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Review: Reprise (2006).

2009-11-25T17:44:12Z

Reprise. Director: Joachim Trier. 2006. Norwegian. 105 minutes.

Life doesn't always turn out the way we hope. Some dreams are shattered and dreams come true. This is the dominant theme in director Joachim Trier's first film, Reprise.

Adorned with Joy Division, quiet introspection, and glimmerings of humor, Reprise follows a group of early 20-something friends in Oslo.
The plot focuses on three characters in particular; two friends and one of their girlfriends, but there is no love triangle. Instead, the focus is on human nature, friendship, loss and coping, and while there are plenty of subplots, the red thread that brings it all together is the merciless slipping of one of the three into madness.

Reprise is shot with subdued colors, an eye for detail and an appreciation for the subtle. It's painted in a limited palette and naturally lit, which I think perfectly suits the film. Notably, I was taken by how skillfully the film was acted. Never did I feel that it was stilted or even fanciful.

5 out of 6 herrings.

Review: Under the Sun (1998)

2009-11-18T17:45:50Z

Under the Sun. Director: Colin Nutley. 1998. Swedish. 118 minutes.

Fields flooded with vast crops of golden rape flowers. Sweden. An illiterate, well-mannered farmer. A classified ad for a young housekeeper with a request for a picture. A well-dressed woman from the city. An obnoxious young greaser that has spent time in the US and prefers an English pronunciation of his surname. Frequent emptying of bedpans. Under the Sun is a film set in 1950s rural Sweden.

While quite possibly made for television (?), the movie appears is largely shot on location and features an enjoyable golden tone throughout... though at times I wonder if a grittier approach wouldn't have been better. While (fortunately) sparse, the soundtrack often veered far too into the realm of the sickly sweet for my tastes. The plot definitely could have been executed better and things were sometimes unintentionally hokey, but I found a little enjoyment in Under the Sun.

Review: Babettes Gæstebud (English: "Babette's Feast") (1987)

2009-11-17T08:57:39Z

Babettes gæstebud (English Babette's Feast). (1987)
Directed by Gabriel Axel.
102 minutes. Danish.

Ingredient I:
Jutland. Birthplace of the English language, the Angles, the Jutes, the Teutons. Mostly flat. Farms. Wind-bent trees. While windy, cold and gray much of the year, there's no place I'm more fond of than Jutland. So far so good.

Ingredient II:
The French. OK, it's not that I particularly dislike French culture (unlike some of my countrymen) but, that said, a Francophile I am not.

Ingredient II:
Food. I am not ashamed to admit that I like food. A lot. Well, good food. And who can deny the food of the French?

Mix these three ingredients together and you might just get a wonderful Danish film called Babette's Feast. Recommended to me by someone with taste, I've kept an eye out for this movie for a while now. I am not at all disappointed. In Babette's Feast, a wonderfully matter-of-fact plot unravels to bring a Frenchwoman to Jutland in the 19th century. After fleeing from certain death due to political turmoil in her native France and after a decade and a half of living with the remains of an aging Christian sect in remote Jutland, Babette comes into a stroke of good luck and decides to give her adopted home a gift: she poignantly exposes the town to the pleasures of the flesh, if "only" through the stomach.

Colors and landscapes are contrasted excellently—Babette's gift glows with rich warmth while the bleak coastal Jutlandic town glimmers like cold bones. Some of the haircuts are strangely feathered and 80s but that's a minor complaint for what is otherwise a fine movie. Everything else was just right. Recommended!

alderwounds.net : now up

2009-06-16T05:18:14Z

My website, which is essentially a little portfolio, is now up. Please have a look:
http://alderwounds.net

Retaking "god." (Glasir)

2009-05-27T05:00:07Z

"God." When you hear this word, what do you think of? The genocidal, masculine sky god of Christianity who suddenly mellows out in the New Testament? Islam? Judaism? Most people in the Western world immediately think of the Semitic sky god of the three aforementioned religions (which are known as Abrahamic religions due to their common origins). This particular Semitic god has a name; Yahweh. Yahweh, once one of many Semitic deities among the pre-Abrahamic, polytheistic Semitic peoples.

The word god is anything but Abrahamic. In fact, it's about as (Germanic) heathen as it gets. From the Barnhart's dictionary of etymology (Barnhart, Robert K (1995). The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology: the Origins of American English Words. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-270094-7):
"God or god n. Old English (about 725) god Supreme Being, deity; cognate with Old Frisian, Old Saxon, and Dutch god Supreme Being, deity, Old High German god (modern German Gott), Old Icelandic godh, gudh and Gothic guth, from Proto-Germanic *ǥuđán."

Of particular interest here is how Christianization seems to have warped the meaning and stripped it of its gender-neutral characteristics (in my opinion a part of the systematic sub-humanization of the female gender that Christianization - and more obviously Islam in modern times - results in), also from the same definition cited above in Barnhart's dictionary:
"The Germanic words for god were originally neuter, but after the Germanic tribes adopted Christianity, God became a masculine syntactic form."

When you capitalize ''God'' in reference to Yahweh, you are referring to Yahweh as a proper noun and as -the- God; inferring that he is the only god and that all others are false. A tactic for which we should have no patience for, and, as heathens, should not be promoting. The goal is to strip the word of the Christianization and bring it back to its roots; referring to the deities of the Germanic peoples. It's our word, not theirs.

I propose that all future references made to the Semitic god Yahweh refer to him by his name instead of our hijacked, indigenously heathen word god. I believe that this would be a solid step forward to getting not only people to think about the words they use on a daily basis, to get people to examine the roots of this particular deity they are so fond of evoking, and to perhaps even check into their own roots.

__________________________________________________________
This message was a recent post from Glasir Heathen Moot. Heathen? Interested in Germanic paganism? Have a visit and create an account to view forums:
http://glasir.alderwounds.net

Copyrighted seeds, GMO invasion, Agent Orange, DDT: Monsanto

2009-05-16T22:43:51Z

Not to mention responsible for producing over 50 "superfund" clean up sites in the US and frequent legal action against farms whose crops Monsanto's genetically-modified crops invade. Of course, it helps employ officials in the US Environmental Protection Agency...

Do you care about the food you eat? The air you breath? Your surroundings? What about your loved ones? Your future?

If you aren't aware already, do yourself a favor and read about what may well be the most vile company that exists in the modern world, Monsanto:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto

Review (sort of): "Okie Noodling" (2001)

2009-05-10T04:53:46Z

Noodling. What is it? Well, I can tell you, for lo! I have watched a documentary about it on Youtube! Okay, half a documentary. Let's just say I can only handle so much film about noodling. But back to what it is. Noodling is, basically, people fishing in lakes.. with their hands. They feel out the lakes for holes in the water, and then stick their hands deep into them. Within the hole will sometimes be an enormous catfish that will bite them (the catfish do not have teeth as we do but rather something sand-paper like) and, with any luck, the noodler will pull out the fish. The reason this is called noodling is because, to entice the papery catfish bite, one wiggles their fingers around like plump worms for the taking.. Of course, there's not always catfish in those holes..!

Remember, it's a tradition:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONDIQwQeFEk

Review: "The Creek Runs Red" (2007)

2009-05-10T04:37:43Z

Some of you may be aware that Youtube recently branched into making full-length films of various genres (including documentaries) available on their service officially and in high quality. For those of you who are not aware of this, have a look here:
http://www.youtube.com/movies

Upon discovering this, the first film I watched was a documentary called The Creek Runs Red. The documentary covers the history and then-current state of a highly contaminated city Picher, Oklahoma in the United States. I had never heard of it before, but I think it's all very interesting. While all quite real, the atmosphere the city projects is really something straight out of fiction, and reminded me a bit of Dear Wendy (also recommended).

Some of the old residents are desperately clinging on to their past, embodied by what remains of their quickly disappearing and rotting and contaminated (but once booming) city, while other remaining residents are horrified of the results that the heavy metals contamination is having on the children growing up there. Some of the Native Americans interviewed that live in reservation nearby are more (understandably) blunt about the whole thing. I found it all very interesting, even emotional, and there were a lot of very peculiar characters documented. As a side note, the city was significantly damaged by a very powerful tornado in 2008, resulting in scores of fatalities, according to Wikipedia.

Watch The Creek Runs Red:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mmhElHeHl0

glasir.alderwounds.net

2008-11-12T20:37:23Z

Heathen? Interested in Germanic Heathenry?

You are formally invited to...

GLASIR HEATHEN MOOT

Warm Feet

2008-10-16T06:49:57Z

I have a confession to make. I have never worn wool socks. Before tonight, that is. It's not that I've never had the need for them. In fact, just off of the top of my head, I can think of several incidents involving serious (and not so serious) cold where wool socks would have saved me plenty of toe-freezing. When it gets cold in steel-toed boots, it stays cold, and anything inside becomes does exactly the same. Right now I'm wearing wool socks, and I must admit that my feet may have never known such comfort. Even better, they have stags on them. Winter calls, and I hear her, all the while wearing my wool socks!!

The Hand with the Knife

2008-02-08T03:18:29Z

And here's one of my favorite tales form the first edition of "Nursery & Household Tales" by the Grimm brothers, translated into English by Maria Tatar and appearing in her work The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales.

The Hand with the Knife
There once was a girl who had three brothers. The boys meant everything to their mother, and the girl was always put at a disadvantage and treated badly. Every day she had to go out to a barren heath to dig peat, which was used for cooking and heating. A dull old tool was all she had to do the nasty work.

The little girl had an admirer, an elf who lived in a hill near her mother's house. Whenever she passed by that hill, the elf would stretch his hand out of a boulder and hold out a very sharp knife that had special powers and could cut through anything. She was able to dig out the peat quickly with that knife, go home with the required amount, and when she got to the boulder, she tapped on it twice. Then the hand would reach out to take back the knife.

When the mother began to notice how quickly and effortlessly the girl brought home the peat, she told the brothers that someone else had to be helping her with the work, otherwise it wouldn't be possible. The brothers stealthily followed her and saw how she got the magical knife, then caught up with her and forced her to give it to them. They headed back, struck the rock as the girl had done, and when the good elf stretched his hand out, they cut it off with his own knife. The bloody arm pulled back, and because the elf believed that his beloved had betrayed him, he was never seen again.

How Children Played Butcher with Each Other (2 Versions)

2008-02-07T23:08:12Z

Recently I typed up two odd folk tales as recorded by the brothers Grimm that rarely see print in the English language:

How Children Played Butcher with Each Other
In a city called Franecker located in West Friesland, it happened that young children aged five and six, both boys and girls, were playing with each other. And they told one boy that he should be the butcher, another boy that he should be the cook, and a third that he should be the pig. They decided that one little girl should play the cook, another was to be the assistant to the cook; the assistant was to catch the blood of the pig in a little basin so that they could make sausages from it. The butcher, as had been agreed, went at the boy who was playing the pig, pulled him down to the ground and cut his throat with a little knife; the assistant to the cook caught the blood in her little basin. A councilor who happens to be passing by sees the whole miserable spectacle: he dashes off with the butcher, takes him up to the house of the mayor, who immediately calls a meeting of all councilors. They deliberated at length on the matter and had no idea what to do, for they realized that it had all been child's play. One of them, a wise old man, ventured the opinion that the chief judge should put a nice red apple on hand and a gilder in the other, and that he call the child and stretch both hands out to him: if the child took the apple, he would be declared innocent; if he took the gilder, he would be killed. This was done: the child, laughing, reached out for the apple and was therefore not subject to any kind of punishment.

(Version 2)
A man once slaughtered a pig while his children were looking on. When they started playing in the afternoon, one child said to the other: "You be the little pig, and I'll be the butcher," whereupon he took an open blade and thrust it into his brother's neck. Their mother, who was upstairs in a room bathing the youngest child in a tub, heard the cries of her other child, quickly ran downstairs, and when she saw what had happened, drew a knife the knife out of the child's neck and, in a rage, thrust it into the heart of the child who had been the butcher. She then rushed back to the house to see what her other child was doing in the tub, but in the meantime it had drowned in the bath. The woman was so horrified that she fell into a state of utter despair, refused to be consoled by the servants, and hanged herself. When her husband returned home from the fields and saw this, he was so distraught that he died shortly thereafter.

Source: Tatar, Maria. The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales (2003) ISBN 0691114692

Reviews: "Twin Peaks" (1990 -1991) and "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me" (1992)

2008-01-02T02:59:59Z

Over the last month, I've been watching every episode of the television series Twin Peaks and, afterwards, I watched the associated prequel film entitled Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. While it made a big splash, it somehow this had escaped my radar. I really knew nothing about it outside of the fact that it was influential. Curious - and having seen practically everything else Lynch has directed - I took the plunge and rented the pilot.

"Twin Peaks" (1990 - 1991)
Directed by David Lynch and Mark Frost.
30 Episodes, English.

While I didn't know what to expect at all, I was very impressed by the pilot. There was a certain sinister element lurking beneath the beautiful views of the North American Pacific Northwest, the characters were all interesting and well executed, the wardrobe was excellent, the music was wonderful; everything fell perfectly into place. Personally, I have a great distaste for television so I was surprised to find that this material had aired at all on television.. and on mainstream American television in the early 1990s no less!

So began my journey into Twin Peaks from episode to episode. The entire first season was completely wonderful and I was glued to each episode. While I've admired certain films by Lynch before, I was surprised to find myself becoming quite unnerved by the series as it reached the climax of season 1. I was drawn in; I eagerly anticipated every new episode that peeled back the mystery of Laura Palmer's death a layer further. Things were becoming more and more intense, the characters were quickly developing. I felt emotion, fear and comedy.

"That gum you like is going to come back into style!"

The second season starts off where the first ended and within the same story arch. Which is great. Laura's fate was largely revealed but many new questions had "floated to the top", if you will. The episodes leading to Laura's killer were handled with intensity, grace and very black humor. I also found these episodes very moving indeed, another sign of their expert handling.

After wards, however, I felt that maybe the series shouldn't have continued or, if it had to, Laura's killer shouldn't have been revealed at all. Supernatural elements were introduced, which, to me, cheapened the plot line of the series. A new killer was introduced who got plenty of screen time and, for the overshadowing that was done prior to his arrival, he was mainly there for unintentional comic relief. A casebook example of showing too much of the villain, in my opinion. Had he not been shown at all, it would have had a greater effect, but I found myself just wishing he'd get on with it. He often just appeared ridiculous. I can only assume Lynch didn't have as much control in the series at this point.

While the series never "jumped the shark" so to speak, many have noted that it seemed to degenerate. Indeed, the series did seem to wane to me as it became notably less mysterious. I no longer felt the series was being guided by the eye of an artist. As I mentioned previously, I suspect that Lynch's hands were sort of restrained throughout the series to varying extents. Mid-way through season 2, those restraints probably became tighter, to the point where holes started to appear in the proverbial fabric in season 2. These restraints weren't always bad, as it seemed to me that this resulted in a curious-midway between light hearted humor and sheer darkness. The show was laced with plenty of symbolism and mystery when it was at its peak; basically the entire season 1 arch.

With that said, the post-revelation episodes of season 2 are not without their perks. There are many masterful scenes in these episodes and it ends very well too. An example of one of these scenes:

Agent Cooper and his new love interest share their first kiss in the diner, before she drops her tray. Very close macro shot of the broken tray. Syrup drips from the broken tray, slowly, slowly. The sound of the dripping magnifies heavily.

Quick cut to rising, majestic music with a light blue van speeding against the sunlight.

Wonderful!

Exactly how much Lynch was restrained here seems to become apparent to me while watching the full length film Fire Walk With Me, which handles the events leading up to Twin Peaks.

"Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With me" (1992)
Directed by David Lynch.
30 Episodes, English.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is a different animal. No, "animal" is too light of a word. Perhaps a more appropriate descriptor is in order; how about a half-alive, half-fever dream ride to hell? In other words, this is Lynch's vengeful swan song for Twin Peaks. This comparison must be stated upfront to someone who has spent 30+ hours watching the series and has become very familiar with the various characters and plot lines. Some of the things taken for granted in the series are absent here, including some major characters. Some actors have been replaced by others. Things are also far more serious, dark and extreme here, which suits the subject matter.

The film tells the story - or some of it - leading to the truly horrible fate of Laura Palmer. It recycles some of the great music of the series but introduces some new music I felt was inappropriate. Still, Lynch's ear for sound in his films is unparalleled, in my opinion, and this is apparent here. The movie, particularly in the scenes at the "Bang-Bang Bar", does have a tendency into questionable dialog. At first, I had largely negative feelings about the film. I think this was because of the lack of some of my favorite characters and because it differed so greatly from the series I had come to be so fond of.

One of my favorite scenes.

However, judged on its own merits I think the film is great. It foreshadows future films by Lynch - particularly Mulholland Drive - and it has its own very dark and disturbing qualities and feel. I think time will judge this movie differently than the initial critics did as the shock of the difference will wear off. In retrospect, I think it deserves its place along with the rest of Lynch's films and will probably gain a much more positive reputation in the future than it had when it originally appeared.

Jägerblut - "Hunting"

2007-12-29T06:21:29Z

Jägerblut
"Hunting"
from the 2007 album entitled 1896-1906
MP3: http://alderwounds.net/depot/mp3/04 hunting.mp3

Leave concrete, mortar, brick behind
We are naked, two of one kind.
We catch the dirty ground beneath
( ....? ) greet us, we breath.

Into the forests, up the trees
Down the lake and into seas
Burn the fire, Reap the ground,
Walk in spirals round and round.

Talk to spirits trapped and bound.
Walk in spirals round and round,
Talk to spirits trapped and bound.

Into forests, up the trees,
Down the lake and into seas.

Eat the fire, burn the ground,
Walk in spirals round and round
Talk to spirits trapped and bound
Walk in spirals round and round
Talk to spirits trapped and bound

Far from cities people hate
The dawn is near, the hour late.
The moon is grinning in the sky,
We come to run, we come to fly.
We come to hunt, we come to die.

We come to run, we come to fly,
We come to hunt, we come to die.

Mist is rising, come and see.
Come, my darling, lie with me,
Come, my darling, lie with me.

Soon we'll be rotting in the earth
We'll be free

I'll be you and you'll be me
I'll be you and you'll be me
A brilliant peaceful world (.. ?)
A monsterous wind, the wood will shake
A monsterous wind, the world we'll take

A hunter in the forest wake

Rain is falling endlessly
Come my darling, hunt with me.

You hunt me, you hunt me
Hunt me, you hunt me
I will be you.

"The Celebration" (1998)

2007-09-19T21:28:02Z

(AKA "Festen")
Directed by Thomas Vinterberg.
106 minutes, Danish.

"The Celebration" is a movie I had heard about for some time prior to seeing it. It was created under the guidelines carved out by Von Trier's Dogme 95 manifesto and so, with that in mind, I was a mixture of cautious and curious. Cautious because I have mixed feelings about Von Trier's fims. Curious because some of those mixed feelings are extremely positive.

Outright, I was glad to see that the film had no pretentiousness. The film centers around the 60th birthday party of a wealthy Danish hotel owner. One by one, his children show up for the celebration. On their individual routes to the event, it's obvious each child has their own issues.

It becomes immediately clear that the Dogme 95 rules had benefited production (especially the cinematography) in giving the movie a gritty, naturally-lit feel without the thick gloss that would have come with such a scenario in the hands of most directors. Instead, what you get is an extended look at several troubled characters, the slowly unshrouded story of a suicide and numerous modern Danish conventions wrapped into a tight, tense package.

The scenarios presented and the accompanying tension drip with the allure of a car wreck. It's natural to want to look.

"Dersu Uzala" (1975)

2007-06-26T02:21:40Z

Directed by Akira Kurosawa
141 minutes, Russian.

"Dersu Uzala" is a Japanese and Soviet coproduction directed by Akira Kurosawa. The movie is based on a book of memoirs by a Russian explorer named Vladimir Arsenyev. Set in the early 20th century, the shamanistic Dersu Uzala, which the film and book are named after, was a solitary, aging Nainai who had lost his family long ago to smallpox. He encounters the Russian crew, led by Arsenyev. Arsenyev, impressed with the wisdom of Uzala, asks him to serve as a guide. Subsequently, Uzala not only enriches the perspective of Aresenyev in the wilderness of Siberia but also saves his life more than once.

Most of the shots in this film are impressively on location and are specific to the season. Each shot shows a significant amount of consideration for placement and symmetry. I felt as though I was watching a series of moving postcards from the time period. Most of the scenes rely heavily on the mood of the environment and follow the seasons of the story. There are a few shots I was personally very taken by, where the two men stand against a wide sky as the sun descends and the moon ascends.

Most impressively to me, there's a very intense scene following Arsenyev and Uzala as they've wandered too far off on a frozen lake, against Uzala's warnings. In time, they are lost due to the increasing amount of wind and barren landscape. As the sun sets, they realize their situation has become very dire. Uzala intently instructs Arsenyev to gather the scattered high grass on the lake as quickly as possible. Beautifully photographed, the sun sets behind them as the wind worsens and the cold grows. Arsenyev becomes increasingly tired, falling to his knees a number of times before eventually passing out against the ice. When he wakes up, he finds that Uzala has saved them both by building a 'nest' from the grass that has incubated them from the freezing night.

The sound in this movie is, however, not great. It's entirely in mono. "Fire" apparently equals static. The soundtrack is completely unecessary most of the time and, in my opinion, actually worked against certain scenes it was used for. Hearing a mono-tastic trumpet BUUURRRR really cheapens what could otherwise be an emotionally gripping scene. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad in stereo. The English dub is absolutely horrible. The voices given to many of the characters are completely disrespectful and cartoonish. I'd recommend avoiding.

Arsenyev's travels are extremely obscure to Western viewers. I find this entire piece of history pretty interesting, as well as this particular region.. The wilderness, the shamanism, the weather - all gorgeously antiquated. While perhaps a bit difficult to watch at times (the movie is rather slow), after sticking with it I found that it was definitely worth my time. I very much appreciate this small glimpse into the remote Siberian reaches of yesterday.

"Elephant" (2003)

2007-06-16T01:03:20Z

Directed by Gus Van Sant
81 minutes, English.

In 1999, the Columbine High School Massacre occurred in Littleton, Colorado. I was just getting home during my first year of high school and turned on the television set. I watched live coverage of the event, complete with updates as it happened. During this time, every news outlet in the US was scrambling to dig up any information they possibly could in as little time as possible. During the following weeks and even months, when the search for news facts failed, new "facts" were invented in an effort to further sensationalize the massacre and draw coverage out as long as possible for maximum financial benefit.

Larger issues such as gun control and the responsibility of family were covered ad nauseam but more interesting to me was the peddling of blatant disinformation. For example, one of the teenagers was apparently a fan of musical act KMFDM who happen to originate from Germany. Soon after, numerous media outlets revealed that one of the shooters was a fan of this "German Neo-Nazi band" despite sole member Sasha Konietzo's status as an ethnic Jew. Someone mentioned the word "Goth," a subculture and term most media outlets in the US were completely unfamiliar with at the time. Subsequently, even though completely unrelated to the teenagers and the shootings, a full scale media witch-hunt for one of the most harmless subcultures on the planet was launched. Pockets were filled, careers were boosted and teenagers were buried.

Gus Van Sant's "Elephant" was originally intended to be a film about the massacre but, at some point, morphed into a completely different creature. Instead, the film focuses on the lives of several teenagers during the hours leading up to a school shooting similar to the Columbine massacre.

While crisply and professionally shot, the actors seem to have had no script and rely heavily on realistic, largely fragmentary and light dialog. Subplots are briefly touched upon - a student is late to school due to his alcoholic father and takes the blame. rather than admit to the alcoholism of his father. An introverted, unattractive girl is berated by her peers in a shower room. Three girls discuss their lunch, then purge themselves of it afterwords. Outside of being students at the same school, most of the subjects have nothing in common. They're simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Hints are given that the shooters have some sort of qualm with a few of the subjects but it's not explored further - intentionally left vague. There's no explanation given as to why. There's no narrative. Instead, heavy focus is placed on atmosphere, ambient audio and realism.

The Great American Cash In doesn't seem to be the root cause of this picture.

Often, the camera is tightly placed and focused on to a single student walking through the school, giving a dreamlike impression of introversion. Ambient music is used extensively to great effect, allowing for extensive immersion during such sequences. Of particular note is an extended, continued shot of a student as he walks through parts of the school. During this scene, the ambiance is carefully mixed with the constantly changing location of the student. One of the killers seems to be a talented pianist and well known piano pieces serve as a repeated motif, resulting in a general feeling of melancholy and detachment.

Such a film could easily devolve into moralistic posturing with even the slightest of hints. At one point, something seems to be hinted at, when the future killers are watching documentary footage of an old pseudo-documentary of the Third Reich on television. However, the characters seem to shrug it off and their voices are largely drowned out by the increasing audio of the program. What seems to begin as a message is obscured and drowned out; a tease.

Is this movie trying to communicate a message? Is it trying to say anything at all? I don't think so. Perhaps not even the focal point of the movie, the shooting serves as a hub - everything leads to it. Surrounding it is an introspective, unpretentious and near surreal portrait of a controversial and haunting event that can't be explained away with any sort of simplicity.

"The Virgin Spring" (1960)

2007-06-09T06:40:01Z

(AKA "Jungfrukällan")
Directed by Ingmar Bergman.
89 minutes, Swedish.

Unfortunately, this review of is going to miss a very important aspect when considering the film. According to the opening credits, it is an adaptation of a 13th century Swedish ballad. I don't speak Swedish and am not sure where to find it in the first place. So, if anyone knows anything more about it please feel free to fill me in as I am always interested.

Earlier this year, I realized that one of the great names in film that I had completely missed was Ingmar Bergman, perhaps one of the most celebrated directors of all time. While in Denmark earlier this year, conversations with Danes about Bergman sparked my curiosity, combined with a distant glimpses of some of his work, mainly "The Seventh Seal" (1957) due to the distinctive and highly influential imagery surrounding the film.

Of the three films by Bergman I had seen ("The Seventh Seal," "Persona" (1966) and "Wild Strawberries" (1957)) I have enjoyed "Wild Strawberries" the most and it has subsequently become one of my favorite movies of all time. I sometimes actually enjoyed the unsettling suspense and experimentation of "Persona" more than the stark, bleached apocalypse of "The Seventh Seal." This doesn't mean that I don't think "The Seventh Seal" doesn't deserve all of the respect and recognition it has garnered -- quite the contrary. Bergman's films have a shimmering, quiet quality to them that I haven't seen duplicated.

After reading a number of summaries of works by Bergman, "The Virgin Spring" caught my eye due not only to my interests in Norse polytheism, of which the film briefly references, but also because it apparently inspired Wes Craven's "Last House On The Left," an early American slasher film from the 1970s.

The plot seems to be set during the Christianization process in Sweden. A wealthy Christian farmer couple in medieval Sweden have two daughters, one of whom is adopted. The adopted daughter, Ingeri, an unkempt brunette, is scorned by her adopted Mother. She mysteriously chants the name of Odin to herself when upset. The other, Karin, a shining blond, is celebrated by both of her parents. Karin is naive and flirty yet chaste and mischievous, basking in her status of wealth and adoration. Ingeri is bitter, acts out and is pregnant out of wedlock.

After sleeping in late, Karin is asked to deliver candles to a local church, as they must be delivered by a virgin. Karin requests that Ingeri come with her and her father accepts despite her mother's qualms.

The two continue along a series of gorgeously filmed sequences in the Swedish forests until they reach a stream. There they encounter a large raven and a haggard man greets them. He appears to have a single good eye or at least two differently colored eyes. Here an odd scene occurs where Karin leaves behind Ingeri and the old man offers her folk remedies for her pain - including a human finger. He tells her he has dreamt of her. The scene seems to be allegorical and perhaps intentionally vague. Whatever the case, it sends Ingeri fleeing into the woods.

Three sheep herders spy Karin as she continues along her trail, one of which is a young boy. Of the two oldest herders, one spins a short sob story about their origins. She agrees to share her lunch with them in a field nearby, with their goats. Karin boasts of her status as a self-proclaimed "Princess" and exaggerates the wealth of her family, arousing perhaps not only envy but also much darker feelings amongst the two older males. A striking scene here features Karin clutching a baby goat in dawning terror before she is raped and murdered.

The murderers then seek shelter in a stead on their way for reasons not entirely explained, although it may have something to do with their assumed need to flee the area. The stead belongs to the wealthy family we've seen at the beginning, whom discover the murders and exact a brutal revenge. There is a particularly emotive scene here where Karin's father enacts his rage on a tree, tearing it to the ground.

The ending is perhaps a bit ludicrous but I can't be too hard on judging this without being familiar with the source material. It may also not be as immediately obvious as it seems, as many questions are left unanswered even as the film concludes. Maybe it's a historical comment.

This film was shot with the eye of an artist and the mind of a poet. A good example of this is the location where the rape occurs. The outdoor set features a large downed tree - symbolism or spur of the moment location? The lighting is wonderful, largely natural and a lot of the movie seems to be on location. Certainly an achievement and likely an overlooked masterpiece in Bergman's portfolio.