showing little sensitivity to others, becoming a pain in the neck in more ways than one, where he seems a natural born irritant.  Troell is an old-fashioned film director, a contemporary of Bergman, sharing much of the religious austerity, but without the flash and the novel invention of Bergman, both of whom use many of the nation’s best theatrical actors.  The film is slow going and can grow tedious, especially with the repetitive use of many of the same classical music themes, which are meant to be leitmotifs but are simply repetitive, making this film feel longer.  Nonetheless, bringing the historical information to the foreground is always instructive and educational, suggesting many heroes may not be the best judge of companionship, but their refusal to capitulate to belligerent and bullying neighbors shows courage and astute judgment.