Culture Watch
HAMSUN
1996, Norway/Sweden/Denmark/Germany, 157 min., subtitles
Director: Jan Troell
Recognitions
Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, Montreal, 1996; Best Actor (Max von Sydow), Valladolid, 1996; Bodil Award for Best Actor, 1997; Guldbagge Awards for Best Film, Actor, Actress and Screenplay, 1997; Grand Jury Prize, Rouen Nordic Film Festival, 199. Based on the Danish book Processen mod Hamsun by Thorkild Hansen
Biography
Writer Knut Hamsun (1859 – 1952) was regarded as a national treasure who could do no wrong in his native Norway. In 1911, he gave up city life to become a gentleman farmer and explore the strong bond he felt between man and nature; in 1920, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his novel The Growth of the Soil, which dealt with these themes. He hated British Imperialism because of the hunger their policies engendered in Norway at the time of the First World War and this primed his support of Hitler. By 1935, he was already being
exploited by the Nazis as a high-culture poster boy and when Germany marched into Norway on April 9, 1940, the seventy-year-old Hamsun welcomed the Nazis for the protection he felt they could give his country from Great Britain – much to the surprise and dismay of his fellow Norwegians. In 1943, he went to Germany to meet with Hitler and Goebbels and presented Goebbels with his Nobel Prize Medal as a token of his esteem. When the war ended, Hamsun was knocked from his pedestal and sent to a psychiatric clinic in Oslo and thence to an old- age home where he died, aged ninety-three. His wife, Marie, who was an even more ardent supporter of the Nazi cause, was imprisoned and sentenced to three years hard labour.
The Film
A dramatized biography of the last seventeen years of Hamsun’s life, from his declaration for the Nazis in 1935 to his death in an Oslo old-age home in 1952. Max von Sydow, in the title roll, gives an extraordinary performance as the cranky, hearing-impaired, seventy-year-old writer. We don’t see many elderly people on film and this one is worth watching just for von Sydow’s interpretation. Also explored is Hamsun’s volatile and tormented marriage to Marie Andersen a writer of children’s books, twenty-two years his junior. We are with him in the Oslo mental institution when, as part of his treatment, he is shown movies of Nazi concentration camps that leave him weeping and shaken. And finally, we accompany him to his trial where he is fined $80,000 for ''economic collaboration. But, despite the unravelling of his Olympian status, he keeps going, working on his final book, Overgrown Paths, a memoir which his Norwegian publisher refuses to print. As strong today as when it was first released ten years ago, we highly recommend this film.
The Story of Qiu Ju
1992, China/Hong Kong, 100 min., subtitles
Director: Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern, Ju Dou)
Recognitions
Golden Lion, Venice, 1992; Golden Rooster, Best Film and Best Actress (Gong-li), 1993; Most Popular Film, Vancouver, 1993; and many film critics’ awardsAdapted from The Wan Family's Lawsuit, a novella by Yuan Bin Chen
Qiu Ju (Gong-Li) is a pregnant farmer’s wife whose husband has got into a fight with the village chief through making a subtle insult about his lack of male children. As a result the Chief has kicked the husband in the testicles and now he refuses to apologize. Qiu Ju is a woman with a mission; she wants justice, and she wants it in the form of an apology, so even when the local officer tries to settle the dispute through financial compensation, she isn’t satisfied. Instead, she refuses the money and begins her journey up the ladder of the Chinese political hierarchy enlisting ever higher authorities to help her get justice. Along the way, she must journey from the village to the local town and finally to the capital, and we get to see a remarkably detailed view of contemporary Chinese life. Most of the story’s background characters are real people, caught unawares by the camera, which gives the film a realistic, almost documentary back-drop. It also notes the behaviour of public officials towards a beautiful – and persistent – woman, thus underscoring some of the more basic inequities of Chinese life.This is a very simple story told with the depth of a master-storyteller, the detail of a sociologist and the insight of an artist, which progresses with the simplicity of a folk tale while presenting rural Chinese life with remarkable authenticity. If you didn’t see it when it first came out, you should definitely see it now.
Highly recommended.
Peace One Day
2004, UK, 80 min., documentary
Director: Jeremy Gilley
Recognitions
Nominated for Best Documentary, British Independent Film Awards, 2004; and for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Documentary, Director’s Guild of Great Britain, 2005
Young Brit filmmaker Jeremy Gilley’s long journey to realize his vision for a universal day of peace. Sick of our world’s apparent obsession with violence, death and destruction, he sets out to single-handedly persuade the global community to officially sanction an annual day when individuals, the military and criminals will put down their guns and abstain from violence. His attitude was "If I fail, it'll make an interesting film about a world unwilling to change, and if I succeed .... well, that's almost inconceivable."
Gilley encounters many difficulties – but he has amazing persistence. From his own investigation of the world’s hot spots where he quizzes the locals about “peace”, to his talks with supporters and meetings with UN officials, he pushes his idea forward. His efforts build to a climax on September 11, 2001, when he happens to be in New York. Using the terrorist atrocity to his advantage, he eventually gets a meeting with Kofi Annan, and visits every Noble Peace Laureate he can get to listen, including the Dalai Lama and Shimon Perez. The UK and Costa Rica puts forward a resolution (A/Res/55/282), and the United General Assembly unanimously adopts it. September 21 is fixed on the global calendar as the official UN International Day of Peace.
Although the film is edited to support its maker and central character, there is no doubt of its importance in showing how one individual’s spirit and determination to turn a seemingly impossibly idealistic vision into a concrete reality can have a very real impact on our world. To date, an estimated 240 million people have been made aware of the official day and the mandate of its observance.
To learn more, and support Jeremy Gilley’s initiative, visit the official site: www.peaceoneday.orgReturn to Page One of Angela Pressburger's April Reviews
Angela Pressburger grew up in the film industry (father Emeric Pressburger made The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus and Stairway to Heaven). She has been been an international program consultant at the Vancouver International Film Festival for the past ten years, and has spoken about film and sat on festival juries in both Europe and North America. She has recently written Show It in Public! — a grassroots guide to showing film in public (www.showamovie.ca) and keeps busy writing reviews for her home video for discerning viewers website, MapToMovies.com..
