- MASTER CLUE RUNESCAPE. HIS JOB LEAVES HIM KIND OF HATED FULL
- MASTER CLUE RUNESCAPE. HIS JOB LEAVES HIM KIND OF HATED PROFESSIONAL
The famous international conductor Daniel Daréus (Michael Nyqvist) has a heart attack with his stressed busy professional life and interrupts his successful career with an early retirement. This is simply because in a world of technology-focused flicks and materialistic self-seeking, any glimpse of human community is, deep down, welcome for anyone, even the cynical. The film remains solid three-star-fare despite the holes that can be picked in it. Apart from in some awkward love scenes, the film's 127 minutes seldom drag, but there is a feeling that things may have been left on the cutting room floor. In fact none of the hitches in the film last very long and all seem resolved within a scene. Perhaps these holes are functions of the editing, like several inconsistencies and continuity glitches that can be spotted, such as Siv's unexplained reappearance in the choir (twice) after moralistic outbursts. Perhaps the unexplained photograph of a young boy, a lost son perhaps, glimpsed once over his shoulder, holds the secret. His repressions and hypocrisies are just there, dangling unrelated to psychological reality. Similarly, the small town Pastor so closely adheres to the moralistic, black-wearing super-Protestant stereotype, that his secret indulgence in girlie magazines is hardly surprising. The violence of the film is mostly a function of male anger and repression, but in never delves deeply into why the school bully who grows up into a wife beater is like this. It contains violence and an ending that might well be a metaphor for dying after achieving creative nirvana. It diverts from the 'let's put on a show despite setbacks and moral opposition' sub-genre. Pollak's film is not all warm fuzzies, however. Also present: jealous, uptight spinster (Siv) (check) geriatric whose soul still sings (check) elderly couple who may have repressed desires for each other since kindergarten (check) obese person whose function is to point out we should not laugh and say 'fatty' (check) intellectually handicapped boy who proves able to sing a good 'A' (check). The place is, of course, populated by a wide range of recognizable types whose character arcs can be predicted: the broken-hearted, fair-haired girl so beautiful she nearly glows the cellphone-ringing local businessman the woman whose beauty is lost amidst domestic abuse the steely pastor and his less austere wife, who at first seem right out of Ingmar Bergman. Here, he takes the job of cantor/choirmaster, despite the usual suspicions of artists and outsiders. He was bullied mercilessly by classmates here, supposedly because he was a sensitive musician without aspiration to drive a truck.
The town he visits, or rather revisits, is, unbeknownst to the townsfolk, the place of his childhood. The stranger is burned-out maestro Daniel Daréus on a quest for self-rediscovery. But it is a formula with life left in it yet, and this seems to be because people need positive- message films that evoke a sense of community almost in spite of themselves.
MASTER CLUE RUNESCAPE. HIS JOB LEAVES HIM KIND OF HATED FULL
This film's structural similarity with the likes of The Full Monty, Brassed Off, Calendar Girls and On a Clear Day shows its indebtedness to the formula. Secondly, any film about small communities taking on the whole wide world will strike a human chord in our increasingly individual/self- focused and impersonalized world. The same year and with a similarly Swedish breeze, The Queen of Sheba's Pearls did it, and Babette's Feast also comes to mind. Firstly, small films about strangers bringing new life to rural Christian communities provide plenty of scope for the exposure of hypocrisy while at the same time allowing repressed characters to break out of their hairshirts. Its success as a crowd pleaser comes from two facts. The film also runs the gamut of proverbial messages about 'finding one's own voice' and 'just doing it despite one's fear', without completely removing the lump from the throats of the cynics. It contains plenty of ammunition for cynical critics, continuity error-spotters and for saccharine-debunkers, yet manages to depict the colours of life in a small community evocatively. Kay Pollak's 2004 heart-warmer Så som i himmelen/ As it is in Heaven contains every stereotype of Swedish humanity and inhumanity yet manages to be a crowd-pleaser.