3412 Sweet Land
Tonight we went to see Sweet Land at the Grandview Drexel. That's my third movie in three weeks--twice to see Dream Girls and then this low budget indy which has been slowly building in popularity since its release in 2005. It is based on a 1989 short story by Will Weaver. "A Gravestone Made of Wheat" and is about a Norwegian immigrant farmer in southwestern Minnesota who receives a mail-order bride from Norway, only to discover she's a German who had recently moved to Norway. It is not a "Hollywood" product, and is a beautiful love story of Olaf and Inge as they struggle against the community's prejudice and the moral standards of that era.The movie begins with Inge's death as an old woman in the 80s, reflects back to the Viet Nam era when Olaf dies, and then starts over with them as young strangers who fall in love around 1920. They encounter prejudice and suspicion in Olaf's strongly Lutheran Norwegian community (it takes place shortly after WWI) and can't marry because her papers are not in order.
Although it's an exceptionally well done film with a wonderful love story and beautiful photography depicting lush farmland and warm friendships, I can't help wondering if there will ever be a film made for commercial release that depicts Christians or even Americans in a positive light? The rural Minnesotan Lutheran congregation insists on speaking only English, even though many of them know Norwegian and the pastor can speak German. As I've come to expect in any film or TV production, everyone but the Christians exhibit Christ's love. There is one very minor character who appears at the beginning and the end whose heart is in the right place--he's of course, an outspoken Socialist.
Inge and Olaf's love story starts and ends with war--WWI and VietNam. The land struggle shows the two of them, both immigrants, harvesting acres of corn by hand, pitted against the modern age of machine farming just developing as farm markets inflated by the war collapse. Yes, and the big, bad commercial interests gobbling up the little guys--and the banker is a relative, a Lutheran sharing the pew on Sunday with the man whose farm he'll auction on Monday.
In what must be the tiniest of sub-plots, there are even two Native Americans, probably from a near-by reservation, helping the banker displace the farmer with 9 children about to be auctioned off his land. The director, Ali Selim, is of Arab parentage doing a xenophobia film when suspicion of Arabs is high, and it's a carbon neutral film (for environmentalists). Ah, the feelgoodiness of it. Oh, it's a good story, absolutely, a story of love and overcoming, and change as the community eventually comes to their aid, but sometimes I just get so tired. . .
Sweet Land
movie reviews
Ali Selim
Minnesota
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2 comments:
For the record...
Sometimes I feel the same way, about Christians always being portrayed in a bad light. However, if you had watched the movie to the end, you would have seen that the pastor in this film is redeemed in the end; he realizes he has been wrong, and this particular scene is actually one of the most touching scenes in the whole movie. I'm surprised you missed it. The community as well takes Inge and Olaf's side eventually. They gather their money together and pay for their farmsite so that it is not foreclosed. I wonder how you missed that...
This may surprise you too, but Ali Selim is not doing this movie to promote a pro-Arab pro-green message. He simply felt touched by the story and wanted to portray it against the beautiful Minnesota landscape. The fact that he happens to be of Arab descent does not mean he is trying to promote a certain political message. The carbon neutral film was something he felt he could do in order to go along with his own personal beliefs on helping the environment. Why not? It really wasn't his idea to publicly make a big deal out of it, but the press seems to be doing that.
And the Native Americans... well, there really were Native Americans in Minnesota back then, and there are now as well. You can't deny facts.
I just think it's strange that people can take a film so lovely and wholesome and pull it apart, taking things out of it that aren't even there...
"I just think it's strange that people can take a film so lovely and wholesome and pull it apart, taking things out of it that aren't even there..."
Why strange? The things I saw were there, placed by the writers and director for a reason. Indians were helping with the auction. The banker did put business ahead of blood relationships and Christian faith. The pastor did speak German and waffled in both his desire to help and his Christian duty and took the low road until the end. For only a few minutes at the end which turned that around, that's a powerful image to leave with an audience who knows little about the situation. You are the one who doesn't want see.
I thought it was a beautiful film and I said so, and I did watch it to the end and pointed out "a story of love and overcoming, and change as the community eventually comes to their aid." If there were any balance in the entertainment or news industry in its treatment of the "majority" nothing would need to be said of these undertones and we could all go home happy and fulfilled with warm fuzzies.
I saw the lingering dislike of the Russians when we were in Finland this summer for what happened in the 1930s and 1940s. These hurts die very slowly and this film is about an era only 1 year after the end of WWI.
We are constantly hammered with anti-American culture images, music and news. If you accept it without mention, that's you're way--join the big crowd. It's not mine.
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